Friday, April 20, 2012

The Man With the Golden Pen

From: Beattie's Book Blog


"[...] Amazon announced Tuesday that it has purchased the North American rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond books. James Bond, of course, is the debonair British superspy 007, whose bestselling books have become an iconic big-screen movie franchise. Under the agreement, Amazon will retain republication rights for 10 years, to both the print books, which have sold 100 million copies worldwide, and the e-books, which have not. Yet. [Not true: see article below]
     The 14 Bond books that fall under the agreement are, in chronological order (American publication dates): "Casino Royale" (1953), "Live and Let Die" (1954), "Moonraker" (1955), "Diamonds Are Forever" (1956), "From Russia with Love" (1957), "Dr. No" (1958), "Goldfinger" (1959), "For your Eyes Only" (1960), "Thunderball" (1961), "The Spy Who Loved Me" (1962), "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1963), "You Only Live Twice" (1964), "The Man With The Golden Gun" (1965), and "Octopussy and the Living Daylights" (1966)."
— Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
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"Ian Fleming Publications attracted attention when, in 2010, it announced it would publish the James Bond e-books directly instead of selling the digital rights to Bond print publisher. Two years later, Ian Fleming has changed its mind and sold the entire bundle of print and digital rights to Penguin competitor Vintage (part of Random House) in the UK.
     Penguin held the print rights to the James Bond novels for years, but at the time the original deal was signed digital rights weren’t on anybody’s radar. Ian Fleming Publications held onto the digital rights and published the Bond e-books in the U.S. in 2008, then in the U.K in 2010, Sarah Weinman reported at the time. She also noted, 'The estate may have some leverage because of the Bond’s popularity across many different forms of media, and most fans don’t automatically think of Penguin when they think of 007.'”
— Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent
Read more...

Buy them all (in pre-digital form) here...

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