THE CAREER NOVELIST
Agents were already armed for the battle. In May of 1993 the AAR
had issued a position paper outlining a division of electronic rights
into two classes, and calling for a set of protections for authors with
regard to exploitation of those rights. Nevertheless, Random House
would yield no ground. Encouraged by their stance, other publish-
ers stiffened their electronic rights clauses and took hard-line posi-
tions in negotiations.
The battle raged.
The high ground was fought over by two generals, Alberto Vitale,
the CEO of Random House, and a senior executive at the William
Morris Agency named Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb cited the sad expe-
rience of a former William Morris client, the actor Spencer Tracy.
Tracy's contracts with movie studios did not cover the broadcast of
his films on television. When studios began to make millions sell-
ing them to TV, Tracy and his heirs lost out.
Vitale, on the other hand, had been stung by the near-loss of
multimedia rights to the works of Dr. Seuss, which Random House
had published for fifty years. Angered that the company that had
made Seuss a household name had nearly lost an opportunity to
profit from his work, Vitale swore that Random House would never
again relinquish electronic book rights, and would henceforth insist
on a first-look option on multimedia rights.
The fight went public. Gottlieb let it be known that Random
House was now at the bottom of his agency's submission list. Vitale
fired back that William Morris was not serving its clients well.
Finally, the two generals squared off in a panel discussion at the
"Multimedia Now" seminar in April, 1995.
Sponsored by Publishers Weekly and SIMBA Information,
"Multimedia Now" was perhaps a turning point. For one thing, mul-
timedia products had then been on sale for two years. All day long
experts from publishing houses, software companies, booksellers,
distributors, and computer magazines testified to the bright
promise, but generally disappointing results, of multimedia.
The war was clearly winding down.
What happened at the panel discussion? How has the war turned
out? Before answering those questions, it might be useful to exam-
ine what we actually mean when we talk about "electronic rights."