Top literary agent  calls Amazon ‘Isis-like distribution channel’

Wylie calls for fellow publishers to stand firm and ‘not to blink’ during negotiations over ebook royalties with digital retailer

He is the sinister “jackal” of the literary world who counts Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth and Martin Amis among his formidable roster of clients.

Andrew Wylie, arguably the most powerful literary agent in the world – who once described himself as a “ravenous dog” – has now sunk his teeth into Amazon, describing the online retailer as a “sort of Isis-like distribution channel”.

In a keynote speech to the international festival of authors in Toronto, Wylie condemned the “brutality” of Amazon’s tactics and made a call for fellow publishers to stand firm and “not to blink” during negotiations over royalties with the digital retailer.

Amazon, Wylie said, had “taken the business and distorted it radically”. In his speech, entitled the State of the Industry: What Matters for Writers, Wylie said he believed Amazon’s digital monopoly could be weakened.

“I believe with the restored health of the publishing industry and having some sense of where this sort of Isis-like distribution channel, Amazon, is going to be buried and in which plot of sand they will be stuck, [publishers] will be able to raise the author’s digital royalty to 40% or 50%,” he said. “Writers will begin to make enough money to live.”............................

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/30/andrew-wylie-amazon-isis-like-distribution-channel