This morning we linked to reports that Open Road Integrated Media will publish a number of eBooks from the William Styron backlist. Open Road will release the eBooks on May 4, and this page has more information about the collection–including Styron’s memoir, Darkness Visible (pictured).
This afternoon, Random House, Inc. spokesperson Stuart Applebaum passed along a statement about the situation: “Our position is unchanged. Our publishing agreements grant us the right to publish our authors’ works in all text-based version of the work, including electronic publication formats. In any potential separation of our e-books backlist rights, we reserve the right to pursue all our options, including, in some cases, legal ones.”
The statement concluded: “Our preferred course is always a business resolution. Random House has more than 14,000 of its backlist titles available in e-book format, and we have the resources and capital to maximize their sales. The Styron titles presented a unique situation in the context of our effective efforts with authors or their estates to transition their backlist to Random House e-books.”