Thursday, August 18, 2011

Amazon Takes on Publishers

This blog has covered posts such as this one on Amazon Kindle and its rising effect towards digitization of books and a reduction in the role of publishers. To my mind, it is clear that book publishers are burying their heads in the sand in the same manner that music production corporations did in the early part of the last decade and lost. Among the many things that publishers fail to understand is that the availability of digital books is placing them in a situation where they must justify their value in the book publishing value chain. 

I am therefore elated after reading here that Amazon has created a crack on the door by directly publishing a book by Timothy Ferriss. This is clearly not the first book that has been converted directly into a digital book but it shows that Amazon is now considering direct competition with publishers.As the story confirms, the foray into direct publishing is a well-considered one as the corporation has created a strong complement of professionals with editorial and publishing capability. This mans that more authors will be given the option of considering direct publication through the channels provided by Amazon. And I can bet that an increasing number will take that option.    

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