Apub signs Koontz

[fjtorres]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/am...ber-2019-07-22

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.11% said Monday that it has signed a five-book deal with best-selling author Dean Koontz, with the first book, "Devoted," coming next spring. Before that, a collection of six short thrillers called "Nameless" will be available for free to Prime members and Kindle Unlimited users on November 12.

A bit more at the source.

[ZodWallop]

I saw that too. I'm not a Koontz fan personally, but good for Amazon.

[leebase]

Publishers have nothing to fear from Amazon. Amazon is just a store like any other book store.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Publishers have nothing to fear from Amazon. Amazon is just a store like any other book store.

It all depends on what the contract actually says. Is Koontz going to be only available via Amazon? How much money is the contract for? Is Amazon trying to sign a bunch of big name authors or is Amazon just trying to let lesser known authors that Amazon isn't just an ebook/indie publisher?

Who knows, it might even open the door to possible anti-trust charges. The government is going after the big tech companies these days.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Who knows, it might even open the door to possible anti-trust charges. The government is going after the big tech companies these days.

I think that is a big stretch. Barnes and Noble also has exclusives. And producing content exclusively for a single distributor has been the model in television forever.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I think that is a big stretch. Barnes and Noble also has exclusives. And producing content exclusively for a single distributor has been the model in television forever.

Yes, but B&N wasn't a publisher. It all comes down to markets and market share. Amazon has to be very careful that they are not seen as trying to leverage their book and ebook market share into their publishing businesses. As one sees in the news forum, Amazon is currently in the cross hairs of the anti-trust division.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yes, but B&N wasn't a publisher. It all comes down to markets and market share. Amazon has to be very careful that they are not seen as trying to leverage their book and ebook market share into their publishing businesses. As one sees in the news forum, Amazon is currently in the cross hairs of the anti-trust division.

Barnes and Noble is a publisher though. Most (all?) of the books in the B&N bargain section that are not remainders are published by them either under their own name or Sterling Publishing. I'm not sure if they sell their books at other retailers, as I just haven't bothered to look.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It all depends on what the contract actually says. Is Koontz going to be only available via Amazon? How much money is the contract for? Is Amazon trying to sign a bunch of big name authors or is Amazon just trying to let lesser known authors that Amazon isn't just an ebook/indie publisher?

Who knows, it might even open the door to possible anti-trust charges. The government is going after the big tech companies these days.

Amazon is competing directly against the publishers. The "most important, must be on it" book store...is leveraging it's position to compete with the publishers.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yes, but B&N wasn't a publisher. It all comes down to markets and market share. Amazon has to be very careful that they are not seen as trying to leverage their book and ebook market share into their publishing businesses. As one sees in the news forum, Amazon is currently in the cross hairs of the anti-trust division.

Well...seeing as that's exactly what they are doing....it's hard to "not be seen" as doing so.

Some of us saw this from the very beginning of the $9.99 for every NYT's best seller days.

You sell below cost and damage all the other sellers.

Once you establish overwhelming dominance, you go after the producers.

Meanwhile "it doesn't matter, I want cheap cheap cheap" folks never ever think there's a problem.

[DiapDealer]

Gonna go out on a not-so-skinny limb here and say that if Koontz's apub-published books/ebooks aren't available everywhere books/ebooks are sold, it will because someone refuses to sell apub-published books/ebooks. Not because Koontz will have agreed to any kind of exclusive sales deal with Amazon.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Gonna go out on a not-so-skinny limb here and say that if Koontz's apub-published books/ebooks aren't available everywhere books/ebooks are sold, it will because someone refuses to sell apub-published books/ebooks. Not because Koontz will have agreed to any kind of exclusive sales deal with Amazon.

Your limb is made of steel.

APub books, both digital and print are now and have long been available via Ingram.
(Edit: pbooks, always, ebooks since 2012: https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/29/3...rnes-and-noble)

What keeps them out of B&N and other retailers is the anti-APub boycott launched by B&N and the AAP.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-boycott-grows

As things stand, AmazonPublishing gets all the benefits of exclusivity without any of the antitrust negatives. Since nobody else wants to carriy their books, their sales concentrate at Amazon's store, which raises them in the rankings and boosts sales though higher visibility. That is why, on the ebook side, they dropped their list price from $8-9 to $5.

