Amazon the publisher? Not quite.

Book publishers have feared Amazon would further cut into their business for years. But the truth is Ian McEwan didn't sign a deal with the site for exclusive e-book rights, as this article clearly wants you to believe -- he went to an indie e-book publisher who then turned around and got Amazon to double the royalties he was getting through his publisher on five titles (see which ones here). Still, it's a big deal because McEwan probably sought similarly favorable terms from his current publisher and wasn't able.

I'm not sure how this affects e-book versions of those five titles already on the market (if there were?), but I suspect it's easier to get this kind of deal if your book came out more than 10 years ago and has no mention of electronic publishing in its contract; the newest McEwan up for grabs in this lot is 1987's THE CHILD IN TIME. I didn't know that authors commonly get 25 percent on e-books, but as is pointed out in the London Times, publishers' overhead costs are much lower on those seeing as there's no there there.

I'd love to see a paper contrasting current e-book practices within publishing with the Jay-Z/ Live Nation deal of 2008, but I'd probably have to write it myself.