Bloomberg Businessweek has a five-page profile on former publisher turned literary agent Larry Kirshbaum, who Amazon picked to head up its publishing division that is stirring up so much fear and loathing in the publishing industry. (The title of the piece, “Amazon’s Hit Man”, and the cover of the magazine issue featuring a burning book with the all-caps block-letter legend “AMAZON WANTS TO BURN THE BOOK BUSINESS” might be taken as some indication of that.) For all that the title and magazine cover are a bit (literally) inflammatory, the article is a reasonably balanced look at Kirshbaum’s career and...

A very interesting article in The Bookseller this morning.  Here's a snippet: Literary agents speaking at Publishers Launch Frankfurt have challenged publishers to approach e-book royalty discussions in a more "knowledgeable" way or face a "reckoning" from the digital revolution. But there are signs of movement on the 25% royalty from UK publishers, with UK agent David Miller [pictured] stating that he had negotiated better rates for some of his authors. Robert Gottlieb, chairman of the US literary agency Trident Media Group, said publishers were still fixed in their traditional models. "American publishers have to...

Found via a post on the E-Book Mailing List today, a fantastic blog post by writer Sarah A. Hoyt, that links to an equally fantastic blog post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (which is of related but not identical subject matter to the blog post by Rusch we covered back in March). Rusch’s post, made back in May, is intended to be an eye-opener, a clarion call to the publisher-bound writers that Michael Stackpole analogizes to Roman “house slaves”. Traditional book publishing, Rusch warns, is traveling down the same road that rock music has. She points to examples from music-industry...

The Bookseller has a commentary column from Caradoc King, chairman and joint managing director of prestigious literary agency A P Watt. King reflects on the quandaries that the new digital age brings with it, questions for which one would expect such an agency to have ready answers—but that remain pernicious even today. A number of these questions have to do with the 25% vs. 50% e-book royalty issue on backlist titles—and whether to set up independent e-publishing units for out-of-print books or titles that do not appeal to traditional publishers. Some publishers are refusing to budge on the 25%...

Jason Boog of GalleyCat has taken a look at an essay by agent Andrew Wylie coming out in the new issue of WSJ Magazine. Wylie, Boog reports, is concerned about the quality issue in publishing, noting that even with all the self-publishing options available, editors and other quality controllers are an essential part of the process. Here’s an excerpt: “The devaluation of quality editing and writing is sad and it’s inevitable. Each house has a large number of titles to publish, and with a difficult economy, fewer people to handle the publications. But publishers need to...

A couple of months ago, agent Sonia Land of the Sheil Land literary agency placed Catherine Cookson’s backlist titles directly on Amazon, without consulting their print publisher, Random House, or offering it a chance to be part of the deal. Now it would seem that Random House has struck back, closing a backlist e-book deal with author Tom Sharpe and bypassing Land, who is also his agent. On FutureBook, Philip Jones writes: Agents will fume: one said the gloves were now off. Anthony Goff, president of the Association of Authors Agents, told me that undermining the...

Literary agent Jenny Bent made an interesting blog post a few days ago, taking on the question of whether traditional publishers are needed as “gatekeepers” anymore. Not too long ago, the conventional wisdom was that such gatekeepers were necessary to prevent readers from being overwhelmed by a flood of poor-quality self-published dreck. But, as Bent points out, this is changing. What I'm loving most about the success of independently published e-books is that many of them didn't pass the "gatekeeper" test--the individual author tried and failed to get an agent or publisher and decided to do...

Hugo Award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has written a fairly large number of novels and edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Pulphouse Magazine, has written a remarkably thorough and insightful blog post comparing the traditional publishing industry to the new world of electronic self-publishing. Rusch posits that adapting to the new world of electronic self-publishing “requires a radical change in thinking,” which many established authors aren’t ready to assay yet. She explains that the traditional publishing operates on a fundamental assumption that can be summed up in two words: “trust me”. Writers, she...

Publishing Perspectives has a piece looking at one agent at the Frankfurt Bookfair expressing concern that publishers might be using e-book deals to undermine book territorial rights in general. Andrew Nurnberg seems to be relatively alone in his concerns, however. “The big thing that’s in the air all the time,” Nurnberg said, “is that territoriality is not so much about physical books. Now the question is moving toward territoriality for e-rights. “Some publishers say, ‘No way, we can’t keep these held to any particular territory. It’s no longer physical. If it’s out there then it...

The Financial Times has an interesting article (free registration or Google News search required) covering controversial literary agent Andrew Wylie’s possible further plans. Wylie caused publishers to see red when he took twenty backlist titles whose e-book rights were not covered by contract and published them via Amazon. Wylie says that he is trying to promote the importance of unifying the print and digital revenue streams. In an interview, Mr Wylie said he preferred to negotiate a deal with publishers that combined the print and digital rights, but had failed to reach a satisfactory compromise...

In the vein of the Authors Guild warnings I posted about yesterday, The Bookseller reports on agents in the UK warning about “rights grabs” tied to potentially-confusing language relating to digital books in the contracts publishers—particularly American publishers—offer to writers. Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander warned over the use of terms such as “derivative works” in contracts, which could affect film, TV, games and merchandising rights. “Publishers are understandably looking to protect their rights—especially where they create material for things like enhanced e-books or phone apps—but it creates a copyright grey area,”...