That’s the title of an article at [e-reads]. I must admit that I’ve never thought about this aspect of ebooks before.
But with development of vooks and similar hybrids of text and other media (“Vook” = Video + Book), publishers are challenging the assumption that interactive rights must be reserved to authors. As enhanced e-books become viable and valuable, publishers want to know why they are abandoning rights to movie and television companies.
That is the background for the memo that a major literary agency has sent to a number of film agents informing them that henceforth they cannot count controlling those interactive rights.
The memo declared in part:
“As a result of this fundamental change in publishing, we will no longer be able to agree to the boilerplate language in most studio option/purchase agreements that address multimedia. These clauses usually restrict the author’s reserved electronic book rights to digital text only. We cannot agree to this limitation. Authors’ reserved ebook rights must now include the right to grant enhanced digital rights in their work, including all the elements mentioned above.” The memo made it clear that “enhanced digital editions, as long as they are non-dramatic, are best exploited by the author in conjunction with the publisher.”
Despite this distinction it’s not likely that Hollywood is going to take this shift lying down. Where enhancements end and movie effects begin will certainly become a bone of contention, so this is going to get interesting and probably adversarial. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.
I really don’t understand this “enhanced digital editions” stuff. I already get those. For one-way entertainment its called TV and Movies. For interactive stuff it’s video games and the internet. Specifically, I can see the internet continuing to evolve in the types of content it delivers; blending articles/text and video even more.
However, I don’t want to replace books with video games or the internet. If I did, I would today. Reading is another choice, and I continue to want to read, at times. OK, a lot of the time — even though I’m a pretty heavy internet user also.
This, in my view, is yet another example of the utter laziness of the Literary Agencies and Writer’s Unions over recent years.
They have totally failed to look down the line at what everyone else knew was coming in terms of multimedia, eBooks etc. Yet they kept using contracts with language that was totally inadequate for the changes in the industry.
I can see this becoming a major legal issue in the coming years.
Also this is yet another reminder to writers to grab control of what they are signing NOW, and not keep on doing what has been done. Contracts need to be read. Wording needs to be read. A move to plain english in contracts will also help avoid this mess.
As to the headline, I can’t being myself to write another comment on a headline that includes the word ‘kill’.