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ksmithHarpercollins e-book plans behind the cut
HarperCollins Plans to ControlIts Digital Books
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the latest salvo in the fight over the future of books on the Internet, one of the country's biggest publishers said it intends to produce digital copies of its books and then make them available to search services offered by such companies as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com., while maintaining physical possession of the digital files.
News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers Inc. hopes to head off the prospect of these big Internet companies taking charge of books that it has purchased, edited and published. Its move to digitize its active backlist of an estimated 20,000 titles and as many as 3,500 new books each year comes at a moment when technology companies and the publishing industry are wrestling over rights and economic models for books online. HarperCollins's effort to make search companies use its digital copies is an aggressive response to anxieties felt by publishers worried that they will lose control over their intellectual property.
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In the body of the piece, is a comment by Jane Friedman, chief executive of News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers: "The effort should result in many books being available for sale digitally long after they may otherwise have gone out of print."
I foresee an interesting effect on the battle for e-rights in upcoming contracts, because this implies, at least to me, that an author may have a hard time getting rights reverted. I know--this isn't a new issue, and I have seen discussions concerning this for years. This just seems to take matters to a different level.
Updated the link. Rest of story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/books/13harp.html, or somewhere online.
HarperCollins Plans to ControlIts Digital Books
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the latest salvo in the fight over the future of books on the Internet, one of the country's biggest publishers said it intends to produce digital copies of its books and then make them available to search services offered by such companies as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com., while maintaining physical possession of the digital files.
News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers Inc. hopes to head off the prospect of these big Internet companies taking charge of books that it has purchased, edited and published. Its move to digitize its active backlist of an estimated 20,000 titles and as many as 3,500 new books each year comes at a moment when technology companies and the publishing industry are wrestling over rights and economic models for books online. HarperCollins's effort to make search companies use its digital copies is an aggressive response to anxieties felt by publishers worried that they will lose control over their intellectual property.
*********************
In the body of the piece, is a comment by Jane Friedman, chief executive of News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers: "The effort should result in many books being available for sale digitally long after they may otherwise have gone out of print."
I foresee an interesting effect on the battle for e-rights in upcoming contracts, because this implies, at least to me, that an author may have a hard time getting rights reverted. I know--this isn't a new issue, and I have seen discussions concerning this for years. This just seems to take matters to a different level.
Updated the link. Rest of story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/books/13harp.html, or somewhere online.
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Ummmm....
Date: 2005-12-12 10:54 pm (UTC)Re: Ummmm....
Date: 2005-12-13 04:56 am (UTC)And rights reversion wording is going to get tougher. I believe contracts can now stipulate that below a certain number of POD or other such copies, an author can demand reversion. and I don't think that number is very high.
I wish