Amazon Bypassing Publishers By Signing Authors Directly

Hugh Pickens writes "David Streitfeld reports that Amazon is aggressively wooing top authors, gnawing away at the services publishers, critics and agents used to provide. 'Everyone's afraid of Amazon,' says Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. 'The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,' adds Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon's top executives. 'Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.' But publishers are fighting back at writers who publish with Amazon. In 2010 Kiana Davenport signed with a division of Penguin for The Chinese Soldier's Daughter, a Civil War love story, and received a $20,000 advance. In the meantime Davenport packaged several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packaged them in an e-book, Cannibal Nights, available on Amazon. When Penguin found out, it went 'ballistic,' accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competition, canceling her novel, and suing Davenport to recover her advance. Davenport knows her crime: 'Sleeping with the enemy? Perhaps. But now I know who the enemy is.'"

Comments

There is room for both.

[DurendalMac]

I think some people are too quick to write off the publishing industry. They still provide things you won't find on Amazon, such as EDITORS. An early author may be able to put a book together, but sometimes they need a very experienced set of eyes to help them fix problems and eliminate some cruft. An experienced writer may not need one as much (although they generally still do), but starting authors almost certainly will. You also cannot get your ebook into nearly as many hands as a hardcopy. Any literate person with functional eyes can read a hardcopy, but you need a Kindle or similar device to read an ebook.

What I hope to see from this is two competing markets. Hopefully this will coax the publishing industry to give authors a better cut. Maybe that's a bit too pie-in-the-sky, but it's possible. Let's hope the publishing industry can adapt better than the goddamned RIAA.

Re:There is room for both.

[91degrees]

Editors are important, but you don't need to sign with a publishing house to get your book edited. There's nothing stopping you from hiring a freelance editor and publishing on Amazon if you think it's necessary.

Lack of money is. Ultimately a publisher these days is simply a one stop shop offering a loan, editing, typesetting, cover art, promotion, distribution and a selection of other tasks that are needed to make a book successful.

You could get all that yourself from other sources but I suspect few lenders would lend you money on the same terms - no requirement to pay it all back until your writing careers is a success.

Good!

[drunkennewfiemidget]

The more of these middle man made-up positions we can remove, the better.

Next up: record executives, realtors, and oil prospectors.

Re:One company

[Fished]

the shoddy big-chain bookstores that put the quality local bookstores out of business.

You mean the "shoddy" Barnes and Noble that had 100,000 books as compared to the "quality" local bookstore that had 10,000? Or was it that the "shoddy" Barnes & Noble could get me the book they didn't have in two days, but it took the "quality" local bookstore two weeks? Or was it that the "shoddy" Barnes and Noble sold Christian bestsellers at 10-20% below cover price, while the "quality" local Christian bookstore marked them up above cover price? Or the "shoddy" B&N database that let them find just about any book, however obscure, foreign or domestic, and how long it would take them to get it, but the "quality" local bookstore that often just couldn't or wouldn't get the book I wanted?

Thanks for clarifying.

There were and are many good reasons for supporting your local booksellers. But, generally, superior quality isn't one of them.