Simon & Schuster Blinks

From what the Association of Authors' Representatives (literary agent organization) and the Authors Guild are saying, Simon & Schuster is backing down on effectively elminating out-of-print rights reversion. The company had tried questioning the Authors Guild in a statement on Publishers Weekly, but apparently that was short-lived. Here's what the AAR had to say after having a few of its crew meet with S&S:

They informed us that S&S is investing a lot of resources in its digital publishing initiative, and their expanded efforts in conventional and newtechnologies will enable them to supply books to consumers in a variety of formats, including Print on Demand, electronic books, digital downloadable audio, online page views, et. al. Their goal is to keep books in print more effectively and to market frontlist and backlist titles more vibrantly.They have confirmed for us that they are agreeable to negotiating with agents a revenue-based threshold to determine the in-print status of a book.

That is certainly good news - and proof that if writers don't roll over, publishers are quite capable of backing down.