Stephen R. Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” has moved e-book rights of said title, plus “Principle-Centered Leadership” from Simon & Schuster (who aren’t happy about it) to RosettaBooks, an e-book publisher who will make the titles available through Amazon. Mr. Covey is however probably very happy about it, since he can keep more than half of the sales, whereas standard royalty from paper-publishers are around 25%. You can read an article from the New York Times about it here (interesting discrepancy; it is free without registration when you access it from New York Times mobile site m.nyt.com, but if you want to read it through the regular site you need to register first).
The whole deal highlights the unsure legal situation. How much of the rights to a title actually resides with a publisher? Is it paper only? Digital? The right to record it? Film rights? Combinations of text and audio? The right to add comments, pictures or take slices of the material to an anthology?
In short, it is a mess. Publishers, however, don’t want to talk too much about it. A situation in which they actually don’t have the rights anymore (at least not for the most interesting future channels) to a material that has taken them decades to build up is a spectre of almost unimaginable board-room horror.
I mean, not only do publishers face a situation where the value of their magazine brand portfolios are diminishing on an almost daily basis. Now, their book catalogues might be wiped out as well.
Now, these aren’t really news. The publishers have for a long time strived to secure digital rights as well, but in many cases it has proven a hard nut to crack. Authors have simply taken a “let’s watch and see” aproach, in many cases not being too happy with how publishers have pushed their creations. And the news of Mr. Covey doubling his margins in the e-world won’t help.
Johan Jorgensen