Indie Book Collective discussion
There's Trouble in the jungle of Amazon.
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My take is that Amazon is just following the course that smart business prescribes, to the logical conclusion. It makes sense to produce as well as retail a product if you have sufficient market share. Amazon has spent the past ten years enlarging their portion on the plate. Now, it will be a done-deal. I wonder what that means, though -- an actual publisher? Does that mean they will begin to do specific, additional marketing for their titles, or will they just wind up lost in the database, waiting for their authors to create enough social-network driven publicity to sell them? Does Amazon then take on the worn mantle of Gatekeeper, while still pursuing CS and their other self-publishing focuses?? It's not really about eliminating the middle-men -- rather it's about getting the biggest slice of available pie possible. It should be interesting to see the resulting configuration when all this hysteria calms and the dust settles!
I'd say Amazon will steer clear of those things (for the most part). What they've got is a very good distribution model. I don't see them moving into the book polishing market (beyond what they already offer with CS) because that costs money. There's almost no additional cost for them for each new title they add on now. But possibly plenty of new buyers for each title. So it's all upside for them.
If they move into gatekeeping, editing, whatever, they'll have to put money and resources into this. With a minimal return on investment. (After all, those are the expenses that are killing the trad publishers these days.) Right now they can get us (the writers) to pay for it all and they reap all the benefits.
I think they'll keep putting their money into building new and better gadgets, and trying to get as many people as possible to join their distribution system. There's the maximum profit model.
They've already announced several publishing operations besides CS, which are sending a lot of shivers through the Publishing Industry. There are a few in place right now, and I think in a couple of cases, they were purchased as complete operations. Amazon is looking to create several new imprints, which, either way it all falls, will probably land on writers in some un-foreseen way!
Richard wrote: "They've already announced several publishing operations besides CS, which are sending a lot of shivers through the Publishing Industry. There are a few in place right now, and I think in a couple o..."Yeah, I just don't think it's going to be any major part of what they're doing. Not like the way Kindle is.
I hope not. Their Distribution alone is going to revolutionize publishing -- I hope enough publishers can find a way to work with them and implement some of their concepts to smooth out the distribution/sales chain. I'm not too pessemistic... most of the time.
Richard wrote: "I hope not. Their Distribution alone is going to revolutionize publishing -- I hope enough publishers can find a way to work with them and implement some of their concepts to smooth out the distrib..."Glad you aren't too pessimistic.
However it works out, one thing will remain true, people will always want content, and we'll be there to provide it!
I'm sure there is a point where they can pull the discount rate low enough I'd pull out, but I'm not sure what that level is yet.
As to the articles listed, I'd have liked to have seen a bit more detail as to what is actually going on. They did mention Amazon's non-disclosure agreement, and apparently something like 4400 titles lost their buy buttons, but all the rest of the information is sketchy at best. What is an astronomical discount rate? (Hell, what is an illegal discount rate? That's something that never crossed my radar before.)
There appears to be some sort of fuss over the Amazon price check buttons, but it's mostly hinted at. And there's something about the video and whatnot content, saying the publishing house had to pay for them. Pay to make them? Pay to put them up?
My guess is that Amazon is moving to cut out the middlemen, and is heading straight toward working with authors. And why not? Every time you add an extra layer between the buyer and the seller, the price has to go up. They want tons of content at low prices. Going directly to the people who make the books is, given their platform, one of the easiest ways to do that.