Literary agent Andrew Wylie’s reputation as a shrewd, relentless businessman has earned him the sobriquet “The Jackal” but in the recent debacle of his failed raid on Random House he looked more like a chimp in a clown costume.

Sarah Weinman, writing in DailyFinance.com, wonders whether he “ever intended to be a digital publisher, or even fully understood what it meant. The origins of Odyssey Editions [the firm Wylie created for his e-book venture] seemed scatter-shot and unfocused at best, starting with a May 11 incorporation filing in the the state of Delaware, and a website domain registration six days later, on May 17, through the Wylie Agency, not Odyssey.”  Was Odyssey “a real business”, Weinman wonders, “or a publicity stunt?”

If the latter, not too many folks found it funny. Some of his authors must have been pretty shook up to be used as pawns in his chess game with Random House, which declared it would do no more business with him if he went through with his e-book scheme.

Nor could Amazon.com find much humor when Wylie offered them a two-year exclusive commitment that he then had to abandon because he didn’t quite own the rights to the books he was offering. “The question of who actually owns the digital rights to works written before e-books were even a gleam in the publishing industry’s eye is still unanswered,” writes Weinman. Wylie failed to heed Random’s warnings that it would not yield those rights without a fight, warnings that were sounded nine years earlier in a lawsuit against Rosetta Books and more recently when startup Open Road Media made a similar play. When Wylie tried the same thing we wondered Will Random House Chicken Out Again?

Random House didn’t chicken out but came out with excommunications blazing, forcing Wylie to retreat from his position and inform Amazon that the titles they thought they had were actually the property of Random House. Furthermore he had to cough up to Random the e-files Odyssey had created. Those files will still be sold on Amazon, yes, but not exclusively as Amazon had expected. E-book editions of those titles will be sold in the platforms of Amazon’s competitors, courtesy of Random House.

Now Wylie can go back to being a Jackal on the hunting grounds he is familiar with, but with claws and fangs banged up by his foray into a world he does not understand. Weinman’s observations are devastating: “Considering that it’s the offspring of a literary agency that represents 700 authors and employs far fewer personnel to handle those rights, Odyssey Editions smacks of a water-dipped toe, a publicity ploy, rather than a deep commitment to digital publishing.”

Read Weinman’s Random House’s Backlist E-Book Deal With Andrew Wylie Leaves Much Unanswered for complete details.

Richard Curtis