Amazon Asking, 'Who Needs Publishers?'
If you owned the world's largest bookstore, would you really need publishers? That's a question Amazon appears to be asking as it moves to offer more books it is publishing on its own.
The company just launched 47North, the seventh imprint from Amazon Publishing. The 47North imprint will focus on science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and launches with 15 books, including the first of a five-book series by noted sci-fi author Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear, called "The Mongoliad: Book One."
This fall, the giant retailer will publish 122 books, available either in traditional physical form or as e-books.
Hires Literary Powerhouse
The company signaled its intent to get serious about publishing with the hiring in May of literary agent and former publisher Laurence J. Kirshbaum to lead the venture for Amazon.
In the May announcement, Amazon said Kirshbaum would lead a publishing team and would create new imprints under the Amazon Publishing umbrella. The company said the acquisitions would include "literary and commercial fiction, business and general nonfiction." Amazon Publishing imprints now include the flagship line AmazonEncore, as well as Thomas & Mercer, The Domino Project, 47 North, and others.
Kirshbaum is the former chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Book Group and for several years had his own literary agency, LJK Literary.
In August, Amazon said it had signed self-help guru Timothy Ferris, whose first book, "The 4-Hour Workweek," was on The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. Amazon announced last week a deal with actress and director Penny Marshall for her memoirs.
'Stealing Your Lunch'
The company is also offering to all of its authors, whether or not Amazon publishes them, access to sales data from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks purchases of physical books by markets.
Amazon's move into publishing is, of course, causing trepidation among publishers and booksellers. Some independent bookstores have indicated they will not carry Amazon-published books on their shelves, and the head of HarperCollins UK has said the move is "obviously a concern."
Richard Curtis, a literary agent and e-book publisher, told The New York Times that, "if you're a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you." He added that, "If you're an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out."
An example of the power that Amazon has to create hits is the historical novel by Oliver P�tzsch, "The Hangman's Daughter." Amazon bought the rights, translated it into English from German, and sold a quarter of a million e-books.
All of which dovetails with the complete food chain that Amazon has now built, with the Kindle e-book reader as the last component. In its recent introduction of its new tablet, the Kindle Fire, company founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos called the new device "an end-to-end service."
