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

One company

[ColdWetDog]

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.

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.

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:Grandinetti is an idiot:

[0123456]

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.

Re:Amazon is just another publisher.

[haystor]

There is significant case law on the matter. Further, an advance of $20k to not work in the entire field of writing for 2 years won't get any traction in court.

Non compete in this sense means those characters/story/universe don't get presented somewhere else. That the publisher gets first release of not just the book, but anything to do with the book.

This is bullying an author, plain and simple. (if the story is as the author has written)

Re:Amazon is just another publisher.

[Savantissimo]

Not only were the short story collections she published with Amazon already published by other publishers, they had been submitted to the Big 6 publisher who is currently breaching its contract. The Big 6 publisher had specifically said that they did not want to publish the short story collections, and the author has the rejection notices to prove it.

So the publisher basically hasn't got a leg to stand on. Their interpretation of the contract is void, in restraint of trade, tortured to justify their fear and hatred of the possibility of any competition from Amazon, even when no such threat exists in this case. Further, they are trying to effectively exert ownership over works that are not only NOT under contract, but had specifically been rejected by them, and to claim rights to put out of print without further compensation all the author's past works and works up to two years in the future (when they are contractually obligated to publish her novel).

She has an excellent chance of prevailing in court, for far more than the advance - this firm is trying to destroy her career, to make sure she is never published by anyone but Amazon if she publishes anything with Amazon. This is really a case that the NY AG and the Justice Department could slam-dunk on multiple counts, too.