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Originally Posted by edercito
Found an interesting article in the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/op...alassi.html?hpI hadn't given much thought to this scenario before, but if a work that was produced in paper by X publisher and then the rights to publish an ebook are given to Y publisher, this instance does not sound entirely "alright" to me given the contributions from X to the original print version. |
The works that are being discussed here, are works that were originally released at least 15-20 years ago, and the author's contract did not include any discussion of ebook rights. I don't believe the publisher has any moral rights to the ebook edition, which is essentially what Jonathan Galassi is arguing in his op-ed piece. If the publishers wanted to ensure that they had the rights to these works, they could have been negotiating for them with the author or author's heirs any time during the last fifteen years or so since ebook rights became part of the standard contract. The fact that they didn't, or only offered the authors a pittance, and they are losing out to Amazon and other e-publishers is too bad, but now they are trying to sway public opinion with op-ed pieces in the New York Times. Random House has already lost this case once (althought I believe they settled out of court with Rosetta books, so it's not binding), and I think the print publishers are going to lose their court case again, despite their public whining.
We all agree that the current publishing model is not going to remain viable. Some publishers will probably not survive, some bookstores will not survive, and a lot of people will switch from reading paperbacks to reading ebooks. All this means is that the publishers need to figure out how to be profitable with the normal manuscript to book workflow figuring hardback edition + smaller paperback runs + larger ebook sales.