Authors and agents say what's at stake in the upcoming lawsuit over interpretation of book contracts is the entire future of the electronic publishing industry.
In Random House v. Rosettabooks, filed Feb. 27, Random House alleges it owns the electronic titles based on a clause in the author's original contracts that gives the publisher the right to "print, publish and sell in book form."
The suit claims that the rights to almost 100 titles – including several by William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Parker – belong to Random House. This despite the fact that Rosettabooks.com contractually acquired and paid for the electronic-publishing rights in question from the authors, their estates or their agents.
The question is whether or not "book form" includes e-books or not. And at risk are not just the 100 titles named in the suit, but the more than 20,000 titles in Random's backlist and ultimately the hundreds of thousands of titles on every publishers list.
Since the suit was filed, many larger publishers such as Simon and Schuster have sided with Random House.
But the Authors Guild (representing 7,800 authors) has joined with the Association of Authors Representatives (350 literary agencies) to file an amicus brief on behalf of Rosetta. It is the first time these two organizations have filed a brief together.
The hearing is scheduled for May 7.
Another interesting sidebar to the story is that Rosettabooks has chosen to lay out the evidence for anyone to see. Just click on the "Litigation Update" at Rosettabooks.com and read over three dozen briefs and affidavits for both sides.
The main question that will be addressed in the suit is whether the range of an e-book's features provide the consumer a totally different experience than a print book does. Do the differences – adjusting the font size of a book, text searches, dictionary capabilities, note-taking, adding notes or underlining – change the experience enough?
Writers' stream dries up: Thousands of writers who had posted over 10,000 articles at the pay-per-click site, Themestream.com, will mourn last week's closing of the site.
In a letter from the editors to contributors, the company said it is in the process of trying to sell some or all of its assets and negotiate with its secured creditors.
"Although we won't know the outcome of these negotiations until they are complete, we believe it is very unlikely that we will be able to pay any other creditors, including contributors," the letter said. "We will inform you if the situation changes. Otherwise, you should assume you will not receive any further payments from us."
Some writers are owned as little as $30 but others are owed much more. Laura Shanley, who used the site successfully and linked her own website pages to the articles, could be out $10,000.
Themestream did not respond to requests for an interview.
Originally Themestream offered writers 10 cents per click on each article and spent tens of thousands of dollars in an ad campaign aimed at authors. But once they were out of the beta phase, the price dropped to just two cents per click per article. This led to criticism from the online writers community who had hoped the site would be a place to showcase their work, as well as provide an ancillary source of income.
Angela Adair-Hoy, publisher of Booklocker.com and WritersWeekly.com, said that pay-per-click sites such as Themestream had a bad reputation from day one.
"Rather than representing what they really were," Adair-Hoy said, noting that they were a website for hobbyists to post things for free, "they solicited professional freelance writers offering exposure and impressive payments."
Adair-Hoy's article – "How to Be a Starving Writer: Write for Pay-Per-Click Sites" – was even posted on Themestream by many of their disgruntled contributors.
Sponsorship with horror: Leisure Books – the first publisher to sponsor a free e-serial on the Internet (Naomi by Douglas Clegg) – is now sponsoring an entire website without taking any editorial control.
The money will enable The Chiaroscuro – a horror and suspense site – to pay what are considered professional rates to fiction writers. If successful, this model could be used by more publishers to help develop writers, and to develop relationships with readers of the genre.
"Our ultimate goal is to improve the visibility and public awareness of horror as a genre and promote new and established authors," said Don D'Auria, editor of the horror line at Leisure Books.
Brett Savory, publisher of The Chiaroscuro, said that he and the other editors had been distracted from doing their jobs by having to worry about where advertising dollars were coming from.
"I thought how nice it would be to just have one company paying the bills, so we could worry solely about buying and editing stories for the readers," said Savory, who approached D'Auria with the deal.
Leisure's sponsorship has allowed the zine to raise the rates to match the Horror Writers Association professional rates of at least 3 cents a word. But the nine staff members still remain unpaid. In exchange for the sponsorship, The Chiaroscuro will run Leisure banners and announce forthcoming titles to the zine's mailing list.
"The same readers who read Leisure novels read our webzine, so we're targeting exactly the same demographic. Why not pool our resources?" Savory said.
In addition, the publisher and the zine are currently planning a joint story contest. The winner will be published in The Chiaroscuro. "No one understands more than we do the importance of finding new talent in the genre and giving authors an opportunity to have their work read and published," D'Auria said.
Last week Leisure shipped over 125,000 copies of Clegg's Naomi to the stores. Prior to the 1999 Web serial that got Clegg so much buzz, his novels, while award winners, only sold 10,000 to 20,000 copies.
Shorter works are MightyWords: Shorter digital content is now for sale at a new BN.com boutique, by way of MightyWords.com. Available are thousands of articles that can be downloaded and printed.
The same titles are also now available at Amazon.com in the site's e-books section, for use with the newly announced Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader. Mid-length works can be downloaded instantly by Windows, Macintosh and Unix (including Linux and Solaris) users and then printed.
Originally MightyWords opened its doors to all writers and published full-length e-books in any genre with no restrictions. But in November 2000, a restructuring led to thousands of authors being dropped from the publisher's roster. MightyWords has since modified its plans, accepting only shorter content.
Yale press goes online: The collections of Yale University Press, a 90-year-old publishing house, will now be available on ebrary.com. Included are thousands of works of poetry, history, literature, economics and language previously unavailable on the Web.
In addition to making available literary and historical works for free, Yale is also interested in how ebrary might generate additional revenue, increase exposure and build branding.
Ebrary's collection of books, journals, maps, periodicals and digitally archived materials, allows patrons to freely browse and search authoritative copyrighted information online without membership or subscription fees.
Browsers only pay to copy or print portions of a document – a model similar to photocopying.
M.J. Rose is the author of a new novel and a nonfiction book about e-publishing.
