http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/publishers-struggle-with-strategies-on-when-to-release-their-e-b/19295066/
Publishers Struggle with Strategies on When to Release Their E-Books
SARAH WEINMAN Posted 2:00 PM 01/02/10
For all their sound and fury, e-book sales accounted for no more than 4% of all book sales in 2009. That figure will certainly rise in 2010. With all manner of e-readers on the market (or about to hit), the boom of reading-related smartphone apps, and Apple (AAPL) appearing to prepare a tablet device (rumored name: iSlate) for its debut on January 26, e-book sales may hit $500 million in the next 12 months, Forrester Research projects.
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Never. Publishers who lack the right to market digital editions of their authors' books may be out of luck -- but they're not going down without a fight. Open Road Integrated Media, the digital-book startup founded by former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, disagrees with bigger players over who has the right to release e-book versions of William Styron's novels (from Random House) and Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (from Simon & Schuster). Ray Bradbury may remain steadfast in his refusal to grant any e-book rights to any of his books -- but Vladimir Nabokov refused to allow the publication of his last novel -- and look what happened. (There's no e-book edition of The Original of Laura on the horizon.)
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