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Random House closes e-publishing imprint

© Richard Loeffler

Last week, Random House announced it was folding its e-book imprint AtRandom. This was the logo used basically to distinguish titles that originally appeared in electronic format before the paper edition. A representative for Random House said Friday that it also will continue to publish titles simultaneously in paper and electronic formats. But the company will phase out the AtRandom page on its Web site as new titles migrate to other imprints. What this will do for Random Houses chances if they ever decide to go to court against RosettaBooks.com one can only imagine. One of the things that RosettaBooks had on its side was the even if Random House thought it owned the electronic rights to author's works, it wasn't taking advantage of it and was denying their authors the opportunity to publish electronically. Random House tried to claim that they were publishing electronically, using the AtRandom imprint to show how serious they were about electronic publishing.

A year ago a Random House executive said: "This is the brave new world we want to see. No printing, no paper and binding, no need for a sales conference or printed catalog -- we don't know the size of the market, but it could be potentially very profitable for us." Well I guess they really didn't know the size of the market and they definitely aren't interested in the potential.

RosettaBooks' founder Arthur Klebanoff was talking about a deal to bring back out-of-print authors through Byron Preiss' iBooks, a small publisher distributed by Simon & Schuster (S&S). RosettaBooks.com, the startup e-book company that touched off an electronic-rights legal battle last spring, had made an arrangement that would have had it acquiring titles that Rosetta would publish electronically, while iBooks would edit, market and produce the print versions. The deal would have given both iBooks and Rosetta more leverage with authors by purchasing both print and electronic rights, as well as help authors market titles through both print and electronic channels. Among the books on its initial list were W.R. Burnett's The Asphalt Jungle and Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy. Klebanoff had been quick to point out that he owned both print and electronic rights to these books (as opposed to the works featured in the lawsuit, for which Random unambiguously owns print rights while the electronic rights are in dispute).

But when S&S heard about the deal - it called Preiss and exercised its right not to distribute the books. "Our agreement is to distribute iBooks titles," says S&S spokesperson Adam Rothberg. The motives for the cancellation weren't immediately clear, though it would hardly be a stretch to connect it to RosettaBooks' ongoing battle with Random. Rothberg says that S&S "continues to support Random" in its lawsuit against RosettaBooks and adds that S&S will still distribute iBooks' other titles. S&S has been involved in rights fights with startups before, most notably with the release of Stephen King's Riding the Bullet, which the house declined to make available to then hot e-publishing outfit MightyWords.