[LINK] Amazon to publish also

Kim Holburn kim at holburn.net
Tue Oct 18 22:20:13 AEDT 2011


On 2011/Oct/18, at 8:08 PM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Excuse me, but what a crock ... not the story, the interpretation.

I tend to agree.  To a bookseller of the scale of Amazon, 122 books hardly even seems worth mentioning.  

> "Amazon becomes a publisher" is accurate. "Do not need a publisher" is 
> nonsense.

Why a nonsense?  More and more people are self-publishing and it's never been easier.  What with POD printers and the ebook markets, it's relatively easy to bypass traditional publishers.  Amazon already has been bypassing bookshops, bypassing publishers is a pretty obvious step for them.  

So far though, writers still have traditional publishers available if they want them.

As I see it, there are two or more things that traditional publishers do, that writers may still need.  They may still need an editor and they still need marketing.  

There are writers that have become famous on the interwebs and don't need the marketing.  

What they don't need is capital to print a large run of books and money and channels to distribute them and all the risk that entails.  That part of publishing may be going away, but it's not dead yet and it won't be Amazon that kills it, it'll be technology: the internet and ebooks.

Kim

> 
> RC
> 
> On 18/10/11 7:35 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>> Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
>> 
>> By DAVID STREITFELD Published: October 16, 2011
>>  <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology>
>> 
>> 
>> SEATTLE --- Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores.
>> 
>> Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their  publishers.
>> 
>> Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both
>> physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer's
>> fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in
>> competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent
>> suppliers.
>> 

-- 
Kim Holburn
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