A lawsuit filed in May accusing Simon & Schuster of cheating authors on e-book royalties has been dropped, but the legal action may not be over.
In a short notice filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, attorneys for Sheldon Blau, author of the 1997 book How to Get Out of the Hospital Alive, officially discontinued the action, which had accused S&S of incorrectly treating e-book transactions as sales rather than licenses.
There was one glaring problem with the suit from the start, however: Blau’s book was never published in a digital edition by Simon & Schuster. While the book was initially published by Simon & Schuster’s Macmillan professional and reference division, S&S officials told PW that division was in fact sold in 1998. The book’s current publisher is now listed as Wiley.
But with S&S now off the hook, lawyers for Blau told PW on Tuesday morning that they are planning on filing suit against Wiley, although at press time that action was not yet filed.
Blau's initial suit sought to certify a class to represent all authors being underpaid for the sale of the e-book.
