The Impending War Over e-Book Publishing
I am not in a book publisher, nor do I play one on the Internet. I am simply a firm believer in the viability of e-book technology, and a large consumer of digital content. My work has put me in conversations with some knowledgeable people in the e-book publishing world, and that has me believing there is a big legal battle over e-book publishing that has the potential to shake up this growing industry.
A recent event is going to push this battle into overdrive, and it’s likely to impact the way e-book publishing rights are distributed. Stephen Covey, one of the most successful business authors, has assigned the publishing rights to two of his most successful books, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and “Principle-Centered Leadership” to Amazon exclusively. This may be the first exclusive deal of this nature that an author has inked for e-book editions.
What makes this deal controversial is that Mr. Covey made this deal separate from his contract with his print publisher, Simon and Schuster. The author has indicated that his original publishing contract does not specifically address electronic editions, thus he can do what he wishes with the rights. He has assigned them to Amazon as the royalty earned will be 50 percent, instead of the 25 percent his Simon and Schuster contract provides. Amazon also intends to promote Covey’s works aggressively, which should mean more sales for the author.
I am all for an author getting the most return out of his efforts, and I wish Mr. Covey well. I don’t believe that Simon and Schuster is going to sit back and let these rights be assigned to Amazon without a fight, however. The legal response, if there is one, will likely contend that a published work is just that, whether in print or otherwise. It is going to become a tremendously important legal battle, especially given the growth of the e-book publishing business. It is certainly going to be a huge wild card in the future of electronic publishing.
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With Simon and Schuster deciding to delay ebooks by four months we may see more authors jumping their ship as well to peddle digital rights to works to outfits like Amazon that value them more highly than those whom make more of their money from cutting down forests.
You may be correct about pending legal action. The precedent is set in the audiobook market. Each audiobook begins with a “published by” so and so remark “with production rights to” so and so. Usually, the two so and so’s are not the same. It appears that this nonprint version of the published work is still under the auspice of the original print publisher.
I’m not an expert in this at all, but my understanding is that book contracts written in the past decade or so specifically include electronic rights if electronic rights were intended to be included.
I recall there was quite a bit of uproar in the science fiction community when Baen Books started its Webscriptions ebook arm (back in 1999 or so) over books published under older contracts. I’m not sure what the eventual result was, my impression is that Baen eventually only included works they had digital rights for.
I know there are works where the author has a digital edition contract separate from the paper edition, instead of the digital edition being a sublicense from the print publisher, so this is hardly the first time where a writer has bypassed his print publisher for an ebook. See for example http://www.watt-evans.com/ebooks.html