A few weeks ago the London-based literary agent Andrew Wylie announced that he was forming his own publishing company named Odyssey Editions in order to publish the agency’s clients in electronic book format; and that Odyssey had signed an exclusive deal with Amazon, so that those e-books would only be available for the Kindle e-reader.
Uproar ensued.
Much of the indie-author* / self-publishing community saw this as a Good Thing.
1) They felt that this was evidence that the dominance of the big publishing houses was crumbling, and power was transferring from the gatekeepers to the authors (although quite how this could be I haven’t yet worked out, with a literary agent and Amazon controlling the books concerned);
2) and that it was evidence that mainstream publishing was broken, and the indie authors were perfectly placed to take advantage of it.
The people on the side of mainstream publishing, however, had other concerns.
1) There’s a startling conflict of interests to be got round when an agency sells its own clients’ work to its own publishing company;
2) Random House felt that it already owned some of the rights which Wylie had just signed over to Odyssey and Amazon and announced that until this was rectified it would no longer consider any of Wylie’s clients for publication;
3) it’s difficult to see how this can be in the best interests of the authors concerned: their e-book rights are now restricted to the Kindle, which prevents them from reaching those people who only read, or have access to, other e-book platforms such as the Nook and the Sony e-reader (and while I realise that there is a Kindle app for the iPad, the PC etc., there’s a decent amount of anecdotal evidence which suggests that these extensions of the Kindle don’t work nearly as well as they should).
So what do you think? What’s the most important thing about Wylie and Odyssey Editions? Do you regard it as a fabulous opportunity for writers to grab control? Do you think that Wylie has made a wrong move here, and is not looking after his writers’ interests? And why is there such a gulf between the opinions of mainstream and self-publishing, once again?
* Which are not the same as independent publishers, as we know.
Definitely not a good move from my point of view but perhaps I am have a degree of bias here. It is just that I am conscious of the many, many people who do not have access to the tchnology. Even some who do will still want hard copies of certain books. I see it as restrictive for both authors and readers. I am not saying we do not want e-technology but it has to be in addition to and not in place of traditional formats.
So if Mr Wylie is trying to take over rather than work alongside then I suspect it is not a wise move at all, indeed it could do great damage. I would not wish to place my carefully arranged cat hairs with such an agent even if s/he said, “Yes I will publish you”. I might as well go the self publishing route – and we all know the dangers in that for most of us.
I don’t think it’s a great idea, and that’s an agency I had been trying to land, too. Another agent does this, part owns a publisher and publishes her clients there, but…I wish I had good communication skills to say why it seems skeevy to me. It just seems too blooming easy. Why should the agent bother about collecting his/her 10percent, or worry that you might not earn anything decent, when he can take fifty percent for what seems to be less work.
We writers send our work to agents in good faith, hoping that they’ll sell our books to Big Publishers with the dreams of fame and or fortune–I for one wouldn’t be at all impressed with “Oh well, we aren’t going to send your books to Random House because whee! we’ve opened up an epublishing company. But don’t worry, it still means you’ll be a published author.” If I wanted ebook publication only (which I’ve done twice, and both books have sold appallingly in comparison to print) then I’d go to an established firm in my genre.
I can’t help but see this as a massive conflict of interest on the part of Andrew Wylie and something which is more likely to benefit him, rather than his client author(s).
If an agent “sells” his client authors’ e-rights to a company in which he has a stake, I have a hard time believing that he is in a position to negotiate the best deal for those same authors, let alone inclined to do so. He’ll have an obligation to act in the best interests of Odyssey Editions and that can and will come into conflict with the interests of his author client(s).
You could argue that a conflict already exists by reason of the agreement with Amazon. He has limited the e-rights of his author client(s) by signing up to put them exclusively on Kindles. It would seem that he’s banking on Kindle winning the e-Reader wars and becoming the e-Reader of choice. He may think that he’s stealing the march by getting in early with such an agreement but, given the technical failings of Kindles widely reported in the States, it seems premature and unwise to have made that decision. I don’t think it’s one that’s in the best interests of his author clients.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jane Smith, Kathryn Eastman. Kathryn Eastman said: A conflict of interests between Wylie & his authors RT @hprw New blog post: Wylie’s Odyssey http://bit.ly/bYleme What do you think about it? [...]
As someone vastly in favour of free/open standards, formats, FLOSS, etc., I really think this restriction to the Kindle is a very, very, bad thing…
So, no one here so far seems to think that this is a good thing for writers, for all sorts of reasons.
In a few days I’ll be discussing an article which supports Wylie’s actions. I can tell you’re going to like it–but I warn you now, it’s a very long piece.
Well, as an author this would make me avoid the agency with a very long barge pole. I don’t get it. An agent is there to get you the best deal with a publisher, yet Wylie wants to take off the negotiating table your rights for the biggest growth area in the industry. And with more and more people in the industry seeing bundling as the way forward (building sales up from a basic hardback package by adding the e-book or audiobook, like electricals companies selling you warranties only less dodgy), he wants to rule bundling out ofthe equation.
This would worry me for 2 reasons – 1. I don’t see how, for the above reasons, it could be in my interests. More importantly 2. it tells me the agency is desperate for extra income other than from its core revenue stream. And that would set off every alarm-bell in my head.
Indie/self-pubbers LIKE this? Eh? This publishing lark getws stranger and stranger
I think the greatest benefit of this whole Wylie Odyssey kerfuffle is Leverage. Wylie’s move shows that is can be done and agents and their authors can take this to publishers and demand better ebook rights or else…
I posted about this a little while ago and the biggest surprise for me was that the other agents were mostly keeping mum while everyone else was commenting on the matter.
I think Wylie’s been rather clever about this, if I’m honest – he’s exploited (possible) gaps in existing contracts and is making a (presumably) decent deal on behalf of his business and his clients. But it’s not a long term position, just the first step in a negotiation which will a) force publishers to think very hard about the e-book market, and b) see a standard set for hardcopy + e-book rights deals. Wylie’s doing a good job for industry by driving a test case through.
Simon, Wylie’s certainly got a lot of people talking about him and his imprint, but I’m not sure he’s really achieving the things you think he is. Most of the agents I follow on the internet and know personally are already doing very good things with e-book rights for their clients, and are certainly not restricting them to a single reader device. It would have been possible for Wylie to sell any e-book rights which hadn’t yet been exploited to publishers who would put them out in a variety of formats, which has to be of more benefit to the authors concerned; most publishers have been dealing with e-book rights for years now, and think about them every day; and standards already exist for print and e-book rights. I don’t see this as a test-case at all, but I do see it as a huge conflict of interests.
Thanks for that Jane, that’s interesting. I had the impression that publishing was very much in the position of the music industry a few years back – in that technology had driven a huge change in their business that they had yet to come to terms with in terms of altering their business models. But of course I’ll defer to your insider knowledge.
One bit of my post that I will stand by though, is that this is an interim position on Wylie’s part, whether he thinks of it that way or not.