Amazon, Wylie e-books deal: Random House disputes

NEW YORK, USA: Online retailer Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it will exclusively publish digital editions of 20 classic books owned by the Wylie Agency, including authors such as Philip Roth, John Updike and Norman Mailer, for the first time on its Kindle electronic reader.

Amazon's move is a sign of intensifying competition in the crowded digital book format, including Apple Inc's iPad and Barnes & Noble Inc's Nook e-reader.

The Wylie deal may set off a race among the makers of electronic readers to buy digital rights to classic books that will help them to win more customers.

This is the first time books like Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and "Ficciones" by late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges will be available electronically, Amazon said. All of the books are exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years.

Kindle customers can download these books for $9.99.

Meanwhile, book publisher Random House said that it disagreed with the new deal between Amazon.com and literary agent Andrew Wylie. Random House also issued a statement saying it had stopped dealing with Wylie.

The Wylie deal to sell "titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our long-standing commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this Agency as our direct competitor," Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum said in a statement.

"Therefore, regrettably, Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved."

Random House owned the rights to produce in print many of the titles under the deal. Books such as "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson and Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" have never been published in an e-book format.

Many traditional publishers claim they own the digital rights to backlist titles, in part because they say they spend money on nurturing and marketing an author as well as printing costs, while authors and deceased authors estates say their old or existing contracts do not cover the digital rights for e-books.