Open Road Media Talks eBook Pricing

By Jason Boog 

openroad23.jpgIn their keynote speech at the eBook Summit this morning, the co-founders of Open Road Integrated Mediarevealed that they are currently discussing a price point of $14 for their eBooks–bucking the $9.99 point set by many Amazon Kindle books.

Jane Friedman and Jeffrey Sharp, co-founders of Open Road Integrated Media will strike a 50-50 partnership with their authors, focusing on authors with healthy backlists and building new eBook authors.

When asked about Random House’s claim to eBook rights of their authors, Friedman said: “That question was somewhat resolved in the Rosetta Books case in 2001. The case settled, but it wasn’t resolved. I think this is something that will have to be resolved. I hate to waste the energy on this when the intention of Open Road is to take the great writers of yesteryear and bring them back … I thought the backlist was the single most important part of the company. In many ways we are being altruistic.”

She closed with some predictions about the future of publishing: “Publishers will get smaller, advances will go down. I think returns will become essential … I think it’s going to be a tough decade … eBooks will get to be pretty close to 50 percent of the business,” she concluded.

Follow all the summit action on Twitter: @galleycat and @eBookNewser and @RonHogan; also, check the hashtag #ebooksummit for even more 140-character wisdom.