If you’ve been in the writing/publishing
game as long as I have, you’ll know that there has been more change and
upheaval than you can probably count. So, when I read two interesting articles
about Amazon’s apparent failure to make a splash in the publishing world, I
can’t say I was surprised.
Articles in gigaom.com and
entrepreneur.com, state that the publishing venture Amazon announced in May
2011 hasn’t been as successful as they’d hoped. The plan was to provide
competition to what was then the Big 6 publishers (now 5), however, but this hasn’t
happened. In fact, Larry Kirshbaum, the man hired to make it happen, recently announced that he’ll be leaving Amazon in early 2014. Neither article faults
Kirshbaum for Amazon’s failure to make the big splash they’d planned. As former
head of the Time-Warner Group and later a literary agent, Kirshbaum certainly
knows the American publishing scene but, as so often happens in publishing,
unforeseen problems cropped up.
Both articles state that, in part, Barnes
& Noble’s (and other indie stores) ban of any Amazon-published books has
definitely hurt their bid to make a dent in the New York scene. Furthermore, a
Department of Justice ruling earlier this year on e-book pricing, which worked
in Amazon’s favor, further angered bookstores, publishers, and some authors.
Consequently, Amazon apparently hasn’t been able to entice many big-name,
bestselling authors to join them.
Interestingly, of the tens of thousands of
authors selling their books through Amazon (both self and traditionally
published), the publishing component of the company has yet to create a runaway
bestseller. According to the entrepreneur.com piece, this is odd, given
the amount of data Amazon has collected about genre, sales, readers’ tastes, etc.
This isn’t to say that Amazon won’t find a
few stars down the road. Kirshbaum was able to sign several celebrities,
including Penny Marshall, but apparently her book hasn't sold as well as they'd anticipated. Welcome to the world of publishing Amazon, where there’s plenty of
hits and misses, and things rarely go as planned.
You can find the articles at:
No comments:
Post a Comment