I read a fascinating anonymous letter, purportedly from a publishing insider, who was speculating on Amazon’s publishing intentions. The letter’s author claimed for years bookstores didn’t fear Amazon because they were undercutting the prices on their books so much and selling at a loss. And they haven’t been scared enough of Amazon’s new publishing deals because they are (according to perception) overpaying on books.
This author suspects that’s not really the case:
Amazon could probably afford to lose $20 million/year in their publishing arm just to put the other publishers out of business. I think that’s what they’re trying to do–throw money around in an industry that doesn’t have any, until Amazon becomes not only the only place where you buy books, but the only place that publishes books, too.
She goes on to note that this is bad news for pretty much everyone working in the traditional book publishing business except the authors, who will see an increase in their royalties setup. And of course, it’s good for Amazon, who will be able to shed their present deal with publishers (which nets them 30% of sales) in favor of giving 30% to authors and hanging on to 70%.
So my question is, what will happen after that?
As far as readers go, most will probably take to digital reading in some form or another, and certain types of books (mostly coffee table/collector, of course) will become the primary format of book publishers.
The larger industry question is: will all content have to come from Amazon? To be fair, they seem a lot less scary than Apple in terms of content control, at least when it comes to unfettered access to whatever you might want, so that’s not so bad.
But let’s face it: it’s still not good for anyone if the reading audience of the world suddenly depends on one publisher. Now, in theory anti-trust/monopoly laws would help prevent such a thing, along with optimistic views of capitalism inspiring competitors. Eventually Amazon’s (very young) publishing arm will piss people off for some reason or another, and there will be alternatives. I’m already annoyed with them myself (a story for another post). But Amazon still has a lot of money to throw around and that may scare off many would-be competitors.
On the other hand…Amazon is eventually going to stretch itself thin, and whichever department(s) make it the least money will be sliced off like so many useless limbs. And there will be investors who find themselves wanting to take Amazon on, as well.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts that have been running around my head. There’s really a lot going on in publishing right now. For example: the anime and manga world is excited about a successful Kickstarter project involving a particular niche manga— it’s old and created by the biggest historical name in manga, Osamu Tezuka, but it’s not one of his bigger hits, nor is it family-friendly. The market that wants this book is a very small, targeted audience, but thanks in part to the astonishingly tight communication of the anime and manga fandom (and particularly manga), it’s well past its goal with another 26 days to go, and others are discussing what circumstances this success can be replicated under.
I also recently read about a new project called Colliloquy, which essentially takes the “choose your own adventure”-style book into e-readers (the Kindle, of course), and also ups the ante by targeting the ever-popular young adult market instead of middle schoolers.
So, yes, may we live in interesting times.
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