[fjtorres]

I'm somewhat bemused, frankly, by all the angst over Amazon's tiny, nearly irrelevant catalog of books. It makes me think there is something fundamental at play that *truly* terrifies the Big Publishers.

I'm starting to think the publishers are finally realizing that, in the wake of the ebook evolution, book publishing (both p- and e-) is becoming a service industry.

The big publishers have been riding the high horse for so long they've forgotten what business they're in. The world has changed around them--has been changing for 15 years now, thirty even--and they are only now starting to contemplate the idea that *they* need to change. That their whole worldview needs to turn 180 degrees around.

In all their years as gatekeepers the traditional publishers got so used to calling all the shots they lost sight of the fact that they are just middlemen. Just like the agents. Just like the retailers. They are just service providers. They don't actually *own* the product or the market.

In the old worldview, publishers sat atop the mountain and agents came in, offering up the work of the authors and the publishers chose what to buy and what to turn back. Nothing saw print that they didn't endorse, nobody read anything "of quality" without paying them. They stood atop the gate between consumer and producer and life was good.

Now, they wake up and life ain't so good. They're just *one* source of content.
It's not bad enough TV and Movies are competing for consumer dollars, now they have to compete against other sources of books. Small publishers. (Lots of small publishers and more popping up daily.) Authors selling direct. Agents fronting for the authors. Self-publishing facilitators and aggregators.
All selling their *services* to the authors.
Suddenly, life isn't quite as good.
Somebody has to be out to get them.

They look around and everywhere they look, they see Amazon.
Big time print book retailer.
Big time ebook retailer.
Big time ebook reader vendor.
Self-publishing facilitator.
Worse, they are helping the small publishers reach bigger audiences. Pretty soon, those small publishers might not be so small...

And then, to add insult to injury, Amazon steps up as a publishing house--for printbooks--on their own. Never mind that Barnes and Noble has been doing the same thing for decades (after all, they've been doing the same thing for decades and life was still good), it is time to panic: Amazon is out to kill them!!

A bit of over-reaction, perhaps?
Probably. But...
Has anybody bothered to pay attention to what the authors signing with Amazon Publishing say? How Amazon listens to them? Gives them control over the final product? How Amazon treats them as partners, as a paying customer, not a suplicant?

Because *that* is exactly what Amazon is doing; they are *selling* publishing services to authors.

They aren't "buying" manuscripts, as the old terminology goes. They are selling *their* capabilities for a fee. They *endorse* books but they don't pretend to own them. They even subcontract with somebody else to put their name on them.

Again: in the wake of the mainstreaming of ebooks and the end of gatekeeping, publishing is now just another service industry. Amazon understand that authors are indispensable, readers are indispensable, but publishers are just go-betweens unless they can add value to the retail product.

A savvy modern-day author can hire an editor, hire a cover designer/artist, got to Amazon or Smashwords or PubIt or whatever and self-publish. And not just nobodies; these are things a newcomer may *have* to do if they don't have an agent. But established authors? They have options. They can Konrath-it. They can Pottermore-it. (Oh, and make no mistake: there is no bigger threat to Traditional Publishers than Pottermore. Cause, if Pottermore works, KING-DOM is not far behind, or Grisham Court, or Roberts-land...)

Established and/or high profile authors have options the unknowns don't have. In the ebook age, *they* have the power. They don't *have* to sell their manuscript at 17 cents on the dollar; they can *hire* a publisher at 30% commission. They can hire Amazon. (And if Amazon succeeds, there will be nothing stopping other ebook publishers from following their example. Like Open Road and Rosetta and Smashwords... Plenty of excess print capacity lying around.)

Amazon is perfectly willing to be a middleman and provide those services to the authors and *act* like one. Their services include financing (hence the advances), editing, proofing, formatting, design... all the things a traditional publisher does, but instead of treating them as a cost-center, they are making those services the profit center. The very thing big publishers are cutting back on are the things that Amazon is looking to make money from. Just like the big boys.

Only, unlike the big boys, they don't pretend they own the content; they're just the hired help. And they work cheap, too. (Who doesn't like a contractor that is solid, quiet, and cheap?)

I'm thinking that is why Amazon's tiny little catalog of 50 second-tier books terrifies the Big Publishers. It's not that Amazon wants to control the business; that is baloney; they'll never build up enough of a catalog to do that. Nobody can and they well know it. It's not that their tiny catalog is going to spawn the great bestsellers of the future, either. (Some of their books the Big Guys already passed on.)
They might get lucky, though.
And getting lucky once is all they need.

Their fear is that Amazon's success will make them look bad.
That in a time of declining peak sales for individual titles, their lower commissions (30% vs 53%) and service-oriented approach will win them customers from among the Big Publishers cash-cows. That the authors will demand equal treatment or they'll take their books elsewhere.

I still don't think Amazon is going to kill the big publishers.
But they're forcing them to change and some of them might prefer to die first.

Just a thought, mind you.