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...

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...

 With Andrew Wylie “threatening” (via FT.com, Registration Required) to expand his exclusive book deal with Amazon.com (OdysseyEditions) we thought some of you might find it both useful and interesting to review the Wylie Agency client list. The only thing we don’t know is how current this list is. It’s long, contains the names of MANY well-known authors, or their estates. Access the Complete List From the Financial Times: Wylie theatens broad digital expansion (Registration Required for Full Text, Free) Andrew Wylie, the literary agent whose exclusive deal with Amazon.com last week stunned the publishing world, has threatened a broad...

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...

Every week it seems something new is happening in eBookland to set the ebook cause back a decade or two. Always at the forefront of the reversal of fortune is greed. This week’s menace to eBookland is literary agent Andrew Wylie and his new publishing venture Odyssey. Wylie could have summed up his actions in simple terms: to disserve both his clients and the ebook-buying public. What, you ask, did he do? He agreed to give Amazon exclusive rights for 2 years to his authors’ backlist titles; Wylie will publish the books and exclusively sell them through Amazon. The backlist includes...