When last we left Amazon, they'd bought up all the components of what would Kindle and CreateSpace, launched them, and set up shop to a small, but growing audience. And the big publishing interests had managed to write off the entire venture as an insignificant product set populated by authors they'd already rejected. And it was about to bite them somewhere the sun doesn't shine upon.
2008 was largely occupied by Amazon building an audience for Kindle and CreateSpace, so let's fast forward to:
2009
As 2009 rolls around both the Kindle and eBooks are starting to pick up some momentum. This is when the eBook authors start to see “real” money come in. It’s also the year Amazon moved beyond the Kindle. Riding the wave from iPad’s launch, Amazon starts making Kindle apps. The Kindle apps let people buy from Amazon and read eBooks on other platforms: iPad, PCs, SmartPhones. The plan is set in motion to make Amazon’s format ubiquitous across any browsing device you might purchase. Sales continue to rise.
2010
This is the year that Amazon formed their first publishing imprints: Amazon Encore and Amazon Crossing.
Amazon Encore was an initiative to print previously self-published books. The general idea being to print them and offer them some indie bookstore distribution, set them up as audiobooks on via Amazon’s Audible operation and do some promotion of the titles. Naturally, they do some cherry picking of better selling eBook authors on Kindle. Why? Because they know what those authors are selling (remember, in many cases these authors have CreateSpace print books to go along with the eBooks, so Amazon has a very clear picture of what these authors will sell without additional promotion).
Amazon Crossing is an imprint that translates foreign works. Amazon Crossing is doubly significant as acquiring the translations, in edition to deciding which books to target, may well have been Amazon’s biggest venture into editorial process.
Up until 2010, Amazon was just a distributor. You upload your materials and people can download the eBook and buy the print copy. While it isn’t clear how much editing was done on the Amazon side for Encore and Crossing, all they were really doing was adding promotion and at least an acquisitions layer of editorial to a pre-existing infrastructure.
So why did no one notice Amazon had become an actual publisher? As was the case with eBooks, these were not books mainstream publishing considered “stolen from them.” Indeed, much noise was made about J.A. Konrath, perhaps the biggest proponent of authors independently publishing their work as eBooks , being among the first books announced. It was written off as Amazon publishing a book that nobody else wanted.
2011
As 2011 wore on, Amazon formally announced three genre-focused imprints. Montlake Romance, focused on romance novels was announced first. The second was Thomas & Mercer, focusing on mysteries and thrillers (with the aforementioned Mr. Konrath among the other of the first wave of releases). The third was 47North, home to science fiction, fantasy and horror novels.
As the imprints are announced, rumor has it that Amazon is scouring New York for a high profile publisher to hire.
Laurence Kirshbaum, former CEO of the Time Warner Book Group has been hired as Amazon’s VP of publishing. Aside from being a major figure in the print publishing world, Kirshbaum was an early supporter of eBooks, backing TimeWarner’s iPublish.com venture way back in 2000. The market may have caught up to Kirshbaum pre-existing digital ambitions and you can’t say he doesn’t know print.
Kirshbaum’s first major hire was Julia Cheiffetz as Editorial Director. Cheiffetz was formerly a Senior Editor at HarperCollins, but much more interestingly spent time at Harper Studio. Harper Studio was a short-lived, experimental imprint that engaged in profit-sharing with its authors. Given the nature of Kindle-publishing, this makes Cheiffetz a very interesting hire on paper… or on screen.
The Thomas & Mercer imprint has snagged crime fiction legend Ed McBain’s catalog and three New York Times bestsellers in Max Allan Collins, Barry Eisler and Kyle Mills.
Montlake has been quieter about their authors, but did snag New York Times bestseller and two-time winner of the Romance Writers Association RITA Award winner, Connie Brockway, for their debut novel.
Towards the end of 2011, Amazon snags a much bigger fish: Deepak Chopra.
