As the owner of an Amazon Kindle I’m quite interested in the evolution of electronic distribution of literature, and how it may be changing the literary scene. This week one of literary fiction’s biggest agents, Andrew Wylie, a fellow known for his, er, assertiviness with publishers, signed an exclusive ebook deal with Amazon.com to distribute his clients work electronically. For two years you won’t be able to get Philip Roth or Ralph Ellison or David Eggars or Salmon Rushdie as an ebook for your Nook, iPad, or other ereader.
It is sort of ironic, isn’t it. Perhaps the fundamentalists annoyed by Rushdie can just ban the Kindle instead.
In any case, giving a certain platform a monopoly over certain artists is problematic to me. Readers don’t want to have to own more than one ereader (see photo on the right, a Sony Reader, a Nook, and a Kindle). This is certainly not consumer friendly and long term, I don’t want to see these kinds of deals, even though I do have a Kindle. The perception that any one ereader is limited could depress long-term ereader adoption past the gadget freaks like me. We’ve also seen some of this in the music world, with iTunes exclusives as an example. But something about locking up Philip Roth on one device somehow seems more extreme, more limiting. In the end I can rip my iTunes songs, most of which have limited DRM at this point, and put them on another device.
The other huge part of this story is how this deal cuts out publishers from the entire equation – and whether doing so at this particular point in the evolution of ebooks as a market is even prudent.
No need to feel sorry for the authors, though, at least in the short term. If your agent is Andrew Wylie, you get paid. Long term? Let’s hope more deals like this won’t dry up the marketplace for books in the digital age.
Update 2011: Now Amazon has moved on to cutting out everyone else entirely. Their new publishing imprint is sending chills through the publishing community for signing authors – including a bestselling author – directly, without even going through an agent. NYTimes has more here.