Note: I have an MBA, I am not a lawyer. I'm looking at this from the business aspects, not the legal. They look similar, though :) This is just a general discussion, I don't know anything specific about the situation.
Probably you won't get an answer from Ray, because if it is under dispute, there's probably lawyers involved. The thing about contracts before a certain era (ie, before people were talking about electronic versions of books), those contracts probably didn't have anything in them that dealt with the rights to an electronic version. "Electronic versions" are never mentioned, because there was no such thing. Time passes, and now, o look, electronic versions are a thing. In this case, the contract Party A (the author) will argue that "it wasn't mentioned, ergo you didn't buy those rights", while the contract Party B (the publisher) will argue that "it wasn't specifically mentioned as a separate right, ergo it is covered by the general rights we purchased". Now, consider a case where the rights have reverted, because a book didn't sell, or it was specifically called out in the contract... then it isn't a problem. The author can get a new contract with whomever, for both print and electronic, or just electronic versions. In the case where a book has been in continual print for over 30 years, and there are no time clauses, then the rights might not revert to the author. This is/was the general behavior of contract clauses on rights, that the rights revert after the book is no longer in print. Publishers are leery of just saying "ok, yeah, e-versions are yours", because that could be used as precedent, and make it more difficult for them in any other similar case. rip On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Mark Chaloner <[email protected]> wrote: > Don't know if you've said this before but what is the gist of the dispute? > > Mark. > On 5 Jun 2015 17:19, Raymond Feist <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Jun 5, 2015, at 1:50 AM, TW <[email protected]> wrote: > > How can Kobo have it in ereader and Kindle not have the Riftwar Saga at > all. I wrote the publisher requesting at Raymond Feist books be put in > Kindle, iBook, ebook, PDF format. Apparently, they are passing my > recommendation along for the U.S. > > I get frustrated because all book series I read right now are either not > in digital format or isn't completed yet. Sigh! > > T. > > > I’ve said a few times, but I’ll say it again. The 1st 8 titles in the US, > those published originally by Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, are the subject of > dispute over copyright and until it’s resolved, we won’t see those eight > titles in ebook in the US. There is no such dispute in other markets, so > those books are in ebook in the UK, Australia, etc. > > Best, R.E.F. > >
