Amazon Signing Up Authors, Upsetting Publishers?
0
Amazon is dedicated to dominating the e-book industry for years to come. The company already has an e-reading platform that others find hard to compete with. It may be losing money on devices such as Kindle Fire. But Amazon will offset its costs with all the content it gets to sell to its customers. As the NY Times reports, the company is now going around publishers to sign up authors. Amazon will publish 122 books this fall and plans to bring more big name authors on-board.
Considering the amount of power the company has gathered in this industry, it is no wonder that most publishers are confused and even afraid of Amazon. After all, the company is now competing with bookstores, publishers, and even agents.
If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.
explains Richard Curtis, a veteran agent and book publisher. In reality, writers and readers are the only constants in this business. Others will have to watch their back the way Amazon is going.
To sweeten its deal with authors, Amazon is offering them Nielsen BookScan sales data. This provides authors will all kinds of useful information to help them sell more books. Publishers are not going to sit around and let Amazon eat their cake. Some may even use legal threats to keep their authors from running away from them. Amazon may be putting pressure on publishers and agents, but it could also help a lot of currently unknown authors. This fight is far from over though.
