So I mentioned how I didn’t really like the recent move by Wylie, but my reasons were because I didn’t want to see exclusivity deals starting to creep up. Imagine if each of the big six publishers picked an e-reader as their distributor of choice. Where would readers be then?
However, the publishers are crying foul over the deal for an entirely different reason. Check out the article over at The Guardian. Publishers don’t like the deal because…well, because it flat out cuts them right out of the picture. Wylie has become, in essence, an e-publisher, completely going around the traditional publishers.
Random House has questioned if Amazon or Wylie has the rights to do this, and has severed their ties with Wylie.
A key question from the article:
“At issue is who holds digital rights in older titles published before the advent of ebooks. Publishers argue that the ebook rights belong to them, and authors and agents respond that, if not specifically granted, the digital rights remain with the author.”
And a bit later in the article:
“Macmillan’s US chief executive, John Sargent, hit out at Wylie’s move, saying he was “appalled” by the two-year deal with Amazon, which he felt “empowers the dominant player in the market to the detriment of their competitors and creates an unbalanced retail marketplace”.
“It is an extraordinarily bad deal for writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible. This deal advantages Amazon, which already has the dominant share in this market,” Sargent wrote on his blog.
“Independent booksellers across the country are making plans to launch their e-bookstores this fall. Now they will not have these books available and Amazon will.”
I’m such a neophyte in this world, that I’m pretty sure this will be a dumb question: If you have an iPod, can you only download materials from the Apple store? Or can you download anything from anywhere?
I ask because I see the same questions arising with this situation. Right now, to e-publish on Kindle, your formatting has to be according to their specs. To do so on any of the others requires a different kind of formatting.
Do you see the industry moving toward or away from exclusivity? In other words, do you see a future where any e-book can be downloaded onto any system?
For that matter, if you choose to publish to Kindle, can you publish to the other systems as well? Is this medium open to authors to publish as many ways as they wish, or are there restrictions?
Yes, if you choose to publish on the Kindle, you can also publish on other devices as well. However, Amazon looks like they are trying to tie up books so that they aren’t available on other devices. So it’s like Amazon coming to you and saying, “we’ll give you $25,000 if you only publish on our device.” It may be good for the author, and it may be good for Amazon, but it’s not good for the readers.
It should be mentioned that you can download the Kindle app on the iPad, but unless I’m mistaken, Nook readers and Sony e-readers are just out of luck. Books offered exclusively through Amazon aren’t available on those devices.