Simon & Schuster Author Partners With Amazon on E-books

Amazon and FranklinCovey Co. announced that electronic versions of business author Stephen Covey's best-selling books, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Principle-Centered Leadership," are now available exclusively in the Amazon Kindle Store for $7.99. Longtime best-seller "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" has helped make Covey Amazon.com's 13th best-selling author of all time.

The New York Times reported Monday that Covey moved e-book rights for the two books from print publisher Simon & Schuster to RosettaBooks, a digital publisher that will sell the e-books to Amazon.com for one year. "This is the first time these books have been available in a digital format, and I'm happy to be able to offer them exclusively on Kindle," said Covey, according to the Times. "With so many readers using Kindle, this is a very effective way to reach people who want to easily download the books and begin reading them instantly."

According to Amazon, "...Kindle customers can expect to see more books by Covey available for download exclusively in the Kindle Store in the future, including the soon-to-be-released 'Great Work, Great Career.'"

Adam Rothberg, a spokesperson for Simon & Schuster declined to comment directly on Mr. Covey's deal, but told the Times, “Our position is that electronic editions of our backlist titles belong in the Simon & Schuster catalog, and we intend to protect our interests in those publications.”