Author Sells E-Book Rights To Amazon

If you haven't heard this yet folks, it's huge, for both authors and publishers. New York Times bestselling author Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Principle Centered Leadership) sold the rights to two of his books straight to an Amazon E-Book publisher. So what does that mean? It means he bypassed the traditional publisher and in doing so dealt straight with Amazon.

Here's the really big part. Mr. Covey will receive more than half of the net profit off these books. More than half. The standard digital royalty is 25%. Don't get all excited and try to sell your book to Amazon yet. The executive was quoted as saying 'superstars are entitled to more'. Yeah, that didn't really endear him to me.

So the big news here isn't so much that Mr. Covey got 50% (because if you're not a 'superstar' it doesn't sound like you'll get that deal), but rather that he bypassed the mainstream publishers. This puts a lot of power in Amazon's hands. The same Amazon who is taking money out of the pocket of every day authors by slashing their book prices painfully low (upon RELEASE!). So low in fact that the author makes pennies and the publisher barely makes back what it cost to make the book. 

Is selling your E-Book rights straight to Amazon a good thing? Stephen Covey thinks so. What do you think? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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