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EXCLUSIVE: Barry Diller and Scott Rudin are in exploratory talks to launch an e-book business for both fiction and non-fiction. I’m told they have had a lot of exploratory conversations and I expect an announcement of a venture launch shortly with major investment capital. The ramifications will be interesting. Both Diller and Rudin are big players in media. Diller’s track record includes the new Aereo TV 
streaming service, IAC/InterActive Corp., TicketMaster and before that Fox (where Rudin became his president of production) and Paramount Pictures. Rudin is a prolific veteran producer of book-to-film and stage adaptations that most recently have included Best Picture Oscar nominees True Grit, The Social Network and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as well as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Other distinguished titles include Moneyball, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and The Hours. Rudin also had movie production deals at Paramount, Disney/Miramax and now has a deal at Sony. His recent stage productions include the Tony-winning Broadway hits The Book Of Mormon, Fences, and the Mike Nichols-directed revival of Death Of A Salesman. No comment from the principals.
Related: Barry Diller Says Aereo Will Be In Every Major City By End Of 2013
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Brilliant union of two staggeringly talented accomplished diversified talents!
Two brilliant companies, a dream collaboration! I wonder how the lowly WRITERS will benefit from this merger?
Rudin and Diller partnering up? Gee, I wonder if that will end up in a lawsuit.
Slowly the Amazon beast raised its head, turned its blood-red eyes to Hollywood and bared fangs still gory with the gruesome remains its most recent kill.
Hmmm. Adjective much?
I’m not surprised. Fuck the writer from the start. Don’t kid around with just the screenwriters. Fuck ALL the writers.
Nikki feared that movies would all be based on comics books.
It’s worse than that.
All movies will be based on shit “written” during NaNoWriMo.
You’re right, except for your exceptionally written, engrossing pieces. The world will not except NO Mike Crane scripts (oops, except it already does). C’est La Vie.
LOL Book Guy.
There appears to be no there, there.
This will probably end with a whimper.
Really – they’re gonna take over the ebook world? The great thing about ebooks is writers no longer need middlemen, and no one owns this world any ore, just as with rock bands and labels.
Authors write, they can briefly hire an editor and artist for a little contract work, and bam, book published – publishing owned by writer. The end. If it’s good, it finds an audience, if not, buh bye.
Any author stupid enough to go into business with a publisher other than herself/himself these days, does not deserve to succeed. Sharks don’t do this for any reason other than wanting to own the content. Unless they’re acquiring your book for millions with a contract for major backend percentages, who needs them?
I’d sweep Electus under the rug as well …
Barry Diller is a visionary who grew networks and media companies after mentoring and defining the last generation of hollywood executives who didn’t come out of agencies. Scott Rudin is a producer with taste whose strength is acting as an advocate to protect talented filmmakers from the fear fueled politics of the studios. One knows how to create a system, the other how to exploit the shortcomings of a flawed one.
Please; this is just another way to screw writers. Get them to sign all their rights away up-front so you don’t have to pay more when the book is a success and you want to make a movie or stage play out of the work.
A tad late to this soiree, aren’t they?
The only thing Rudin can sell me is a restaurant recommendation in NY.
Can we please go back to the 70s or early 90s. Folks, unless you’ve lived both shut the fuck up. I’ve live all as a viewer. This is staggeringly awful. Movies are no longer. It’s garbage. Stop it.
Meh. The hurdles to getting into ebooks are higher than people realize, the returns fewer. The ebook only hits have generally been very low priced (50 Shades is an exception). Legacy publishers bring more to the table than most people realize. Diller and Rudin are going to find this no waltz and I fail to see what they’ll bring to the table that’s unique besides their names which won’t be as much help here as they think.
Yes, the legacy houses can and still often do bring a lot to the table, but in totality their worth keeps fading and for most authors tying up with them rarely mitigates the down side of tiny advances plus signing everything over to them. Their value is only going to keep dropping as the barrier to entry in this profession all but evaporates, and the value of traditional expensive promo such as The Today Show and expensive PR tours continues to diminish.
Creators now create, sell and own outright, minus a small cut to whatever ‘distributor’ and the minor upfront costs. As we all know, much of the classic Hollywood/media content model has been collapsing for years. It has been most swift for newspapers and music recordings, then video stores, now bookstores and onward it will go.
Mr.’s Diller and Rudin are obviously smart and skilled, but they are needed in this equation about as much as the desperate execs who concocted the fake, failed “360″ model that (thankfully) never took off in music. These are the moves of talented but aging executives simply trying to hang on and preserve old turf, while others break new ground.
You obviously know nothing about ebooks and self-pubbing. The hits are low-priced because of the much better royalty structure offered by companies like Amazon. 70% of 2.99 is going to net the author much more than 17.5% than an overpriced $9.99 legacy published book. And what, pray tell, do legacy publishers bring to the table more than people realize? Their ownership of all rights in perpetuity, shoddy editing, narrow-minded selection of titles they think will be a success? Again, I come back to my original point – you know nothing.
Great. Now Rudin can option great books from himself. And never make them into movies.
Can’t these guys just let go? It’s time for boat-drinks! No writer worth his/her talent is going to place his/her work with these two. All they’ll get is some low hanging fruit!
Writers do not need anyone to help them publish ebooks or pbooks. Just someone trying to make money off of an artists intellectual property!
It’s great to see Rudin & Diller combining forces! I would imagine they’re looking to be more innovative & if so, they would do well to team up with a project like The Numinous Place, which blurs the line between book & film. Every story should create an EXPERIENCE like this. It is innovation with an intense cool-factor, and once this project launches, there is no going back … audiences will demand and expect more advanced storytelling like this! Will Rudin & Diller play in that arena??
The question is this: is this announcement significant? Iean are they going to try and compete with Amazon, or use Amazon. If they are going to compete it is significant. Otherwise…..snore….
ONce you sell an e-book, what is there to prevent the recepient, friend or foe, to just e-mail it another friend ad infinitum. It is all on line is it not? Since when has anything, once on line been blocked from being forwarded?