From and article in Publishing Perspectives:
And so about three years ago Gillis and Wickett drew up a list of authors whose work they admired and began contacting them to see if they would be interested in having Dzanc publish their older work in digital format:
Dzanc co-founder Steven Gillis (Photo: Ann Arbor Chronicle)“We contacted scores and scores of people, everyone we had respect for. [NBA nominee] Noy Holland and [NEA Fellowship winner] Stephen Graham Jones came quickly. Some authors had to check their contracts. The easiest were those authors who owned the rights and said ‘here you go’ or told their agents, ‘I want to do this.’ The worst is when the agents can’t decide…”
Dzanc was offering an attractive 50/50 deal on royalties from sales of e-books. The response from the authors they contacted was almost universally enthusiastic. Titles published before 2000 were usually easy to acquire as there were no contractual issues tying up e-book rights, since digital publishing in those days was not yet a serious proposition.
