The answer depends upon the wording of the publishing agreement or contract. If your contract pre-dates the digital era, it’s possible your contract doesn’t mention electronic publication at all. In that case, there is not likely to be an e-book publication right. However, where the contract refers vaguely to the author granting “electronic rights” to the publisher, or where the contract grants broad publishing rights to the work in any media, the author may then wonder whether that includes e-books. The law in this area is not well settled. A publisher could be justified in distributing a hard copy work in a digital format so long as the publishing agreement contained some reference to electronic rights, and so long as the publisher did not reproduce the article in a format that differs from the original publication. For example, reproducing a book word-for-word may be permissible assuming the right contractual language, but reproducing a newspaper article without the rest of the newspaper in an online publication may not be permitted. If you are concerned about e-book publication of your work, make sure you locate your publishing contract and show it to a lawyer for advice. You would also wish to look at the payment section of the contract to determine what royalties you would earn on e-book sales. Typically, the percentage owed to the author should be higher than for print publication, since e-book publication is much cheaper. Further, your lawyer will look at the reversionary rights paragraph to determine whether your book is out of print and therefore whether all rights in the book, including electronic rights, have reverted to you.