For Immediate Release – news of a really exciting project we have been working on this year.

Iconic Books, Such as John Updike’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Rabbit Series and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” Now Available Electronically for the First Time Ever, Exclusively in the Kindle Store

Amazon’s Kindle Store now exclusively offering 20 books from The Wylie Agency’s new Odyssey Editions imprint

SEATTLE—July 22, 2010—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that The Wylie Agency is publishing 20 books from some of literature’s most influential authors through its new Odyssey Editions imprint and making them available for sale exclusively in the Kindle Store. This is the first time any of the titles—which include Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead,” Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”—have been available electronically, and all of the books are exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years. Starting today, customers can download these books for $9.99 from the Kindle Store and read them everywhere–on their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac, iPad and Android devices.

“Our goal with Kindle is to make every book, ever published, in print or out of print, available in less than 60 seconds,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “Having these prominent and important books available through The Wylie Agency’s Odyssey Editions is another great step toward this goal. We’re excited to let our customers read books like ‘Rabbit Run’ for the first time ever electronically.”

“As the market for e-books grows, it will be important for readers to have access in e-book format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer,” said Andrew Wylie, President of Odyssey Editions. “This publishing program is designed to address that need, and to help e-book readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature.”

The Wylie Agency operates internationally from offices in New York and London. In business for more than 30 years, it has built a reputation for consistently high standards. The writers and estates it represents include many of the greatest names in 20th and 21st century literature. Odyssey Editions is the first digitally native literary imprint launch of its kind.

Books available in the Kindle Store through Odyssey Editions include modern classics such as Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” John Cheever’s “The Stories of John Cheever” and four novels from John Updike’s Rabbit series.

The 20 e-books published by Odyssey Imprints carry an elegant and unified new look designed in collaboration with Enhanced Editions. Features include:

• Newly-designed jackets
• Interior typography adhering to best conventions of book design and reading on Kindle
• Colophon, book covers and series design optimized for the Kindle screen

The 20 books being published by Odyssey Editions and made available exclusively on Kindle are:

• “London Fields” by Martin Amis
• “The Adventures of Augie March” by Saul Bellow
• “Ficciones” (Spanish Edition) by Jorge Luis Borges
• “Junky” by William Burroughs
• “The Stories of John Cheever” by John Cheever
• “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich
• “The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer
• “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
• “The Enigma of Arrival” by V.S. Naipaul
• “The White Castle” by Orhan Pamuk
• “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth
• “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie
• “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks
• “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson
• “Rabbit Run” by John Updike
• “Rabbit Redux” by John Updike
• “Rabbit is Rich” by John Updike
• “Rabbit at Rest” by John Updike
• “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh

The Kindle editions of these books are now available for sale exclusively in the Kindle Store. Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 630,000 books, including New Releases and 106 of 110 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 510,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 75 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.

For more information about these books, visit www.amazon.com/odyssey or www.odysseyeditions.com. Eleven of these books will be available globally. Kindle is in stock and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle.

About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Amazon.com, Inc.
Media Hotline, 206-266-7180

]]> http://www.enhanced-editions.com/press-release/2010/07/odyssey-editions-launches/feed/ 0 http://www.enhanced-editions.com/blog/2010/07/odyssey-editions-covers/ http://www.enhanced-editions.com/blog/2010/07/odyssey-editions-covers/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:44:49 +0000 the Enhanced Editions Team http://www.enhanced-editions.com/?p=1404

We have just launched Odyssey Editions with The Wylie Agency and Amazon.

Below are the final covers for the Odyssey Editions titles. There will be more details of the other work we have done in the project in the coming days – please sign up for our newsletter or RSS feed to stay in touch.

London Fields by Martin Amis.

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow.

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges.

Junky by William S. Burroughs.

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk.

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike.

Rabbit Redux by John Updike.

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike.

Rabbit at Rest by John Updike.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

Enhanced Editions is delighted to announce the launch of Odyssey Editions, a project produced for The Wylie Agency . Odyssey is a new, digital-only imprint set up to publish beautiful and digitally native eBook editions of some of the modern literary classics that TWA represent. As a first step, Odyssey has today published the first digital editions of 20 literary classics on Amazon’s Kindle platform.

