E-Book rights for older books in question
Posted by Jacque on December 13th, 2009
Who owns the electronic rights to older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth, reports the New York Times.
The family of William Styron wants to see e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible” created. They believe they retain the rights to digital editions, but so does Styron’s publisher, Random House.
“The discussions about the digital fate of Mr. Styron’s work are similar to the negotiations playing out across the book industry as publishers hustle to capture the rights to release e-book versions of so-called backlist books. Indeed, the same new e-book venture Mr. Styron’s family hopes to use has run into similar resistance from the print publisher of “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller,” says the NY Times.
While most traditional publishers have included e-book rights in new author contracts for 15 years, many titles were originally published before e-books were explicitly included in contracts. Random House has sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, writing that the company’s older agreements gave it “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”
Some authors or their estates are seeking alternatives for e-books partly because they are dissatisfied with the digital royalty rate, typically 25% of net proceeds, offered by most traditional publishers. The argument is that because it costs publishers less to produce and distribute e-books, authors should receive more, not less, in digital royalties.
“I think the potential danger that publishers run by not talking this through carefully,” said Andrew Wylie, a literary agent who represents the estates of authors of backlist titles not yet in digital form, including Ralph Ellison and Vladimir Nabokov, “is that they will be excluded from e-book rights in a significant way.”
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