Earlier we reported that French publishers decried Wylie's publishing venture. Now it looks as if their protest has been effective. The Bookseller is reporting: ... Wylie has moved to re­assure the French trade that he will no longer be withholding digi­tal rights. He said: "Physical and digital rights will be together [in France], which is what we always wanted." Flammarion chief executive Teresa Cremisi said: "Everything will be resolved. It was like a summer fever—amazing. But he has now abandoned his project and that is a good thing." Another publisher, who declined to be named, said Wylie had "capitulated". "He had been refusing to...

According to the Bookseller, French publishers have released an open letter that objects to Andrew Wylie's move into digital publishing as "unacceptable". The SNE letter explicitly warns against putting digital rights in the control of "outside parties", including "agents", who it said were "liable to endanger the equilibrium within the profession". The "commercialisation" of electronic rights was "the natural responsibility of the publisher", the letter states. ... The Bookseller Daily understands that at least four French publishers have suspended negotiations with Wylie since July. Gallimard told The Bookseller: "We are one of them, and I know several of my colleagues have done...

The Bookseller notes that Penguin is now negotiating with the Wylie Agency over e-book rights for the three Penguin titles Wylie was publishing through Odyssey Editions. This comes shortly after Random House struck a deal with Wylie over its 13 of Odyssey’s 20 books. If Penguin succeeds in extricating its e-book rights from Wylie’s clutches, that only leaves Odyssey with four titles—and it’s anyone’s guess how long those will stay once their print publishers come calling now that Wylie’s been shown to be willing to deal. Not really so much of a publisher anymore, is it?...

The following joint statement was reprinted in Publishers Weekly: "We are pleased to announce that The Wylie Agency and Random House have resolved our differences over the disputed Random House titles which have been included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program. These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House U.S. controls their rights. The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House's current e-book customers. Random...

If you needed proof that the earthquake of Andrew Wylie’s Amazon publishing deal continues to send aftershocks through the publishing industry, you need look no further than this post by “Agent Kristin” on her blog “Pub Rants”: Several agent friends have confirmed that Macmillan sent a letter over the weekend asking authors to sign amendments that gave them electronic rights to backlist titles. Kristin points out that these letters went directly to the authors in question—not the agents or agencies that represent them—and reminds authors not to sign them without checking with their...

 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...

Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin weighs in with his (lengthy) thoughts on the Wylie/Amazon book deal, which has quickly become the nine day wonder of the e-publishing world. He summarizes the issue of movement toward e-books as having three key components for publishers: e-book pricing, dominance of sales by a monopoly or oligarchy of big stores, and royalties. Shatzkin notes that the questions of pricing and monopoly have been at the center of attention for the last year, most notably at the beginning of 2010 when Amazon and Macmillan faced off over the Agency Pricing model. But now it’s...

So says an article in the Financial Times (registration required). According to the Times an unexpected consequence of the Wylie deal is that other companies want to reach deals quicker to avoid a prolonged war and risk missing ebook sales. “We feel much more comfortable in giving our valuable backlist to publishers at very good royalty rates, which we are now winning,” said Amanda Urban, the literary agent at International Creative Management. Ms Urban represents bestselling authors E.L. Doctorow, Jay McInerney, Toni Morrison and Haruki Murakami. Since the iPad’s debut, Ms Urban said her agency had secured e-book royalty rates of...

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...

From the Authors Guild site: We don't know the details of the Odyssey-Amazon agreement, but we can make some informed guesses. The agreement is most likely under the agency model, with Amazon paying Odyssey 70% of the retail price of the books. Wylie and Odyssey are together taking a typical agent's commission as compensation: 10 or 15% of the 70% received from Amazon. In round figures, this means that the author receives 60 to 63% of the retail price of the book. For comparison, a typical contract with a traditional publisher pays e-book royalties of 25% of net proceeds. If the e-book...

The Wylie Agency has created an imprint called Odyssey Editions that will sell ebook-only backlist editions of its high-end clientele. The deal with Amazon will run for two years and be exclusive. The books will sell for two years and the titles have not been in electronic format before. Some of the titles include: The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, The Stories of John Cheever, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, John Updike's Rabbit series and Fear and Loathing in...

In an interview in the Harvard Magazine, high end author's agent Andrew Wylie says: He’s dissatisfied with the terms publishers have been offering for e-book rights, which were not widely foreseen and are not allocated in most extant book contracts. In fact, Wylie threatens to monetize those unassigned rights by going outside the publishing business entirely: “We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to...