RosettaBooks' founder Arthur Klebanoff has acquired the e-book rights to Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club in a deal he directly negotiated with Tan and agent Sandy Dijkstra. According to Klebanoff, Joy Luck is the kind of title the company wants—a strong backlist book that can be given a boost by electronic publishing and marketing. "If we could get a crack at rights to a book that's at a strong rate of continuing sale, we're going to take it," he said. Despite the book being 14 years old, Klebanoff said he can find new sales from channels like the library market. Rosetta will co-promote the new edition with Microsoft and netLibrary.
Klebanoff didn't talk to Penguin's Carole Baron, publisher of the print edition of Joy Luck, until after the deal was completed; he said Baron "was very relaxed about it." Penguin, which had filed an amicus brief on behalf of Random House when the company sued Rosetta, will likely cross-promote the Joy Luck e-book with Tan's recently signed nonfiction collection, The Opposite of Fate.
Klebanoff hopes this is a signal deal that alerts both publishers and authors that it is safe to negotiate with him. Meanwhile, the arrangement with Random that arose from the settlement last month is moving ahead, he said. That list will "tilt fiction" and feature authors a lot newer than the ones who were part of his original deal. "What you will be seeing are books by authors who are highly productive, and who have had books within the last two years that are bestsellers."
