The E-book Battle With A-holes

According to one Huffington Post writer, the battle between superagent Andrew Wylie and Random House is a battle between a**holes, and that Wylie's attacks are necessary to keep publishers in line. Here's the basis for this looming battle of publishing giants:

Big publishers claim they own the eb00k rights for all books published before 1994 since no publisher mentioned ebooks in their contracts before that. Their claim is they don't have to pay authors for those sales, which, of course, are largely literary classics or bestsellers. The Wylie Agency has decided to launch its own publishing company, Odyssey Editions (for ebooks only), to prevent Random House (and others) from getting their hands on them. Random House has said it will no longer do business with Wylie (who represents Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth, as well as the estates of John Updike and Norman Mailer). Wylie also plans to give its authors a bigger percentage of the profit, which the big houses have limited to 25%. This battle will likely end in court.


A lot of anger is being expressed in the blogosphere on this issue, about writers getting screwed by big business interested in the bottom line, etc. A lot of altruism seems to be suddenly emerging in the world of ebooks, as if writers weren't getting screwed before. Here are some random thoughts:

1. Random House is screwing authors. Electronic rights that covered audio books should be applied here.
2. Wylie is benefiting from Random House and other publishers' work. He's only publishing ebooks, but his company is benefiting from their copy editing and initial marketing. He's pushing a polished product rather than having to invest in polishing it himself. He's not really risking losing money on the unknown. He may have once upon a time, but not now, not repeatedly.
3. Amazon is thrilled to be entering this deal with Wylie because their ebook business is exploding. Of course, Amazon fought long and hard to keep ebook prices down and Random House was one of the companies that convinced them to raise prices so that they, and their authors, could make more. Amazon was keeping ebook prices below paperback prices. Amazon can be a**holes, too.
4. People are screaming that authors are getting screwed by big publishers, but some of them sided with Amazon on the price of ebooks, going so far as to give all ebooks priced above $9.99 a one-star review and then refusing to buy them. Readers can be a**holes, too.
5. Authors get 25% of the wholesale price of ebooks (only 10-15% of hardcover books), but still make an average of 75 cents less for an ebook sale. The one big advantage is that ebooks stay on the shelf longer, if being harder to find.
6. Publishers face lower costs with ebooks, but it's not as simple as some writers have suggested: it's not just format, upload, and sell. Publishers face copyediting, marketing, artwork, and tech-support issues, though storage and shipping are off the table. Writers who don't recognize this are being a**holes, too.

Ebooks are about to overturn, and perhaps even overwhelm, the publishing industry. There will be a long list of books to slog through, nothing leaping off a shelf to grab your attention. Writers Wylie represents will likely benefit, new writers will struggle as always to find an audience, (though without book signings to help), and publishers will look for new ways to promote their best works.

In short, authors will still make less money, because publishing is peppered with a**holes. But it turns out the publishing body as a whole needs all the pieces to together nicely: Wylie, Random House, Amazon, readers, and writers, if it is to function properly. I hope this gets worked out, civilly and in short order: RH pays for past work, Wylie recognizes what publishers have done for him and his clients, Amazon offers fair prices, readers pay fair prices, and writers stay prolific and inventive without being underpaid. Otherwise, ebooks won't be a new Gutenberg press spreading literature to the masses but a regurgitation of literary classics at bargain-basement prices -- and that comes out all wrong.

I know people like simple good guys and bad guys, for morality tales as black and white as the written page, but that's a boring story. Characters come in shades of gray. And that includes assholes. To grant less is to create underdeveloped characters. Any basic writer knows that, and I hope the people writing about and following this story see that, too.

To read more on this, visit Publishers Weekly.