I saw this New York Times article over at CNBC about Amazon publishing books directly with top authors:
Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers…..
It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said.
Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
I love that guys like Tim Ferris, author of some pretty entertaining books like The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, can now bypass mainstream publishers altogether. Soon other lesser known writers will join him, without the need for a publisher. It’s about time.
Amazon’s new business direction sounds very reasonable. Modern technology eliminates the need for many middle men required in the recent past. Long live the doctrine of creative destruction. Am I supposed to object to this development? If so, they need to provide a good reason why I should do so.
This isn’t a big surprise to those of us in the indie-writers community. Amazon’s CreateSpace subsidiary was already squinting in that direction, and the company’s powers of promotion and marketing are clearly at least the equal of its powers of physical production.
The question in my mind this morning is how Amazon will select writers to invite into the fold. Already well-known writers? Okay, that too was to be expected. But will it take an interest in any of us who are, shall we say, already “part of the family?”
Stay tuned!
I may have to do the same myself. My agent is making one last attempt to find a publisher for My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill, but this is a topic that publishers are convinced no one cares about. I may have to go direct, even though there is a loss of prestige that way.
In preparation for this possibility, I used Amazon to get my wife’s first book out there in both Kindle and print on demand formats. (Unfortunately, the subject matter pretty well precludes getting a publisher unless you are already nationally famous.)
No publisher?? Wrong. It’s just smoke and mirrors. **Amazon** is the publisher. On paper, they might make it a little easier for unknowns to get their work published and might make it a little more profitable for authors then they get their work published, but since Amazon will be the publisher, none of the books they publish will be available from Barnes and Noble, iTunes, or any other book seller. Just Amazon. Which means ultimately less money for the author and less respect/credibility for the author from other publishers and retailers and thus less of a chance to get new works published and sold by traditional publishers and retailers should the authors realize they’ve been screwed by Amazon as much as they would have been by a traditional publisher. Oh, did Amazon forget to mention that….?
I have a solution for you. Publish your book somewhere else.
Correct, Amazon becomes the publisher instead. This is not a new idea; in the early days of printing (16th-18th centuries, maybe into the 19th) the printer (publisher) was often also the bookseller (retailer).
See, for instance, this: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/history/common-sense-larger.html
Amazon is simply doing what R. Bell was at in 1776. But, their profit potential is far larger than his, because it costs nothing to publish on the Kindle.
Die, publishers, die!
No doubt the mainstream publishers are crying “Barbarians at the gate!” and sounding alarms, but then they would, their jobs as gatekeepers and middle-men are at risk. However, the damage they’ve done to shrinking a couple of generations of readers though may be irreparable. Generally speaking, people are reading less. Given the choice of fiction they’ve had to endure with all the politically-correct angles, men are reading much less and fiction has become disproportionately geared to women’s tastes.
If the indie market can win back the men and the women who’ve despaired over the Oprah-esque fiction being written out there, it will have won a victory indeed.
It looks more like Amazon is trying to “cherry-pick” the author list. It will hurt every label they take a successful author from, and the remaining brick-and-mortar stores, but I don’t see any benefit to me, a book buying reader.
“Soon other lesser known writers will join him”
First of all, Helen, lesser-known writers are ALREADY self-publishing, as e-books. That’s old news already.
Second of all, this:
“I don’t see any benefit to me, a book buying reader.”
…is well-answered here:
“I welcome breaking the power of young editors from Ivy League [or the rough equivalent] colleges to decide which authors not only get published but pushed.”
As a veteran of the NYC publishing wars (I did marketing), this remark is dead-on correct. Because of e-books and the ‘net, books can finally be published strictly on the basis of merit. That is to say: On merit as judged by the book-buying public, and NOT by a handful of often-misguided (at best) or brain-dead (more typical) gatekeepers.
Absolutely right, Mister Snitch, and Steve D (below) backs this up: “I’ve lost track of exactly how many excellent 99 cent Kindle books I purchased on amazon in the last year or so.”
Let the free market of ideas and talent have its way! We are all the richer for it.
My concerns are Leslie’s (above) about exclusivity to Amazon, and also about the important role editors play in making books – particularly fiction – not suck.
Self-published books tend to be – to put it diplomatically – awful. The plots are usually just as interesting and imaginative – if not too much so – but basic fundamentals of communication are often sorely lacking, superfluous elements are never cut as they would be under a professional eye, and the edges are just generally very rough.
This isn’t meant to be a blanket statement, and of course the economics may favor self-publication regardless (as the saying goes, no one but a blockhead ever wrote but for money), but I’ve read enough now that I’ll often say “hey, this reads like it’s self-published!”
Note that: (1) Amazon’s retail price is generally $1 above retail hardcopy booksellers, despite the economies of e-publishing which are estimated to reduce production costs by more than 70%, (2) the books Amazon publishes can only be read on their proprietary platform (think Betamax), (3) which means Amazon authors will be denied revenue from any potential sales to a majority of the e-book market – Nook, Sony, PDF, etc., (4) the e-books are not ‘owned’ by the purchaser, nor can they be shared, loaned or transferred, and (5) Amazon customers will be denied access to any e-books published in non-Kindle formats. Contrast this to a competitor like Baen or Webscriptions, which sell their authors’ e-books in any format the customer desires at a price more than 10% below the brick-and-mortar stores.
All-in-all, Amazon’s is the marketing approach of a monopolist, and I pity any author who makes Amazon his exclusive publisher.
” the books Amazon publishes can only be read on their proprietary platform”.
Huh? I can read Kindle books on my iPad, iPod, and Android phone.