Here’s the launch list in full:

• London Fields by Martin Amis
• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
• Junky by William S. Burroughs
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul
• The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
• Rabbit, Run by John Updike
• Rabbit Redux by John Updike
• Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
• Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

See all covers we designed here

Initially available only for Kindle, these are not “Enhanced” eBooks, but eBooks purposefully produced for a digital-only audience. All are available to order from Amazon today.

We will expand on the work we have done in future blog posts, but for now we wanted to flag up some features we’re really excited about:

• The design. We are absolutely thrilled with the identity, from the covers to the website.
• The covers. We used the opening lines of each of the books, made the type big, and beautiful.

• The eBooks. The aim was to make “invisible” eBooks, allowing the writing to speak for itself and making sure the reader wasn’t interrupted with the annoyances common to many eBooks.
• The website. In twelve years of producing publishing websites, it is very clear that content remains king. The Odyssey Editions website features some staggering pieces of archival material , generous excerpts from every book, and each of the authors talking about their work. Plus a great photo of Hunter Thompson and many other authors.

So, that’s the launch of Odyssey Editions. Please take a look at the website, read the press release, and check out the eBooks on Amazon.com.

Enhanced Editions’ The Death of Bunny Munro app was the first ever ebook submission for the D&AD design awards earlier this year, and it almost made it to the judging stage, but it wasn’t to be. To show there are no hard feelings, on Wednesday 26 May Enhanced Editions co-founder Peter Collingridge will be speaking at D&AD’s inaugural Sharp’ner event, which aims to bring publishers and designers together to “explore the future of books and book design alongside current and dream projects.” Peter will talk about the design decisions made during the early stages of development, the challenge of creating an invisible design, and the complex synergy that exists between design, user experience and reading. You can buy tickets from the D&AD online shop.

If you can’t make the Sharp’ner event, or you want to “try before you buy”, check out Peter’s keynote address from this year’s Tools of Change conference, and his “Fail Harder” pecha kucha from last year’s London Book Fair

You may have noticed that we’ve had a number of titles marked as “Coming Soon” on this site, one of which was David Eagleman’s wildly popular Sum: Tales from the Afterlives. This wonderfully complex little book is now available in the App Store, and we hope you’ll agree with us that it was well worth the wait. To make up for keeping you in suspense all this time, we’ve dropped the price from £9.99 to £4.99 for two weeks only!

As per usual, we have synchronised the audio with the text, and, as with The Death of Bunny Munro, Canongate have created an audiobook that truly complements the text at hand. Each of the book’s 40 tales is read by one of a stellar cast of readers: Gillian Anderson, Emily Blunt, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Jack Davenport, Lisa Dwan, David Eagleman, Noel Fielding, Kerry Fox, Stephen Fry, Clarke Peters, Lemn Sissay and Harriet Walter.

The app also contains nine exclusive video interviews with David Eagleman, in which the author takes us further into the imagined scenarios of Sum, discussing science, religion and what it means to be a possibilian. In the two sample videos below, Eagleman explains the origins of the book and the ideas behind the title story.

Sum, by David Eagleman from Enhanced Editions on Vimeo.

David Eagleman explains Sum, the story from Enhanced Editions on Vimeo.

Sum: Tales from the Afterlives is now available on the App Store normally priced £9.99, but £4.99 for two weeks only.

Sum: Tales from the Afterlives, the word-of-mouth phenomenon that has already hit the shelves in paperback, is to be released in a variety of exciting formats and experienced in new ways.

David Eagleman’s book caused quite a stir last year when it shot to the No 2 spot on Amazon following a tweet from Stephen Fry. Now Sum has again found itself at the forefront of technological innovation and multimedia publishing.

The slim volume has been adapted for the stage by Brian Eno, in an event which will form a key part of the Brighton Festival on 22nd May. This Is The Afterlives is a multimedia production in which Eagleman’s short, sharp vignettes are ‘reincarnated’ for a live stage encounter by a diverse cast of readers, including the author. The readings will be accompanied by visual images from Wordsalad’s Nick Robertson and live music by Brian Eno.

To coincide with this groundbreaking performance, Canongate Books is releasing a deluxe gatefold edition of the Sum audiobook. Currently only available to buy as a digital download, this audio features a stellar cast of readers: Gillian Anderson, Emily Blunt, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Jack Davenport, Lisa Dwan, David Eagleman, Noel Fielding, Kerry Fox, Stephen Fry, Clarke Peters, Lemn Sissay and Harriet Walter.

