E-edition released of Moody’s ‘The Ice Storm’

NEW YORK — Rick Moody is finally letting “The Ice Storm” and some of his other previous works come out as e-books.

Electronic editions of four of Moody’s books went on sale Tuesday, released by digital publisher Open Road Integrated Media. Besides “The Ice Storm,” the other books include the novel “Purple America,” the memoir “The Black Veil” and the short fiction collection “The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven.” In a recent email, Moody, 54, told The Associated Press he had been reluctant to grant electronic rights because most publishers treated the e-editions as “an ancillary part of the lives of my books.”

“I was never comfortable, in the past, with how people were talking about the e-books of my backlist, and thus my delay,” Moody wrote.

Open Road was co-founded in 2009 by former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman and now has some 10,000 electronic books in its catalog, from Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” to Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides.”

Moody declined to discuss financial details, although Open Road is known for offering 50 percent royalties on e-book sales, double what traditional publishers usually offer.

“Their approach is very much about writers and writing, and they are unencumbered by traditional thinking about how to connect readers with literature,” Moody told the AP. “Best of all, their list is remarkable. It would be hard to think of another publisher that has been as aggressive and forward-thinking about literature in the digital age, and with such great taste.”