A deal giving Amazon.com exclusive rights to sell some of Random House’s most classic books in electronic format has fallen apart. The publisher and its representative, the Wylie Agency, announced Tuesday that 13 titles were being removed, including Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita.”
The development is being hailed as good news by independent booksellers, who stand to suffer from exclusivity agreements with the major online retailers in the growing field of e-books. The deal even drove a wedge between Random House and its agent, but in joint statements Tuesday they said they were resuming normal relations and putting the dispute behind them.
As the e-book market took shape and expanded, agents and publishers have bickered over author royalties, particularly in deals brokered before the digital era, and a constellation of new content platforms like Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Apple’s iPad have sparked nasty fights of their own over catalogs and pricing. In fact, The this year began with a price war over the content publishers provide for these gadgets; was six months before that issue was settled, but hardware such as the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook were duking it out at the virtual cash register as their respective companies were slashing prices almost daily.
Now that electronic books have sold faster than hardbacks for the first time, it’s easy to see what they’re all fighting over.
