More on Random house and E-rights

[erazmus]

http://www.publishersweekly.com/arti...dustryid=47146

At issue is the rights to electronic editions of everything Random House published prior to 1994.

Mike

[Lyn]

RH will probably retain the rights, imo, but will likely increase the royalty rate for e-versions to appease agents and authors.

[erazmus]

I'm pretty sure they will not retain the rights. they have already lost one court case on this, and there are enough authors with work at stake who are not being considered for e-publishing efforts by R-H that the Author's Guild will almost have to take it to court so they can sell their works elsewhere.
I think R-H will eventually settle with a blanket contract offer to the authors, most of whom will do what ever they have already decided they will do. R-H really has no case, as it changed its contract in 1994 to include electronic rights, undercutting its claim now that they already had them.

Mike

[crystalwizard]

I'm pretty sure that there are laws against adding stuff to a contract that's already been executed unless the contract in question says you can.

Which means any contracts that don't have clauses about e-rights can't just be modified and have those clauses added.

The big problem's going to be if the contracts are written in general enough terms that the publisher can claim that e-rights should be covered.

[erazmus]

They tried in the one case mentioned in the article, and the judge summarily threw it out. It was tangential to that case, I think, but that is a good sign it won't fly.

Mike