The Jackal, the Amazon, the Dinosaur
For those who care, go ahead and read all about super-agent Andrew “The Jackal” Wiley (I think Wiley Coyote would have been a better nickname) and his new venture with Amazon’s Kindle, which pissed off Random House and most of the publishing world. It’s a brave new world, indeed.
Not to side with Wiley, but this one quote, pulled from here, pretty much sums it all up:
“One of the facets of this story that is much to be wondered at is that Random House is continuing to stick to its old story from the Rosetta trial, that its existing contracts cover digital rights. To me, this signals that Random House, along with many publishers, persisted in believing that electronic books would never come to be. Certainly, some of the earliest attempts at e-books that date back to the late 1990s collapsed dismally. However, it would have behooved a company with such important holdings to protect its assets in a clear legal manner. Yet, I am fairly certain that what is true for Random House is true for many houses, that too many of them waited too long to recognize the potential reality of e-books and that a sly agent beat them.”
This only further demonstrates the sad inevitably of this whole e-world when it comes to artistic content traditionally disseminated in non-digital form. It seems publishers, like the record companies before them, are perhaps too short-sighted to fully understand (and survive) the world in which we live and the one we are headed toward.
Personally, I plan to keep buying paper books, as I still buy CDs. But hey, I’m a dinosaur. ROAR!
Not to side with Wiley, but this one quote, pulled from here, pretty much sums it all up:
“One of the facets of this story that is much to be wondered at is that Random House is continuing to stick to its old story from the Rosetta trial, that its existing contracts cover digital rights. To me, this signals that Random House, along with many publishers, persisted in believing that electronic books would never come to be. Certainly, some of the earliest attempts at e-books that date back to the late 1990s collapsed dismally. However, it would have behooved a company with such important holdings to protect its assets in a clear legal manner. Yet, I am fairly certain that what is true for Random House is true for many houses, that too many of them waited too long to recognize the potential reality of e-books and that a sly agent beat them.”
This only further demonstrates the sad inevitably of this whole e-world when it comes to artistic content traditionally disseminated in non-digital form. It seems publishers, like the record companies before them, are perhaps too short-sighted to fully understand (and survive) the world in which we live and the one we are headed toward.
Personally, I plan to keep buying paper books, as I still buy CDs. But hey, I’m a dinosaur. ROAR!
posted by ZombieDante at 8:07 AM
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