2012
Amazon group their new adult titles under the name “New Harvest” and entered into a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to distribute them. Naturally, Barnes & Noble and several independent book stores decided to boycott the print editions of the Amazon books, giving Amazon something closer to a monopoly on those titles, even when offering them up for sale.
In January, JA Konrath (scorned by traditional publishing and in a mutual embrace with Amazon) brags about making $100K in three weeks from his self-published ebooks.
The Next Step
As I’ve been saying in class since 2005 (actually, I first heard this theory in grad school in 2003, well before Amazon’s acquisitions signaled their march to publishing), what is there to stop Amazon from approaching a top selling author like Stephen King or James Patterson and offering them a big raise if they write their next book for Amazon? They’re fishing in those water already with the addition of Deepak Chopra, even if it’s just a memoir with his brother.
It’s not like Barnes & Noble doesn’t publish their own books. Granted, in the case of B&N, it’s usually cheap edition of public domain classics, though I do remember comic book retailers screaming bloody murder when B&N got an exclusive reprint edition of the Ultimate Spider-Man graphic novels. It’s not like Wal-Mart hasn’t had exclusive CDs, either. On the other hand, B&N (or their Sterling publishing subsidiary) haven’t been aggressively targeting New York Times bestselling authors… yet.
When Amazon publishes their own books, while there will be some bookstore distribution (I say some because there is some boycotting going on), the bulk of it will be direct to consumer distribution through their own website. Amazon can print their own books (potentially pooling the print run with HMH) and cut out the distributors. No distributor discounts = extra profits. They really can afford to pay a premium for authors.
Previously, you wouldn’t think Amazon would attempt to pry a top-selling author from the mainstream publishers for fear the publisher might pull their books from Amazon. The whole premise of Amazon is that they sell everything in print. And when publishers started to stand together to protest Amazon’s eBook pricing policies, it didn’t take all that long for Amazon to cut a deal and insure they still had everyone’s books.
After all, it just wouldn’t do for B&N to have books that Amazon didn’t. Although B&N does let people publish to their Nook device and it wouldn’t be terribly hard for them to do the same thing Amazon’s doing by offering to bundle a print contract with the Nook eBook. They already have print distribution through Sterling and can dictate in-store placement.
If you stop and think about it, what Amazon has really done is said to authors “You get 70% royalties on your eBooks. We’ll put a print version on our website. We’ll get someone to handle bookstore distribution for print. We’ll give you an advance. All you have to do is keep your eBook exclusive to us.” Amazon is clearly betting on the digital future.
This is also the one possible weak link in Amazon’s current run of success. Publisher’s Weekly quotes a lukewarm reception from independent booksellers (most of those interviewed seemed unaware that Amazon was using Houghton Miffln Harcourt for bookstore distribution) and Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch clarifying “We will not stock physical books in our stores if we are not offered the available digital format.”
If independent bookstores really do tend towards a “special orders only” and no shelf copies policy and Barnes & Noble sticks to their guns about not stocking print-only products, that would greatly curtail Amazon’s penetration into outside print channels. A cold war is starting over these print editions and the next year will likely determine if it turns into a shooting war as Amazon starts to unleash its better known exclusive authors.
It would not be at all surprising if we were in year 8 or 9 of a 10 year plan for Amazon to establish itself as a publisher. Even if this has just been an extremely smooth case of Amazon adjusting their outlook on the fly, you have to ask yourself: When Amazon has already nabbed a handful of bestselling authors, in addition to their Kindle-cultivated talent base, how long before they land that superstar author nobody thinks would talk to them and will other booksellers be able to stay away from a hypothetical King or Patterson book from Amazon?
Add the looming threat of the Espresso Book Machine - a Print on Demand book machine designed to fit in a bookstore or library (the closest one to San Francisco and the Valley is in the Sacremento Public Library) and you'll see why traditional print publishers are a little nervous. Still, you can't say Amazon was secretive about their activities. Big publishing was unable and unwilling to connect the dots.
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Todd Allen writes for Startup Grind, among other things