In addition, on May 24th the stories will be released as downloadable paired ‘bundles’, onto Audible.co.uk and iTunes. In additional to the initial release of twenty pairs, there are plans for future releases with reimagined and remixed content.

An enhanced application for iPhone and iPod Touch, developed in conjunction with Enhanced Editions, will also be released on 20th May. This brand new app will contain the full text, the full audiobook and nine videos of David Eagleman discussing the book, its themes, origins and impact.

Alongside these releases, Ridley Scott’s production company RSA have been commissioned to make a number of short films inspired by the scenarios of Sum, as part of a broader partnership with Canongate Books to bring its content to a wider audience in different media and forms.

More information can be found on the book’s website.

David Eagleman will be on tour in the UK at the end of May and is available for interview. For further information contact Anna Frame on 0131 524 9340 or anna.frame[at]canongate.co.uk.

From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Darkmans comes Burley Cross Postbox Theft, the latest title by acclaimed novelist Nicola Barker, and now an iPhone app! The quaint Yorkshire village of Burley Cross is far from serene, suffering as it does from persistent dog-fouling, life-threatening manhole cover theft and suspicious activities in the public lavatories. The crowning indignity, however, was the vandalising of the local postbox and the theft of the letters contained therein. PC Roger Topping, the reluctant sleuth, must piece together the recent happenings in the moorside village in order to identify the culprit, but as he does so he is drawn ever deeper into a world of petty local rivalries, curtain-twitching neighbours and dodgy sex magic.

For such a wonderfully eccentric book, we thought we’d do something a little special with the free version of the app. Not only does the app contain the first letter from the Burley Cross heist, with fully synchronised audio, but it will also serialise a further three letters through its in-built postbox during the week of its release. We will also be putting the audio versions of these letters on our podcast if you’d like to get a real flavour for some of the characters.

The book is already getting some great coverage, with the Times calling it ‘pure, unadulterated entertainment’ and the TLS revelling in the book’s ‘frenetic rhetoric’. If you’d like to hear Nicola talk about the book, UK residents can listen to her on the BBC’s Front Row programme (PC/Mac | mobile).

Head on over to the App Store to purchase the full version, or try out the sampler now for free.

To celebrate the runaway success of Philip Pullman’s new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, we are pleased to announce a limited-time offer for our app, where you buy the app and get the book free!

Our app contains the full ebook, the full audiobook (read by Mr Pullman) and twenty minutes of exclusive video interviews, and is available at the bargain price of £9.99. (The UK print edition is the same price, and the audiobook is £14.99. The videos are not available elsewhere.)

The first 50 people to purchase the iPhone app (and send their Apple sales receipt to pullmanpromo [at] enhanced-editions.com will receive a free hardback copy of the book itself, sent to your home. You can even choose which cover you want – there are two covers to the book, reflecting the controversial way that Pullman has created a twin brother (Christ) for Jesus.

Hurry though, this offer ends on Friday 16th April at midnight GMT.

For more details about the app, here’s a short promo:

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Buy on the app store

“As soon as men who believe they are doing God’s will get hold of power, whether it is in a household, or a village, or in Jerusalem or in Rome itself, the devil enters into them.”

Philip Pullman’s closing comments from the Oxford Literary Festival have received a lot of attention over the past few weeks, so we thought we’d share with you some of the video footage that didn’t quite make it into the app.

We visited Mr Pullman at his house in Oxfordshire, and (as well as the Q&A which is exclusive to the app) recorded readings from a number of chapters from the book. Below is Philip Pullman reading from the ‘Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane’, a pivotal chapter from The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

Pullman has recently said that this “soliloquy” is the only part of the text where he has Jesus speaking for the author. Last night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, in discussion with Marina Warner, Mr Pullman said that he “depicts Jesus losing his faith” and it is in this section that the loss of faith is most obvious. Jesus addresses God only to find that he is answered by silence, and in this reading, Pullman displays the vitriol and anger he feels not towards religion, but to the institutions who claim to be doing the work of God.

Find out more about our app for The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ in this short promo:

Purchase the app from the App Store or check out more of the features.