Do you have another point to make? One supported by facts, perhaps?
As you complain about a work only being available from Amazon, keep in mind that the Kindle software is available on many platforms. For instance, I have a fairly large collection of Kindle books on an iPod Touch. The only readers who will suffer are those locked into someone else’s closed system.
Not completely true. I’ve been able to buy stuff from other sites (Baen Books, through Webscriptions, especially) and have it sent to my Kindle converted to Kindle format by Amazon.
A while ago Amazon and publishers squabbled when some publishers insisted on setting the minimum price Amazon could charge for a book. (I forget if it was for hard copies or ebooks or both.)
If Amazon turns around and lures away their writers, color me unsympathetic.
If nothing else, I welcome breaking the power of young editors from Ivy League [or the rough equivalent] colleges to decide which authors not only get published but pushed.
I’m sure if I ever again want to purchase anything written by Joyce Carol Oates [or some similar author] about some stone loser who misunderstands reality, makes a series of idiot choices based on that misunderstanding, and permanently screws up not only her life but the lives of everyone around her I will be able to do so no matter what Amazon does. As depressing and uninteresting as such written work is, I have to admit it will contain very few errors in grammar, usage, or punctuation and will have few typos. That still doesn’t make me want to spend $30+ for it.
If Amazon provides adequate value added for the price, why should anyone complain?
I wonder why the publishers don’t get together, set up their own website, and sell books in competition with Amazon. They could offer deep discounts and end up making more money for each book.
Would that jive with anti-trust law?
If Amazon continues allowing books in other formats to be converted to Kindle, that will work. If not???
I will tell you right up front that I am a Barnes & Noble employee. There is no better way to browse for books than to actually go to the books store. I cannot spend my life “attached” to my computer, I do need to get out once in a while. Barnes & Noble still has a book club, poetry night, author signings, book fairs, story time and other activities for kids. Yes, this comes at a price, but I think it is well worth it.
I’m not going to disagree with you, Tammy, but I’d like to add a coda: If you’re a NOOK owner, which I am, the B&N store is a great place to:
– Read eBooks for free;
– Purchase the eBook versions of the physical books you find on the shelves!
B&N appears to recognize this, as it has made its stores attractive for precisely these things. Their management must get credit for its insight; the purchase of an eBook through one’s NOOK eReader makes B&N at least as large a profit as purchasing the physical edition. So Beth and I always bring our NOOKs to B&N when we go — and among my little pleasures is showing other shoppers the eBooks I’ve written, in the B&N online catalog!
(Yes, I’m a sneaky sort, but one must make a living, mustn’t one?)
Self-publishing is probably the way of the future. But some of the gatekeeping publishers did is valid. I have browsed samples of books at Lulu and Xlibris and similar sites and find they are usually not as well written as books from regular publishing houses.
Hmmm … I don’t know if I would great this with happy hosannahs, as an indy author myself. Amazon is great as an on-line retailer; can’t get anywhere without them: the set-up for authors to do their own author page, to track sales, and to expedite making books available for Kindle editions – all great. But now and again, there are issues. A couple of years ago, they had tried to restrict the various small POD (Publish on Demand) publishers to using their in-house printer, Booksurge, as opposed to LSI (Lighting Source International/Ingram) which was the print and distribution service which most of them favored. Amazon basically threatened to stop direct sales of books by authors who were published by POD houses who wouldn’t play ball. Currently there is a ruckus brewing about Amazon pulling reviews of books from a quite respectable and honest book-review site. The reviews were pulled, then reinstated, then pulled again.
And for AthensRambler and JorgX – I do have an editor, quite an old-fashioned and strict one. My own books are traditional historical fiction, with an American frontier setting. At least two thirds of my fans are men, as I write very guy-friendly plots and characters!
I’ve lost track of exactly how many excellent 99 cent Kindle books I purchased on amazon in the last year or so. Then there is the public library that is “loaning out” e-books and I’ve also “borrowed” books from other friends’ kindles. And things seem to be accelerating rapidly along these lines. In my opinion, the death of big publishing houses is inevitable. If I was an editor I’d be setting up my own freelance/contract services.
@David/Californa You’re incorrect about #4.
“Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle — Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices.”
The game is changing daily in this space. Sure, when anybody can publish anything on Kindle, there’ll be a lot of crap out there. But there are plenty of good indie authors with great material (often professionally edited) who would never be seen/read in the old publisher plantation system. And Amazon isn’t necessarily the only game in town. They have KDP and CreateSpace (paper printed on demand), but groups like SmashWords (gets your stuff onto other e-formats) are likely to play a major role here. It’s now technically/mechanically quite easy to self-publish. A much bigger obstacle is marketing your work.
I don’t see why anyone would consider this a big deal.
Publishers perform a service, mainly editing, distributing, and financing. They’re not just middlemen, like wholesalers with big warehouses, who can be cut out by more efficient networks. (Though distribution can be done more efficiently than it has been in the past, and is in fact being done more efficiently now.) If publishers are cut out, then the services performed by publishers are cut out too. Unless, of course, Amazon provides the services instead. In which case, Amazon becomes just another publisher. And that is hardly earth-shaking news. If Amazon is not acting like a publisher, but is more like a direct conduit between the author and the buying public (ie, a printer of works which skip traditional editing and even typesetting), well, such systems predate Amazon and are fully functional today. With computerized files providing the interface between author and printer, firms such as Lightning Source print up conventional books which are then sold through conventional channels … conventional channels like Amazon. Authors are not confined to novelty formats such as e-books with this system.
So, what innovation is Amazon adding here?