NEW YORK (AP) — 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 last month, released by digital publisher Open Road Integrated Media.

Besides The Ice Storm, the other books include the novelPurple America, the memoir The Black Veil and the short fiction collectionThe Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven. In an e-mail, Moody toldThe 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 catalogue, from Alice Walker’s

The Colour Purple to Pat Conroy’sThe Prince of Tides.

Moody declined to discuss financial details, although Open Road is known for offering 50 per cent 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.”

Moody, 54, is best known for The Ice Storm, the 1994 novel about a pair of troubled suburban families in 1970s Connecticut that became a feature film starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. The book is part of Open Road’s “Iconics” series, which includes

The Colour Purple, Erica Jong’sFear of Flying and dozens of other notable works.

Moody’s new novel,

Hotels of North America, published by Little, Brown and Co, has since been released.