
Amazon Fires Missile At Book Industry, Launches 70% Kindle Royalty Option - icey
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-amazon-fires-torpedo-at-book-industry-launches-70-kindle-royalty-option-2010-1
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sjunkin
This is brilliant. Anything which streamlines distribution has always helped
the consumers and producers while increasing overall efficiency. Redfin is a
good example, this looks like it will be another.

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cnunciato
Not always. Redfin, maybe, since the middleman in that case is really more
like an obstruction between buyers and sellers. Publishers aren't an
obstruction in that sense. Sure, some of them could probably run leaner
operations and give more money to their authors, but the publishing industry
as a whole serves a very valuable purpose we don't necessarily recognize,
because we're so used to it.

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runevault
Depends, there is some use like content filtration. However the user ratings
could fill in for a lot of that on amazon.

Also, as came up in another branch of the article's discussion, this could
cause certain things like freelance editing to get a real boost from potential
increased customers.

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cnunciato
Personally I love the idea of authors earning more for their efforts, I think
that's great, but there are so many unintended (by consumers, anyway) costs of
Amazon using its reach for this kind of thing -- publishers get squeezed, so
they produce fewer books, bookstores get squeezed, so more of them close up
shop, commerce flows ever more directly to Amazon, choice gets limited... I
just don't like it. I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon, but I'm starting to
think maybe that's such a great thing anymore, in the long run.

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iron_ball
Your comment was gray when I saw it, so I restored it to >0, but I disagree.
This move makes it easier for authors to get their product into readers'
hands, gives them a better cut than the publishing industry generally did, and
provides better value for the user. Amazon can't cause "less choice," because
for one thing, they have effectively unlimited inventory; and for another, if
there's an untapped demand, a competitor will arise.

Sure, nobody else can publish to Kindle, but the next few generations of
smartphones, netbooks, and possibly tablets are very likely to make that a
nonissue.

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petercooper
_Sure, nobody else can publish to Kindle_

That's not true, is it? I'm sure I've seen publishers like Pragmatic
Programmers selling Kindle stuff that doesn't go through Amazon. I don't have
a Kindle though, so I'm not going to state this with 100% confidence ;-)

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shawndumas
They do indeed. I have a number of titles in epub format from them.

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greyman
The article suggest that the Kindle business is a big money-loser so far? That
surprised me. Why it should be a money-loser, when the Kindle itself is rather
expensive and the e-book copies cost virtually nothing(?)

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gchucky
There was an article a few months back that stated that Amazon loses $2 for
each book sold on Kindle. Publishers won't sell e-books for less than the
publishing price.

[http://www.tbiresearch.com/e-readers-should-drive-profits-
fo...](http://www.tbiresearch.com/e-readers-should-drive-profits-for-both-
distributors-and-book-publishers-2009-11) is the original document, as far as
I can find right now.

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etherael
Is this genuinely a case of "We have commercial control of a lot of physical
book manufacturing commodities and in order to leverage the value of these
commodities we want to artificially inflate the price of the competition"?

That... seems... well, it doesn't taste good, let's put it that way.

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Mark_B
This is a totally exciting and great idea, but the down side the cynic inside
of me sees coming is the spam/ads saying "Work from home as an author and make
$$$" and junk Kindle-only books flooding Amazon.

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potatolicious
> _"and junk Kindle-only books flooding Amazon"_

I actually think this would be a great idea - so long as it does better than
the App Store in terms of filtering for the best. Amazon's
recommendation/review system has always been pretty strong, though.

Democratization of publishing, of content distribution and production, is one
of the chief reasons why the internet has been the most important invention in
recent memory.

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ShabbyDoo
So, am I correct to assume that authors mainly need publishers for printing,
distribution, and marketing? Will we see more self-publishing as a result of
the Kindle/Nook/etc?

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msg
The main benefit I receive from publishers is filtering. Even the worst
publisher printing unbelievable shlock is light years ahead of the garbage in
the publishing anteroom, the slush pile.

With that, the greatest blog post on publishing of all time, "Slushkiller":

<http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html>

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tjic
> The main benefit I receive from publishers is filtering.

The main benefit I receive from my friends is filtering.

Now, the question is: do publishers or my friends do that job better?

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msg
Or a deeper question, are the publishers making your friends' lives easier by
doing it first? Do your friends read thousands of self-published books to
provide you with recommendations? Or is all their action applied after the
mainstream publishers' filter?

I'm sure there is self-published stuff out there that is worth my time.
Unfortunately, I don't want to read the literary equivalent of MySpace to find
it.

A good publisher has a quality bar I can trust, and they've taken on the
burden of reading unsolicited submissions. And as the blog post says, 75% of
it is unreadable crap, 24% is readable but not worth your time, and 1% or less
is quality and publishable. That's a lot of hours you and your friends would
have wasted.

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xcombinator
:-D I'm waiting for the Apple tablet info the 27 of January. It seems too much
coincidence that Amazon changes her policy now just at the same fees that
Apple Apps Store charges.

They must know something that we don't and want to be first...

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runevault
There have been rumors/leaks that Apple is making content deals with various
forms of publishing including book, which if true this does make more sense.

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j_baker
While I sympathize with the Publishers, they're beginning to sound a lot like
the RIAA. For capitalism to work, dinosaurs have to die. And it's beginning to
look like the publishers are turning into dinosaurs.

Personally, if I were to publish a book, I'd be tempted to just cut out the
middle man and forego the big advance (which I hear usually isn't that big
anyway).

