Wylie and the Odyssey, Part 2
To update this post concerning Wylie and Amazon’s recent deal, here’s a long quote from The Guardian:
Fear and loathing among the movers and shakers of America’s publishing industry reached new heights late last night with both Random House and Macmillan denouncing top literary agent Andrew Wylie’s move into digital publishing.
Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com’s Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture.
The disintermediation provoked an immediate reaction from Random House, which publishes a number of the authors featured in Odyssey Editions in physical form. On learning of the new venture on Wednesday night, the publisher fired off a letter to Amazon “disputing their rights to legally sell these titles”, which it said were “subject to active Random House publishing agreements”.
And late yesterday evening the publisher went a step further, with spokesman Stuart Applebaum issuing a statement saying that “on a worldwide basis”, Random House “will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved”.At the very least, this will be interesting to watch. Me, I’m staying out of this fight.
