Apropos of the HarperCollins v. Open Road lawsuit over the backlist e-book title Julie of the Wolves, legal blogger Passive Guy (aka contract lawyer David Vandagriff) has written a fairly lengthy post looking at the question of whether e-book rights are covered in pre-e-book contracts. Passive Guy writes: A fundamental legal question involved in construing a contract is what the parties intended at the time the contract was made. The intent must be manifest in some form in the written agreement. A secret intent by one party that the word tomato also includes avocado won’t bring...

In regard to the HarperCollins’s lawsuit against Open Road over the Julie of the Wolves e-book, I received an email from Open Road representative Josh Raffel today with a couple of brief statements from Chris Davis, Open Road’s COO. Of the case itself, Davis writes: “It appears to us that HarperCollins is trying to intimidate authors, overturn established law and grab rights that were not in existence when the contracts were signed many years ago. We are confident that we will successfully defend authors’ rights and we look forward to filing our response...

A couple of days ago I mentioned the lawsuit HarperCollins filed against Open Road for e-publishing the backlist title Julie of the Wolves by Jean C. George. I’ve just come across entertainment lawyer Lloyd J. Jassin’s analysis of the issues on his blog, Copylaw. Bringing up previous precedents that relate to similar matters (such as whether the rights to screen a movie also include the rights to screen it on TV), Jassin discusses the legal basis that courts will sort out in their decision. He also mentions that courts will usually decide cases of ambiguous contracts that seem...

Looks like it’s that time again: time for some publisher to sue over backlist e-book rights. Open Road’s e-publication of Jean Craighead George’s young-adult novel Julie of the Wolves has HarperCollins howling. HarperCollins, which has sold 3.8 million print editions of the book since its 1972 publication, has filed suit against the e-publisher. It insists that its contract with George covers “such electronic means of distribution, which is but a technology-enabled variant for how consumers can read [the book]”, despite e-books having been strictly science-fictional at the time the contract was written. This isn’t the first time Open Road...

HarperCollins is considering selling interactive ad space in factual e-books, New Media Age reports. The ads would be limited to books that convey factual information, rather than fiction titles. HarperCollins group digital director and publisher David Roth-Ey explains: “Certain kinds of books create immersive reading experiences whereby ads would be too interruptive for readers, and publishers and even advertisers aren’t likely to put a premium on that. But information books, for example a Collins birds guide, could provide very valuable real estate for contextual advertising - in this case potentially a binoculars manufacturer.” Other...

At FutureBook, Philip Jones has a look at the current status of digital royalties. There appears to be some ambivalence going around the publishing industry at the moment, as even though some agents are reporting getting rates better than the current 25% industry standard, publishers are still largely adamant that they will go no higher. This makes Amazon’s self-publishing operations, offering 70% royalties on the e-books they sell, look more attractive. HarperCollins’ Worldwide chief executive Brian Murray points out that the 25% royalty rate is better than the 16%-18% authors traditionally get on print books, and that there should...

Digital Book World has a ten minute video interview with Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins, where he talks about how the publisher is experimenting with new business models in the digital age. It's worth watching the full interview, but this is what he has to say about HarperCollins' controversial library lending policy: Libraries are a really important channel for HarperCollins. We’ve talked about discovery of books and libraries are where a lot of discovery happens in many communities across the country. So HarperCollins is committed to that library channel. The challenge is that we’re trying to balance the needs of all...

Any time you turn on the news, odds are good you will see something about the News Corporation voicemail-hacking scandal which has again exploded onto headlines in the last few days. It stood to reason that sooner or later some corner of it would reach into the e-book world. Yet, strangely enough, it is not something related to Murdoch’s feud with Google or obsession with paywalls. In this case, it comes by way of agent Andrew Wylie, who made a big splash in the publishing world last year with his abortive backlist self-e-publishing operation (which by and large mysteriously...

The publishers' long-running line of early childhood reading books, featuring characters such as the Berenstain Bears, Frog and Toad, and Splat the Cat, have been converted into digital versions with professional narration and word highlighting. The ebook editions are only avaiable through Apple and Barnes & Noble. Here's more info from their press release: HarperCollins Children's Books announced today the launch of the I CAN READ program on Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's NOOK Bookstore. I CAN READ is the first complete early reader program available digitally, with eighty titles out now and many more to come. I CAN READ...

Publishers Weekly takes a long, interesting look at the question of library e-books and what they mean for both the publishing and library industries. To some librarians’ surprise, library e-books are proving extremely popular with patrons. "It's amazing," says Diane Eidelman, administrator for member services at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, a consortium of over 50 libraries on New York's Long Island. "We just can't keep up with the e-book demand. We'll purchase an enormous amount of content, and within 24 hours it's all checked out." Indeed, the numbers tell the story....

The Bookseller’s FutureBook blog is carrying a post by e-book distributor OverDrive, touting the benefits of multi-channel distribution for e-books. Concentrating solely on e-book stores such as those for Kindle and Nook ignores readers who buy from other places or borrow from libraries, OverDrive notes. In 2010, 718 million book and title catalog pages were viewed via OverDrive “virtual branch” library pages, but only 15 million digital titles were checked out, meaning that readers are viewing information about books through their libraries before making purchases elsewhere. But libraries are just a start. Adding titles to retail...

Reuters is carrying a story on publisher Nicholas Callaway, who has been publishing beautiful coffee-table books since 1980, has recently decided that books that used to belong on the coffee table will work better as interactive apps on a tablet. Whereas it used to be that huge pages with detailed pictures were the way to go, now Callaway is more interested in smaller screens. "This is revolutionary," he says, stroking his finger at the iPad's glass surface and prodding to open an app he has developed. "This is the Looking Glass. This is Alice in Wonderland....