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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.
According to the New York Times, the books will be available exclusively at Amazon’s Kindle store for two years. "The fact remains that backlist digital rights were not conveyed to publishers, and so there’s an opportunity to do something with those rights," Wylie said in an http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/books/22odyssey.html?_r=1" target="_blank" title="interview">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/books/22odyssey.html?_r=1">interview with the newspaper. Wylie declined to disclose the financial terms that Odyssey had reached with authors or their estates, but he said they were more favourable than the terms that other publishers were offering.
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 move will frustrate publishers, particularly those who own the print rights over the books in Wylie's fold and who believe they may also own the digital rights. Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told the Wall Street Journal: "We are disappointed by Mr. Wylie's intention, which we dispute."
The Wylie Agency commissioned the UK's Enhanced Editions earlier this year to help bring Odyssey Editions into being. According to founder Peter Collingridge the move represents a challenging power shift in the publishing industry. In an earlier">http://www.thebookseller.com/news/119581-rowling-opens-door-to-digital-h... interview with The Bookseller Collingridge said the question for any agent was who the best partner was in each new media territory. "Is it the print publisher, an app developer, a computer games company?" he said.
The Wylie Agency’s stellar list includes authors Martin Amis, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, as well as the estates of giants including Italo Calvino, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike. But added Wylie: “We’re perfectly happy to entertain the idea of publishing authors we don’t represent.”
The 20 e-books published by Odyssey Editions carry a new unified look designed in collaboration with Enhanced Editions.