From the press release: Smashwords, the leading distributor of indie ebooks, today introduced a new service for literary agents. The service provides literary agents simple but powerful tools to manage the publication and distribution of their clients’ indie ebooks. Service highlights include free ebook conversions, centralized metadata management, distribution to major worldwide ebook retailers, time-saving aggregated sales reporting across all retailers, and special merchandising at Smashwords.com. “Literary agents will write the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution,” said Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords. “Agents represent the most commercially successful...

From the press release: Trident Media Group, one of the world's leading literary agencies, today announced that it is launching a new e-book initiative, Trident E-Book Operations. This division will create, manage and implement innovative e-book strategies for its authors, including the distribution of a variety of e-books directly to a large number of e-tailers in North America and internationally. Authors will have more flexibility than ever before, as well as new potential domestic and foreign revenue streams. Robert Gottlieb, Chairman of Trident, said "Trident has been a leader in innovative approaches in...

From The Bookseller: E-books pioneer Arthur Klebanoff has made a targeted approach to UK agents over backlist digital rights, with agents calling his 50% royalty rate a "very positive" alternative to working with traditional publishers. Klebanoff, who founded New York-based digital publisher Rosetta Books in 2001, met UK-based agents last week and addressed a meeting of about 65 agents organised by the Association of Authors Agents on Monday. Klebanoff is looking for backlist titles where digital rights are unassigned, with a view to acquiring both world rights or US rights alone. He said Rosetta was offering a royalty more than double that on...

UK agents Curtis Brown and Blake Friedman are planning to go into publishing, says The Bookseller. Curtis Brown m.d. Jonathan Lloyd said: "Where Ed Victor leads, others follow—and we are right behind him, but with a rather larger list." He added that making out-of-print works available would not only add value for clients, but allow agents to prove if a market exists for the titles. Blake Friedman joint m.d. and agent Carole Blake added: "It seems very sensible to me—I'm sure we will follow soon. I agree with Ed that it doesn't have to been seen as an aggressive move towards publishers." Meanwhile,...

That's what the The Bookseller is saying today.  According to the article agents are expecting that escalators will become standard rather than an exception. An escalator clause means the royalty rate changes according to the level of sales. One leading agent said: "A number of publishers in the UK and the US are now offering escalating royalties [on e-books] . . . I want to work totally with publishers but I think they should at least be open to an escalating royalty rate on e-books." He said offering an escalator would be a way of bridging the gap between the royalty rate...

Pitch University, an advice site centered around how to pitch your book, has an interesting look at whether or not a writer should e-publish his book. Literary agent Christine Wittholn takes a look at the opportunities fostered by the e-publishing explosion and warns that they may not be right for everybody. E-publishing, she is quick to warn, creates a huge slushpile, with quality writers sometimes few and far between. If a writer is going to self-publish, he needs to know how to make his work stand out from the rest, and also has to know how to balance promotional...

That's what The Bookseller is reporting today.  The UK agents are talking about changing the Association of Authors' Agents constitiution to allow them to become publishers.  It's not official yet, but evicently the talk is going around.  According to The Bookseller: The issue is not yet on the agenda of the next AAA meeting but the debate was sparked following Sonia Land's decision to publish Catherine Cookson's backlist digitally through her own company Peach Publishing, as well as Amazon.com's continued courting of agents, with it currently hiring an editorial director. The AAA constitution says anyone employed by a...

Publishing Trends has a preview of an invitation-only survey of US literary agents which was done by the Idea Logical Company and Market Partners International. Here's a snippet. The full survey will be presented at Digital Book World. More details in the article. 50% think “the overall impact of e-books and their royalties” are helping their authors’ income on backlist contracts. 25% say e-books are helping earnings on new contracts. A third have no preference for the “agency” versus “wholesale” model, while 27% have a preference for agency, and 17% prefer wholesale. Two-thirds believe that if e-book rights are not...

The Bookseller is reporting that Amazon met with about 60 agents at the Frankfurt Book Fair. One agent who attended said Amazon seemed to have two aims: “They were keen to try to enlist agents as a force against the agency model—and I have to say they failed on that front—and there was also an element slightly of ‘let’s get to know each other a bit better as we’re going to be working together’.” He said Amazon spoke about wanting to work with publishers rather than directly with authors but added: “It felt like they were just going through the motions.” Lots...

That's the title of an article at [e-reads]. I must admit that I've never thought about this aspect of ebooks before. But with development of vooks and similar hybrids of text and other media (“Vook” = Video + Book), publishers are challenging the assumption that interactive rights must be reserved to authors. As enhanced e-books become viable and valuable, publishers want to know why they are abandoning rights to movie and television companies. That is the background for the memo that a major literary agency has sent to a number of film agents informing them that henceforth they cannot...

 Any change, even for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. Arnold Bennett Just Two Things Somewhere in the rush to judgement and foolish reaction to Andrew Wylie’s deal with Amazon two major things have been overlooked. The first is that Agents have as much to lose from the ongoing disintermediation of publishing as publishers do. That has important implications for how we should think about Wylie’s deal and the ramifications of it. The second is that regardless of this deal the technology and the motivation exist to enable this ongoing disintermediation. If Wylie were ...

An article in The BookSeller is discussing this today. Authors and agents are playing hardball on backlist e-book deals with publishers, with some said to be withholding deals for six to 12 months in the belief that the current industry standard royalty rate of 25% could be smashed within a year. Agent Georgina Capel said that: “We believe 50% is the right royalty rate and in most cases we are asking for 50% on backlist titles. We are not agreeing to anything less than 25% on new titles, and we believe it will be 30%–35% soon.” ...