It sounds like Wylie is pouncing on the opportunity made available by Amazon’s announcement of its new Kindle to make a finer point on his battle over e-book digital rights.
Coupled with Kindle CEO Bezos’ prediction that e-books will outpace paperbacks by 2012, Wylie is now threatening to expand his negotiations from a 20-book deal with Amazon to now 2,000-book deal if publishers don’t get a handle on digital royalties.
This goes back to a post I wrote two days ago. Last week Wylie set up a publishing house called Odyssey Editions, and negotiated e-rights with Amazon for a two-year period on 20 classics.
Wylies says he is “only trying to make a point” so that the two revenue streams will be addressed together in all publishing deals.
Prior to the mid-’90s, publishing deals did not address digital rights. Any agents holding rights to books written prior to that time retain all rights, both print and digital.
Now Wylie’s got a stable full of some of the best modern literature on the planet.
Sounds more to me like he is trying to force Random House’s hand. And make a lot of money.