Random House and Wylie reach e-rights agreement

Random House and literary agent Andrew Wylie have reached an agreement in their feud over digital royalties.

A joint statement by Random House Chairman and Chief Executive Markus Dohle and Mr Wylie stated that the two sides have resolved their differences over 13 titles that the Wylie Agency had planned to issue as e-books, exclusively through the online retailer Amazon.

The Financial Times reported that the deal, hammered out over a two-hour meeting between Mr Dohle and Mr Wylie, did not offer preferential terms but was “consistent with agreements we’ve reached with other literary agencies for other backlist e-book rights”.

The titles will be available through a variety of e-book publishers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the Sony Reader store.

Random House confirmed that they would be resuming normal relations with the Wylie Agency after the month long stand-off.

The agreement leaves Odyssey Editions, the Wylie Agency’s digital off-shoot, with seven titles that will be sold exclusively by Amazon. The deal had been heralded at the time as a major change in publishing – with authors and the Wylie Agency bypassing Random House who Wylie felt was not offering his authors a high enough rate for digital rights.  

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