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HarperCollins has become the third publisher to condemn The Wylie Agency's decision to set up a digital-only publisher, with chief executive Victoria Barnsley saying "the only winners in this are Amazon".
The e-tailer benefits from the set up thanks to a two-year right to exclusively sell the e-books through its Kindle Store. Wylie announced on Thursday it was launching an e-book publisher, called Odyssey Editions, launching with 20 backlist titles from the agent's clients.
HarperCollins UK has print rights to three of the books on Wylie's initial list—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Naked and the Dead, Love Medicine—all three of which are available to download from the Kindle store internationally.
Barnsley said: "HC will vigorously protect its rights and our authors' interests by ensuring their work gets to the broadest possible audience. The only winners in this are Amazon."
This move has already been criticised by Waterstone's, with head of e-commerce David Kohn saying it was "very disappointing to see that some of our best writers' work is to be only available in such a limited fashion. It does not help build the market, nor does it serve readers well."
Random House and Macmillan have already waded into the controversy, with the former disputing the legality of the move, and cutting off future dealings with the agency on a global basis "until this situation is resolved".
http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/macmillan-response-to-wylie-exclusive-pu... target="_blank">In a blog post, Macmillan US chief executive John Sargent said he was "appalled" that Wylie had "chosen to give his list exclusively to a single retailer".
It was "an extraordinarily bad deal for writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible", he added.
Penguin, which has the largest number of titles in Odyssey's launch list, has declined to comment. No one from Faber was available to discuss the matter.
Authors include Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Philip Roth (all Vintage) and Orhan Pamuk (Faber). The list also includes a number of deceased authors, such as Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Saul Bellow and Evelyn Waugh (all Penguin).