Odyssean Wylie, Book II
Thomas Jones · Wylie and Random House make up
Everyone breathe easy: Andrew Wylie and Random House are friends again. As the headline in the Bookseller would have it, the publisher has won the battle: the literary agent has agreed not to publish electronic versions of Random House titles under his own imprint, Odyssey Editions (a name perhaps implicitly casting Random House and the other big publishers as Polyphemus and the Cyclopes). In return, however, Wylie has won a better deal on royalties, at least for the big-name writers under dispute, or in many cases their estates. Boyd Tonkin suggested in the Independent last month that this may have been his plan all along. And Wylie more or less admitted what he was up to in an interview with the Financial Times a couple of days later:
I am only trying to make a point in order to underscore the importance of getting the right terms with a view to uniting the two [print and digital] revenue streams.
Point emphatically made and, it would seem, taken. (Wylie sails away laughing; publishers blindly hurl rocks into the sea.) The biggest loser is Amazon, who had an exclusive deal to sell the Odyssey books on Kindle. But few people will be shedding any tears over that.
Comments
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27 August 2010
at
10:01am
Dan Holloway
says:
This would have been a dangerous startegy of course - and reminds me of that philosophical exercise from undergrad days about act utilitarian rulers and punishment. If everyone knows this is what Wylie was up to, there would have been no point in Random House offering more royalties.
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27 August 2010
at
10:15am
A.J.P. Crown
says:
As well as King Abdullah II and Martin Amis, Andrew Wylie has some good writers on his list, so I'm glad for them. I'd rather they got the money than Amazon.
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27 August 2010
at
11:03am
Joe Morison
says:
@
A.J.P. Crown
I'm sure Their Majesties are thrilled.
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28 August 2010
at
7:19am
outofdate
says:
You and your spelling. Cyclopes, it says here, is the genus of which the silky anteater is the only known species (which staggering feat of classification should be flung in Prof. Dawkin's face like a rotten egg whenever he appears in public). The one-eyed geezer was Cyclops.
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28 August 2010
at
7:20am
outofdate
says:
Dawkins'. Hoist with me own petard.
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28 August 2010
at
7:44am
outofdate
says:
@
outofdate
Hoist twice, because had I bothered to scroll down I'd have found that Polyphemus' people were indeed the Cyclopes. Delete all three comments, there's a kind editor. (Shouldn't come too hard, I'm perhaps in no very strong position to add, what with all the deletory practice you've been getting lately.)
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28 August 2010
at
7:44pm
Joe Morison
says:
@
outofdate
You have my sympathy, passé one, we all blunder but in cyber space our screams are never silenced.
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29 August 2010
at
1:51am
outofdate
says:
@
Joe Morison
Thanking you kindly. Also for suggesting a nice new alias with which to try and fail to cover my tracks.
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30 August 2010
at
11:34am
Yes, I really thought I was on to a winner...
Read moreSurely the biggest losers are Random House - because they have shown themselves to be ransom-payers. The next few months will see HOW many agents pull a similar stunt...