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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.'"
One Company to rule them all, One Click to find them,
One Company to contract with them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Profit where the Bezos lies.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If the contract gave exclusive distribution rights to Penguin then the author is in breach of contract. Seems simple to me.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Maybe they got tired of having to qualify every eBook price with "This price was set by the publisher".
Want to know what's wrong with the eBook market? Just check out this page; $15 for a poorly scanned version of a book that was written more than 40 years ago, that's available new in paperback and even hardcover for less. Seriously? Who the hell comes up with these pricing models? Even as a huge eBook fan there's been plenty of books that I've passed on because I just can't justify the cost for a digital copy, even ignoring the fact that the digital copy is DRM'd to Amazon's tool set.
They'd offer her $40k + legal expenses. This is a pissing match, plain and simple.
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.
The more of these middle man made-up positions we can remove, the better.
Next up: record executives, realtors, and oil prospectors.
Firstly, his quote is entirely untrue. If there were noone between the writer and reader, you'd end up with lackluster works.
Have you been to a bookstore lately?
Sparkly Vampire #16, Sparkly Werewolf #5, Oscar Wilde - Vampire Hunter (Ok, I might read that one), Zombies Vs Vampires #9, More Zombies #97.
There's a reason why I mostly buy self-published books these days; they may have more typos, but at least there's some variety in the stories for sale.
Publishers typically have been leeches. Sucking 98% of the profit out of a book.
It's high time that writers were able to sell to a reader and keep most of the sale, they did 90% of the work, they deserve 90% of the sale price.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not just writers and readers...any successful writer will tell you that editors are also an essential part of the process. Amazon will either have to provide authors with editors or come up with a situation where editors can work on projects as independent contractors.
You are telling me that all writers are no talent hacks and the publisher makes their book fantastic?
So let me guess, the harry potter books direct from JK Rowling are full of profanity and nudity and the publisher fixed them into the books that sold like hotcakes and everyone wanted to read...
Let me guess, you also have a nice bridge in Manhattan that you will sell me for a deal. I know several writers and all of them are looking forward to the day they can bypass the publisher. Most of them are angry that the publishers don't even supply the services they used to, like editors and reviewers to go over the books several times before publishing, they have to hire their own out of their own pocket.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You know how it's done, so what do you need Amazon for?
Marketing.
Self-publishing through Amazon or other e-book retailers is fine, but for many authors having Amazon push your book through their marketing capabilities (e.g. 'You bought 'An Ideal Husband', so you might like 'An Ideal Husband And Zombies') is worth a percentage of royalties and potential restrictions on other e-book retailers who might not want to sell Amazon-published books.
Of course, the flip-side to that is that you as a new author are quite likely to languish as nobody is interested in your work because nobody has heard of you.
What we've been seeing with iTunes and people who self-publish these things through Amazon, is that you can potentially make vastly more by selling it cheaply and having a large number of people download it and you get paid directly than you would otherwise. If you're getting 75% or so of each $0.99 download, versus the few pennies (or less) you'd make otherwise, you get much more cash.
Assuming you got past your terrible "grammer" and spelling, you might find you could make more by cutting out the middle-men and letting Amazon do the selling.
That's likely what they're banking on, and if they could get some exclusive content from successful authors, they could potentially make a truckload of money by not having to pay the publishers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Publishers take a lot of the profit from successful books. They also end up paying a lot of advances on complete duds on which they lost money. (Same thing with music labels.) Vanity publishing has always been available to authors that think they can make more money by cutting out the middleman. (If you could convince a bookstore to carry the things... most booksellers have better things to do than wade through self-published crap.)
I agree that the traditional publishing model is now becoming outdated with the advent of e-books, but it had it's purpose at the time.
Isn't Step 2: Find some content to put on your network? I mean if you have no authors from any major publisher on your store, how do you expect to attract people to it? It's sort of like those MP3 stores that existed before iTunes where your choice was "horrible overpriced mess with obnoxious DRM and scant handful songs from one label" or "Indie crap that appeals to maybe a few dozen people worldwide, and then mostly so they can be more indie than you." Both models were terrible failures for obvious reasons.
The difficulty isn't in setting up a DRM free marketplace, it is getting content on that marketplace. If it's good people will buy it, but good luck getting anything good when you have to work completely outside of the publishers. You'll get a few titles from authors willing (or desperate) enough to take the chance, but you're competing with publishers that will put out literally thousands of quality titles (and tens of thousands of crap titles).
I read the internet for the articles.
If you were to actually read TFA by the NYT
It was behind a login wall for me. Fuck that. Slashdotters barely bother reading articles, nevermind putting up with stupid barriers.
Penguin can rage at the dying of the light....but that will only make it run out of breath sooner.
I prefer the poetic image of star systems slipping through Penguin's fingers the more they tighten their grip, but I don't know why.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I think it's amusing that Penguin is involved here (although it may as well be any publisher for this particular story).
When Penguin was founded in the 1930s, they were probably as much of a disruptive force as Amazon is now. Paperbacks were pretty much unheard of. At the time new books -- which meant cloth-bound books -- generally cost about 6 shillings, or say about 20-30 pounds in today's UK money, or 40-60 US$. The first Pengins were sold for 6 pence, or 2-3 pounds, or 4-6 US$. All the original Penguins were reprints, i.e. not new original works but titles licensed from other publishers. The public reaction was positive. The publishing community started with an attitude of amused skepticism, and soon evolved to something like fear, as they watched Penguin cannibalize their sales.
These days Penguin is still around, having outlived and/or absorbed most of the old British publishing companies. It's interesting to think that they might be confronting an upheaval in the industry similar to the one they caused themselves 80 years ago.