The e-book scene: Fight over rights, new e-book readers
By Peter on Dec 13, 2009 in World literature, e-book readers, e-books
A new legal battle is brewing. This time between publishers and copyright owners over the right to digital versions, or e-book versions, of published titles. Facing declining book sales, both the family of William Styron and his publishers want to produce e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice
According to New York Times:
Mr. Styron’s family believes it retains the rights, since the books were first published before e-books existed. Random House, Mr. Styron’s longtime publisher, says it owns those rights, and it is determined to secure its place — and continuing profits — in the Kindle era.
To be sure, this question applies to a large number of books, some of them very valuable commercially. The digital fate of e-book versions of most so-called backlist books seem to be open to dispute. This concerns books by a huge number of famous authors, for instance, Joseph Heller, Ralph Ellison, John Updike and others.
E-books, with no printing costs and cheap digital distribution, represent an increasingly attractive and potientailly profitable publishing channel. And, of course, the only one that is growing for the moment.
A major reason for this is that more and more readers seem to buy e-book readers. Kindle, by Amazon, is a huge hit. And now Barnes & Noble has released its own e-book reader, the Nook. The third major contender among consumers is Sony’s e-book reader, the PRS-600BC and PRS-700BC.
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New York Times has published a comprehensive review of e-book readers, but these for the moment seem to be the major competitors.
Nook is the device on the top right, and below are pictures of Kindle and the Sony reader.
It’s hard to say which is the best. They all seem to be very good. Their prices are fairly similar too. I suspect that to a large extent it is a question about what your shopping and reading habits are and which company you have the strongest relationship to.
It will be interesting to follow what is happening in this area in the near future. Readers are faced with several good choices, and with more to come. Publishers and copyright holders, on the other hand, seem to be destined for huge battles in court until the merits of copyrights and publishing rights can be clearly established.
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