Amazon Bypassing Publishers By Signing Authors Directly 461
Hugh Pickens writes "David Streitfeld reports that Amazon is aggressively wooing top authors, gnawing away at the services publishers, critics and agents used to provide. 'Everyone's afraid of Amazon,' says Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. 'The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,' adds Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon's top executives. 'Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.' But publishers are fighting back at writers who publish with Amazon. In 2010 Kiana Davenport signed with a division of Penguin for The Chinese Soldier's Daughter, a Civil War love story, and received a $20,000 advance. In the meantime Davenport packaged several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packaged them in an e-book, Cannibal Nights, available on Amazon. When Penguin found out, it went 'ballistic,' accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competition, canceling her novel, and suing Davenport to recover her advance. Davenport knows her crime: 'Sleeping with the enemy? Perhaps. But now I know who the enemy is.'"
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Publisher Pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
Who the hell comes up with these pricing models?
Publishers who don't want people buying ebooks and destroying their dead tree book market.
Re:Grandinetti is an idiot: (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, his quote is entirely untrue. If there were noone between the writer and reader, you'd end up with lackluster works.
Have you been to a bookstore lately?
Sparkly Vampire #16, Sparkly Werewolf #5, Oscar Wilde - Vampire Hunter (Ok, I might read that one), Zombies Vs Vampires #9, More Zombies #97.
There's a reason why I mostly buy self-published books these days; they may have more typos, but at least there's some variety in the stories for sale.
Good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Publishers typically have been leeches. Sucking 98% of the profit out of a book.
It's high time that writers were able to sell to a reader and keep most of the sale, they did 90% of the work, they deserve 90% of the sale price.
Editors (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not just writers and readers...any successful writer will tell you that editors are also an essential part of the process. Amazon will either have to provide authors with editors or come up with a situation where editors can work on projects as independent contractors.
Re:Amazon is just another publisher. (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends. They got a deal for the novel "The Chinese Soldier's Daughter". She repackaged a collection short stories and sold them on Amazon.
Did the publisher have any rights to those short stories? She did sign a non-compete but does a collection of short stories compete with a novel?
At this point we are into lawyer land where logic and reason do not apply.
Kind of like the Twilight Zone except without the almost universal just outcome.
Re:Amazon is just another publisher. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is significant case law on the matter. Further, an advance of $20k to not work in the entire field of writing for 2 years won't get any traction in court.
Non compete in this sense means those characters/story/universe don't get presented somewhere else. That the publisher gets first release of not just the book, but anything to do with the book.
This is bullying an author, plain and simple. (if the story is as the author has written)
Re:If Amazon is smart... (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were actually smart, they'd offer her $40k + legal expenses + require she write a book about her experience kicking her publisher in the nuts.
Re:Amazon is just another publisher. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only were the short story collections she published with Amazon already published by other publishers, they had been submitted to the Big 6 publisher who is currently breaching its contract. The Big 6 publisher had specifically said that they did not want to publish the short story collections, and the author has the rejection notices to prove it.
So the publisher basically hasn't got a leg to stand on. Their interpretation of the contract is void, in restraint of trade, tortured to justify their fear and hatred of the possibility of any competition from Amazon, even when no such threat exists in this case. Further, they are trying to effectively exert ownership over works that are not only NOT under contract, but had specifically been rejected by them, and to claim rights to put out of print without further compensation all the author's past works and works up to two years in the future (when they are contractually obligated to publish her novel).
She has an excellent chance of prevailing in court, for far more than the advance - this firm is trying to destroy her career, to make sure she is never published by anyone but Amazon if she publishes anything with Amazon. This is really a case that the NY AG and the Justice Department could slam-dunk on multiple counts, too.
Re:It won't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's amusing that Penguin is involved here (although it may as well be any publisher for this particular story).
When Penguin was founded in the 1930s, they were probably as much of a disruptive force as Amazon is now. Paperbacks were pretty much unheard of. At the time new books -- which meant cloth-bound books -- generally cost about 6 shillings, or say about 20-30 pounds in today's UK money, or 40-60 US$. The first Pengins were sold for 6 pence, or 2-3 pounds, or 4-6 US$. All the original Penguins were reprints, i.e. not new original works but titles licensed from other publishers. The public reaction was positive. The publishing community started with an attitude of amused skepticism, and soon evolved to something like fear, as they watched Penguin cannibalize their sales.
These days Penguin is still around, having outlived and/or absorbed most of the old British publishing companies. It's interesting to think that they might be confronting an upheaval in the industry similar to the one they caused themselves 80 years ago.