More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Amazon throws down the gauntlet – hires major agent to start publishing venture
May 23, 2011 | 10:54 am
|
By Paul Biba
Amazon has started some imprints and done more than a little in the pure publishing space, but now it has, it seems to me, thrown down the gauntlet in front of all of the major publishers. There will be more than a few conferences going on in the offices of the major publishers today. Here’s the scoop from The BookSeller:
Amazon.com has hired publishing big hitter Laurence Kirshbaum to run its New York Publishing office.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal the former c.e.o. of the Time-Warner Book Group and more recently a literary agent, hasaccepted the role of publisher for Amazon’s New York publishing office, and will start on 5th July. Publishers Marketplace reported that Amazon announced the move to a group of agents Sunday night. Reporting to Amazon’s Jeff Belle, the piece says that Kirshbaum is charged with building “something that will look like a general trade publisher”, with “a specific focus on non-fiction, but also literary fiction”.
Kirshbaum is a major player in the industry and everyone I mentioned this to at BEA was simply amazed. All the publishing people here feel it is a simply stunning move in the industry.
|
Related Posts:
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
“…everyone I mentioned this to at BEA was simply stunned”
Yet more proof – as if any were needed – that publishers really are ignorant, stupid, or both. A move like this from Amazon could have been predicted a long way out.
Anyone in publishing who didn’t see this coming is beyond stupid. However, I do think most in publishing knew this was coming, but the ‘surprise’ was who the person was.
Amazon has been ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ against publishers for years….
Excellent news. Heavyweight competition for the Big 6 is a very good thing.
the day the big 5 (now 6) forced agency price-fixing on amazon, everyone knew that amazon had to take the gloves off and counter by becoming a full service publisher themselves. not sure what the legacy publishers were thinking. maybe they thought amazon would go this route anyway, but they certainly pushed the eventuality forward with their collusion on prices.
The commenters on this site need to start being a little more intelligent and display some empathetic understanding. Everyone knew this was coming. That doesn’t mean you can stop doing business with Amazon if you want to be successful in the publishing world.
Here’s a quick note: whenever you think there is something *weird* going on in the publishing world, ask yourself this question: “What would I do if i were in their position?” And actually be honest with yourself when you answer! Think about who the stakeholders are (authors, readers, resellers, etc.), and consider ALL of the components of the decision, not just singular ones that help you make a narrow point and misconstrue the ecosystem that exists.
More often than not you’ll find yourself agreeing with most publishers actions (DRM notwithstanding, although Amazon seems to be doing fine selling DRM’d ebooks). If you don’t, frankly, you’re lying to yourself and/or couldn’t hack it as a publisher (that’s fine, publishing is a tough business!). Most people’s comments on this site are variations of “Publishers owe me something, wah wah, publishers stink, wah wah” that unabashedly and almost proudly display their ignorance of running a content-driven business. If you are only willing to think like a reader, you’ll continue to be frustrated, and you’ll only have yourself to blame.
I’m tickled pink about this. For over a year now, the Agency 5 have been telling us “it’s my way or the highway, if you don’t like it too bad”. Well guess what, there’s a little fork in the road now.
I agree. It’s hard to see why anyone in publishing should be surprised by this move. Amazon only outsources when doing something in-house doesn’t add significant profit or requires expertise they don’t have. To give one example, they’ve been developing their own line of electronics add-ons such as cables, targeted what sells best. They will even buy expertise. They moved into audio books when they bought Audible and used books with Abebooks. Efforts a few years ago to force POD publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge printing are another example of trying to reach outside retail to control production.
Keep in mind that what Amazon seems to be aiming at isn’t simply a vertical monopoly like when Henry Ford built with his River Rouge plant. Ford did try to take over every aspect of manufacturing cars from the iron ore through the finished product. But your local Ford dealer wasn’t owned by Ford Motors and if you made a competing automobile, you weren’t forced to sell a large percentage of your cars through a Ford-run dealership.
The closest parallel might come from the early 1930s when Pratt &Whitney, Boeing, and United Airlines had close corporate ties. Pratt & Whitney gave Boeing preferential treatment when it sold engines, enabling Boeing to beat its competitors. Boeing then gave United preferential treatment when it sold airplanes, giving United a similar boost. As a result, the first 60 Boeing 247s–the plane passengers in that day most wanted to fly–went to United. That sort of corporate combination was banned.
With Amazon the potential for abuse moves in the opposite direction, from retail to manufacturing. Contrary to what some pundits claim, all books are not equal at Amazon. Amazon search yields results that are only loosely related to the search terms. Some books get heavy exposure, the online equivalent of a display at the store’s entrance. Other books are relegated to the online equivalent of dark corners in a warehouse. A search by their exact title won’t display them even on search pages that include long out-of-print and unavailable titles. As one of Amazon’s lawyers explained to me, it is all based on automated calculations about Amazon’s profit margin. If you’re a publisher and want Amazon to push your books, try overpricing them.
It seems highly likely that, since Amazon will slant search results to favor Publisher A over Publisher B to earn an extra 20 cents, it will certainly slant them to favor its own titles and grab all the profit.
Here’s an illustration of how it might be done. A customer searches for a murder mystery called Murder by the Shore by that exact name. The book doesn’t appear. Instead, they see a book called Murder by the Ocean that’s an Amazon imprint. Thinking they misremembered the title that customer buys Amazon’s book. Amazon gets a sale, while its competitor does not.
@anon (IF that is your real name): How can we guess how publishers would respond to these questions when, by every indication, the publishers themselves respond in different ways and give mixed messages about their intentions? (Check out a few of today’s posts, for example.) The only sure thing we outsiders can answer is, “To make more profit”… and other than that, we can’t penetrate the smokescreen.
So there’s little point in saying “Us publishers need understanding, we are at Amazon’s mercy.” Frankly, what little we’ve got from publishers does not promote empathy. And that’s why most people here applaud the entry of Amazon into publishing, and the hope that their actions will start to bring some transparency and sense to an already chaotic, consumer-unfriendly industry.
(Though that’s probably a vain hope as well…)
As a case in point of where the publishers have gone wrong, and most especially Penguin, Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter was published in 2001. The Kindle price for it is $18.99 for this 353 page book. This means that I will be checking it out of the library if I want to read it, or will just forget about it and pick something from wanted list for Kindle. Within a 2-month period last summer Penguin published 6 books that I wanted to read, and overpriced the Kindle versions, so I checked them all out of the library. Penguin doubtless thinks they are doing great charging 14.99 for new fiction, and maybe they are, but would they not do even better at a more reasonable price? I’ll bet Amazon will do well with their venture.