Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

While the Kindle, the Nook, and the Kindle Store are busy hammering away at Publishers we suddenly get an unexpected source of Publisher angst – Superstar Literary Agent Andrew Wylie.

Publishers are still reeling from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ announcement on Monday that Amazon is selling 143 ebooks for every 100 hardcovers. Andrew Wylie hits them at this critical juncture - He’s decided that his superstar authors ought to stop donating 75% of their ebook revenue to Publishers (courtesy The Bookseller).

Agent Andrew Wylie has launched an e-book publishing offshoot Odyssey Editions with titles by Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and John Updike part of the launch list.

The move sees Wylie make good on his threat issued in a Harvard Magazine interview in June to bypass publishers because he is unhappy with publishers terms for digital rights.

Guess which store gets 2 years of exclusive access?

Yup, it’s the Kindle Store.

Odyssey Editions will begin with 20 titles that have never been available in e-book format.

All of the books will be priced at $9.99 at the Kindle store, Russ Grandinetti, the vice president of Kindle content for Amazon, told the NYT. Eleven of these books will be available globally

… the books will be available exclusively at Amazon’s Kindle store for two years …

Amazon is making all the right movies to ensure the Kindle Store wins the eBook Wars.

Andrew Wylie follows up on his earlier threats and deals a crushing blow to Publishers

Here are Andrew Wylie’s threats from May (the article is more of a love letter from Harvard to a favored son – however, well worth reading) -

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 the frontlist book business

Andrew Wylie’s Client List is an all-star list of authors -

Wylie’s deceased clients are even more illustrious than his living ones: W.H. Auden, Saul Bellow, Roberto Bolaño, William S. Burroughs ’36, Italo Calvino, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Hunter Thompson, John Updike ’54, Litt.D. ’92, Andy Warhol, and Evelyn Waugh, for example.

It represents more than 700 clients, including Martin Amis, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Ian Frazier ’73, Al Gore ’69, LL.D. ’94, William Kennedy, Henry Kissinger ’50, Ph.D. ’54, Elmore Leonard, W.S. Merwin, Lou Reed, David Rockefeller ’36, LL.D. ’69, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Oliver Sachs, and Nicolas Sarkozy.

This is a huge win for Authors represented by Mr. Wylie, for Amazon, and for the Kindle and a big loss for Publishers. The pricing at $9.99 is very compelling and it gives Kindle owners the chance to read some of the best authors of our times.

Publishers can keep selling us $14.99 books supposedly written by James Patterson (he always has his co-author write the books and just sort of co-writes them after he gets the first draft or something strange like that). We’ll gladly take Rushdie and Roth for $9.99 instead - Also, the indie authors at $1 and $3 and authors who come in at $9.99 or below.

Why don’t more people think like Andrew Wylie?

This is one smart literary agent. Here are his thoughts on the backlist -

Ignoring the frontlist hype, he has sought to make accomplished writers profitable by concentrating on the backlist.

“Shakespeare is more important than Danielle Steel in large part because his work is more lasting,” he explains. “So you have to negotiate with an eye toward capturing that long-term value.”

It’s hard not to love someone who values quality authors whose work has lasting value -

 “We went after the most important writers in their respective languages,” Wylie says, “and we brought to those estates the same discipline of properly assessing the value of the writer’s work.

What happened was an appreciation in revenue to the Calvino estate of 2,000 percent. More or less the same with [Jorge Luis] Borges. When you make that kind of difference, you recalibrate the priorities of the publishing industry somewhat, so that they place a higher value on work that lasts over time.”

That’s exactly the kind of people and the kind of attitude we need more of in the New Publishing World.

How big of a blow is this? How big of a win for the Kindle is it?

Well,

How do you quantify John Updike, Nabokov, Borges, Martin Amis, Rushdie, Eggers, and the remaining 694 superstar authors Andrew Wylie has ebook rights for?

Serious readers get one more very good reason to pick the Kindle. 2 year exclusives are rather ridiculous and you have to imagine Amazon made some sort of revenue – perhaps a guaranteed amount per book in case the 70% cut of Kindle book sales doesn’t hit a particular target.

It’s not necessarily very fair to have all these authors limited to one store – However, that’s what’s happened and the Kindle and the Kindle store will benefit from it and Publishers will be weakened. This outcome is better than Publishers getting these ebook rights and never releasing them or doing it half-heartedly. Amazon and the Kindle are definitely on a roll – It’ll be interesting to see how today’s Amazon earnings call goes.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | andrew wylie, kindle vs publishers