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American Booksellers Association chief executive Oren Teicher has described the launch of agent Andrew Wylie's Odyssey Editions as "bad for the book industry and bad for consumers". Wylie announced the launch of digital publisher Odyssey Editions one week ago signing 20 books up to an exclusive two-year deal with Amazon. The move has provoked a storm in international publishing, with Random House, which claims to have digital rights over some of the books included, cutting all dealings with the literary agency worldwide.
Responding in a report on the ABA's Bookselling this Week Teicher said: "The issues sparked by evolving business models in the rapidly developing world of digital publishing are multifaceted and, at times, complex. However, from the perspective of independent booksellers one important reality is unchanged: Diminishing the availability of titles and narrowing the options for readers can only harm our society in the long run. That the Wylie agency has sought to distribute these works through a single retailer is bad for the book industry and bad for consumers. Books -- in whatever format -- are crucibles of ideas and unique expression, and we should be doing all that we can to expand, not constrict, readers’ access to them."