Remember when Amazon first launched its publishing business and it was touted as a terrible move by industry analysts because of how difficult it would be to get retailers to sell the books? Well I’m imagining everyone at Amazon laughing right about now.
As you know, the books Amazon publishes are sold on Amazon and basically nowhere else. You can’t walk into your neighborhood Barnes and Noble store and find them. You typically can’t walk into your favorite indie bookstore and find them. Why? Because they refuse to carry Amazon titles. Which comes as no surprise to anyone. But that hasn’t stopped the company from making its mark on the publishing industry in just a few short years. This year Amazon Publishing will release 1,200 new titles. Next year that number will climb to 2,000. And I imagine it won’t stop there. 2,000 books is a small drop in the publishing bucket, but I bet many within the industry fully expected Amazon’s leap into publishing to fail, for whatever reason. It hasn’t. And is likely here to stay a little while.
Have you read a book released by one of Amazon’s many publishing imprints? You may not even know it.
On this day in 2014 I published And the Edgar Award Goes to….
Johnny Reads 
A friend of mine just had her first published by an Amazon imprint yesterday. It seems like it works a lot similarly to your typical traditional publisher but with a few quirks. Not at all surprising that they’re looking to expand on it.
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It’s my understanding that they work exactly like traditional publishers. Except for royalties, I think. Pretty sure Amazon authors get better terms than typical authors. But your friend probably knows better than I do.
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2,000 is a drop in the ocean, but from a single publisher it’s pretty huge, isn’t it? I have no idea if I’ve bought any of their books, though.
I’m off to search imprints.
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It’s not too many. And Amazon has more than a dozen imprints. But obviously it would be more than a small press.
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If Amazon fully embraced the print sphere, understanding that there will always be a demand for print, even if it continues to shrink, they could further diminish the power of publishers to compete since Amazon owns the largest distribution network on the planet and even the publishers rely heavily on Amazon, far more than any other single source (including IngramSpark)
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Are you saying they haven’t embraced print?
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I mean not as much as they could. They have print but not like a major publisher. This is because for the longest time Amazon believed e-books were the future and print books were passe.
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I’m not sure what you’d have them do differently. Their books are available in print and eBook. They’re priced very reasonably. And they’re high quality. It’s not Amazon’s fault that most retailers refuse to carry them.
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Was yours printed and released like this? Because if so, then I have read a book from Amazon. I’m honestly not sure about any others I’ve read. Probably not a whole lot since I prefer to shop in bookstores. But that doesn’t mean I never will read more, I’m just not right now.
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Nope. This is about their traditional publishers. Thomas & Mercer. 47North. AmazonCrossing. And others. They operate exactly like any other traditional publisher, but their books aren’t in stores.
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Gotcha. Then, nope. I’m pretty positive I haven’t read them. Again, not for any reason other than I don’t shop for books online as much as in store.
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I know. I think retailers should sell quality books, no matter who publishes them. Amazon’s had a few nominated for major awards, so it’s not like they’re releasing bad book after bad book.
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The big five probably don’t like that, but they’ll have to get over it. All these people against Amazon publishing sound like book snobs to me. Or maybe publishing snobs?
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Or maybe snobs against Amazon.
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Another distinct possibility.
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They’re everywhere.
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