I was going to save this for a Monday Motivation post, but there’s just too much to cover, really. it’s just… I’ll let you form your own opinions. Frankly, I find it fascinating, but then I have the advantage of watching from a safe distance, since when it comes to books I’m both published by and a customer of e-primary presses. Still, it really speaks wonders about the changing landscape of ebooks right now!

The Wylie agency have decided to set up their own publishing company and deal exclusively with Amazon for its ebooks, rather than through traditional channels.

This deeply upsets (and by “deeply”, I mean “legally”) Random House, who believe they have the rights to the ebooks. So Random House are refusing to negotiate any new contracts with Wylie authors until this is resolved. The Wylie Agency has some pretty big authors too, like John Updike and Salmon Rushdie. They have a reputation for pinching them from other agencies once they get famous by offering to negotiate absolutely huge advances; it’s what they’re famous for, and why Wylie is called ‘The Jackal’. HarperCollins condemns the move, as does Macmillian, while Penguin Books claim they don’t mind as much (of course, they have less to lose in this battle, only having one Wylie book affected). Of course, most of these publishers are using the Agency model, which means their own prices are pretty high, their royalties low, and their books not available in a lot of online stores.

Writer Beware comments here on why they dislike these kind of agency/publisher arrangements. The Independent manages to argue both sides of the case, while The Guardian seems to find the whole thing amusing and offers perspectives from authors and publishers.

EREC lists other agencies that have done the same, though note that none of the others have tried this with books a very large publishing already claim to own the rights too:

So we know have Ravenous Romance/Lori Perkins, Open Road Media/Jane Friedman and Diversion Books/Scott Waxman all ready to show us noobs how to epublish.  (A.k.a spin backlist and slush into supplementary income for their agencies?).

Personally, I think Random House’s claims to the ebook rights are pretty tenuous, but I also think the conflict of interest inherent in agencies opening their own publishing houses is worse. After all, why shop your e-rights around to other publishers when they could publish your book themselves and take a bigger cut? Wylie are not the kind of agency to ever take on li’l ol’ me, but personally I’d be very dubious about ever going with an agency that had a publishing arm of any kind (though I have to admit I’m okay with being published by Ravenous Romance, so YMMV).  I’m more than happy working with e-only publishers, but, again, I’d be a little dubious of one that could only offer my book through a single retailer – not iBooks, not Fictionwise, not Waterstones or Borders or B&N (even the Agency 5 manage a handful of retailers) – in a single proprietry format. It’s probably a good thing I can’t stand Rushdie and his ilk anyway.

Like the Agency model, this is another approach to eBooks that’s appears to be bad for the author and bad for the customer. There’s nothing like being screwed over both coming and going, is there?