There was a very interesting NY Times article a few days ago written by David Streitfeld. It discussed Amazon's bold steps in building its own publishing brand. The title of the piece spoke of Amazon writing publishers out of deals. The publishers are "terrified and don't know what to do," according to Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House.
Amazon has been aggressively pursuing top authors. Even celebrities have seen the business sense of partnering with Amazon. Director/Actress Penny Marshall got an alleged $800,00 advance for signing with Amazon to do her memoir. Likely, Ms. Marshall also got a piece of the pie because Amazon is building brand loyalty by sharing the profits from the sale of books with the authors who wrote them. It's quite sad how revolutionary that concept is and it's quite funny that the weapon of equity pointed straight at their P&L sheets so terrifies the traditional publishers.
Some publishers have taken the war a step farther by punishing authors who dare to self publish material that is NOT UNDER CONTRACT. That's right, Penguin supposedly canceled a new author's publishing contract because she dared to self publish some old work during the long - long - long period between signing a bood deal and the book actually appearing for sale.
Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport signed with Penguin and received a 20k advance for publication of her book "The Chinese Soldier's Daughter." It was due to come out next summer. During the interval, Ms. Davenport, mindful of lectures about the need to drum up publicity and build her "brand" self published an e-book of some of her old work on Amazon.
She says:
When Penguin found out, it went “ballistic,” Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted “Cannibal Nights” removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.
Ms. Davenport refused to remove the e-book. Penguin says it will pursue legal action if the author doesn't return the balance of her advance. A lawyer with the author's guild who has represented Ms. Davenport, Jan Constantine, says that Penguin made an example of Ms. Davenport. The lawyer feels Penguin's acts are intended to warn published authors that for them, self-publishing is a risky business.
The writer felt she was being punished for sleeping with the enemy.
The publishers could try beating Amazon at its own game by sharing some of the wealth and some of the control over the final product with authors. I guess it's just that if you're used to keeping all but a tiny slice of the pie, you've come to consider the pie yours - rather than the creation of the baker who cooked it.
Traditional publishers have put out some fine work from some amazing folks through the years. But they should recall that authors talented enough to create such masterpieces are likely risk-takers by nature. If publishers don't change their tune the best and the brightest are likely to dance away.
Oh and Amazon - yoo hoo-over here - over here. **Waves**.
Maybe I should try billboards???