Update: Filmed by Mike Paterson for Canongate Books, we now have the video of Philip Pullman’s closing comments from his talk at the Oxford Literary Festival.

Here’s an example of the high-calibre content that we populate our in-app news feeds with; in this case the feed for Philip Pullman’s latest novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, which is now available on the App Store.

Philip Pullman took to the stage of the Sheldonian Theatre yesterday (Sunday 28th March) to discuss The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ in public for the first time. He was interviewed by Peter Kemp of the Sunday Times.

Pullman began by describing a childhood suffused with biblical stories – his grandfather was a clergyman – in which the figure of Jesus had loomed large. The genesis of the book came when he was approached to contribute to the Canongate Myths series in 2002/3 by publisher Jamie Byng, and then when Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams asked him if Jesus would appear in the author’s fiction. Pullman promised that he would ‘deal with him’ in a later book.

He actually had written about Jesus before, in a metaphorical sense, in The Scarecrow and His Servant, though the allegory had not been picked up by the public generally speaking. Asked about the decision to make Jesus and Christ separate characters, and specifically twins, Pullman cited Paul’s documenting of the life of Jesus and how he referred to the historical figure as ‘Jesus’ about 30 times, but as Christ 130+ times. It was this later re-casting of Jesus that inspired Pullman to create a Christ figure who would manipulate the life of his brother: to bring ‘truth into history’.

His research into the life of Jesus was exhaustive. As well as the four gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – which vary wildly in narrative shape though all retain a neutral and uninflected tone – he also read the apocryphal gospels and key works such as George Eliot’s translation of The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined by David Frederich Strauss.

Then the challenge in going about the writing process, which was a relatively speedy 4-5 months (he admitted it took sixteen attempts to get His Dark Materials off the ground), was knowing – as David Mamet put it – ‘where to put the camera’. The character of Christ also developed as one with far more psychological nuance than could be found in the gospels, ‘frightful, embarrassed’ as he is.

Kemp then struck to the heart of the book, and its twin concerns of ‘authorship and authoritarianism’: how stories come about and how institutional bodies can manipulate those stories to their own ends. The central irony and tragedy of the book, in Pullman’s opinion, is that the church is fatally compromised because ‘inevitably human problems occur’ where people seek to elevate themselves above others. Although without the church, Jesus’s life story might be lost. The Christian need for a church is seeded in the tension that exists between prophets and their followers and how those followers cope when a prophecy doesn’t come true.

Despite Christ’s weaknesses, and his manipulation of history under the spell of the mysterious Stranger figure in the book, Pullman admitted that he ‘came to like Christ a great deal, and dislike Jesus in turn’. Pullman’s Jesus can be strident and cold, as much as inspiring. The book exists because there is so much ‘room for speculation’ in the gospels, especially the ‘narrative tact’ of the resurrection.

Some interesting questions came from the audience: why Pullman doesn’t refer to Jesus as the ‘Son of Man’ as Jesus does himself numerous times in the gospels, and whether Jesus or Christ (as he has them) left the greatest legacy. Pullman was quick to praise the enduring meaning of the parables and the beatitudes, particularly the Good Samaritan, a story he feels you never forget once you’ve heard it, although he questioned the ‘truth’ of the gospels, comparing them to the conflicting views of a jury who have all heard the same evidence.

The Q&A also brought out the defiance in him, declaring that ‘I’m as certain as I can be that there is no God’, as he lampooned the Old Testament God: a ‘psychopathic tyrant’ guilty of ‘vainglorious boasting’.

He ended the event by calmly fending off the accusation that the book title was offensive to a Christian believer:

Yes it was a shocking thing to say, and I knew it was a shocking thing to say.
But no one has the right to live without being shocked.
No one has the right to spend their lives without being offended.
Nobody has to read this book.
Nobody has to pick it up.
Nobody has to open it.

And if they open it and read it, they don’t have to like it.
And if you read it and dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it.
You can write to me.
You can complain about it.
You can write to the publishers, to the papers,
You can write your own book.
You can do all those things.

But there your rights stop.
No one has the right to stop me writing this book.
No one has the right to stop it being published, sold, or bought, or read.
And that’s all I have to say on that subject.

(Thanks to brfuk.blogspot.com for the transcription of the last quote.)