Amazon Signs Exclusive E-book Deal with Author Stephen Covey

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 15, 2009 - 10:44am.

Seattle - Online retail giant Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) on Tuesday announced that it has signed a deal with best-selling author Stephen R. Covey, giving the company the exclusive rights to sell e-book versions of two of his titles on Amazon.com.

The one-year agreement covers the titles "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Principle-Centered Leadership," published originally by Simon & Schuster, a unit of CBS (NYSE: CBS).

Covey will make the titles available to Amazon through RosettaBooks, an e-book publisher that works with other established authors, for distribution to PCs, Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, and its Kindle for iPhone application.

The New York Times noted that Covey's move "promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing an could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html

http://www.stephencovey.com