Just hours after RosettaBooks, the startup presently entangled in a lawsuit with Random House, announced a copublishing agreement with small publisher iBooks, S&S nixed the deal by announcing it wouldn't distribute the co-published titles. S&S, which has a distribution arrangement with iBooks for the press's print titles, is believed by sources to have made its decision because of concerns over working with Rosetta, a publisher that has challenged large houses' claims to electronic rights.
The deal would have brought back out-of-print authors through Byron Preiss's iBooks, a hybrid electronic/ print publisher. Rosetta, the startup run by lawyer Arthur Klebanoff that touched off an electronic-rights firestorm last spring, had inked an arrangement under which Rosetta would publish electronically, while iBooks would edit, market and produce the print versions. S&S would have handled print fulfillment.
Both iBooks and Rosetta would have used the deal to gain more leverage with authors by purchasing both print and electronic rights, and to help authors market titles through both print and electronic channels. Among the books on its initial list were W.R. Burnett's The Asphalt Jungle and Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy. Klebanoff was quick to point out that he owned both print and electronic rights to these books (as opposed to the works covered in the lawsuit, for which Random unambiguously owns print rights while the electronic rights are in dispute).
But when S&S heard about the deal last week—for the first time, apparently—it called Preiss and exercised its right not to distribute the books. "Our agreement is to distribute iBooks [print] titles," said S&S spokesperson Adam Rothberg. The motives for the cancellation weren't immediately clear, though it would hardly be a stretch to connect it to Rosetta's ongoing battle with Random. In that lawsuit, Rosetta contends that a number of older contracts the conglomerate has with authors don't cover e-rights. Rothberg said that S&S "continues to support Random" in its lawsuit against Rosetta and added that S&S will still distribute iBooks' other titles.
After he heard the news, Klebanoff sounded somewhat rueful, and told PW he hoped to find another print partner. He was also critical of the deal's undoing. "By Simon & Schuster swinging a big club, it's not Rosetta that has a problem, it's the little author," he said, adding that he thought S&S had let other issues get in the way of a smart partnership.
Preiss, who said that he hadn't anticipated an S&S objection because these books were not in dispute, called the situation "embarrassing" and said he'll "be the poorer" for not being able to publish the titles.