For that matter, price isn't Amazon LLC's biggest competitive advantage: it's distribution. Just as with other publisher books, they get them direct from the publisher and Ingram gets nothing. The same applies to AmazonPublishing: as long as the boycott stands their Ingram expenses as minimal and they can eat them, treating all sales as coming from Amazon LLC.

Since Amazon LLC moves over 50% of all pbooks and over 70% of ebooks, none of which go through Ingram it is easy to see how giving the Ingram share to the author could make APub's offer better at 50% of print than a BPH deal.

APub killed their SCOUT (ebook only) program but while it ran it offered rates of 50% of net instead of 25%. Given a typical 30%of cover distribution charge from KDP that meant that SCOUT titles paid out 35% of cover instead of of 17.5% of cover. The program offered a fairly low advance on their five year contract but it was only for ebook rights. It had no shortage of candidate titles.

Their terms for agented authors are NDA'ed but their authors seem very happy, as reported by Publishing Perfection:

https://publishingperspectives.com/2...erspectives%29

Koontz isn't the only one going to APub in the near term.
Cornwall and Weir are also in the pipeline.

Unlike the authors that signed with APub ten years ago when they ran out of New York, the current batch of authors know of the boycott and are shrugging it off.

As Shatskin said in his post earlier this week, things could get interesting on the tradpub side.

https://www.idealog.com/blog/a-lot-h...ast-ten-years/

[Fbone]

Amazon published titles are available at B&N in paperback. The ebook is not but that may be due to KU exclusivity.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As Shatskin said in his post earlier this week, things could get interesting on the tradpub side.

https://www.idealog.com/blog/a-lot-h...ast-ten-years/

I didn't like reading this from that link:

If this is a sign of things to come, and it is hard to see why it wouldn’t be, some profound changes might be just around the corner.

My concern comes because Amazon doesn't seem to issue advances to fund narrative non-fiction research, nor to do much to improve manuscripts. And I consider these to be the main social contribution of the incumbent large publishers potentially threatened by Amazon Publishing.

Now, as the individual who owns the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos does do a lot to fund narrative non-fiction research and improve (short) manuscripts. Perhaps this gives some hope. And maybe this is just a fiction issue.

Not that I don't read fiction. I do. But I've got zero fear of ever not being able to find the kind of fiction I'd want to read.

Do people think that Dean Koontz doesn't need strong structural editing? If the answer is yes, he might as well go to the highest bidder.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I didn't like reading this from that link:



My concern comes because Amazon doesn't seem to issue advances to fund narrative non-fiction research, nor to do much to improve manuscripts. And I consider these to be the main social contribution of the incumbent large publishers potentially threatened by Amazon Publishing.

Now, as the individual who owns the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos does do a lot to fund narrative non-fiction research and improve (short) manuscripts. Perhaps this gives some hope. And maybe this is just a fiction issue.

Not that I don't read fiction. I do. But I've got zero fear of ever not being able to find the kind of fiction I'd want to read.

Do people think that Dean Koontz doesn't need strong structural editing? If the answer is yes, he might as well go to the highest bidder.

I don't know that the trends in fiction will have a big effect on non fiction. A fair amount of the non fiction that I read is published by academic imprints rather than big five publisher imprints.

My guess is that authors who are use to getting advances, will continue to get advances. While the article doesn't say, I would guess that Koontz is either likely getting paid via the standard system, i.e. X percent up front, Y percent when the first manuscript is delivered and the rest when the final manuscript is delivered. I would be quite surprised if the contract says that Koontz doesn't get an advance, but purely a percentage of the sales.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Do people think that Dean Koontz doesn't need strong structural editing? If the answer is yes, he might as well go to the highest bidder.

I'd thought of that too. I don't read Koontz, but Stephen King is known to give praise and credit to his editors.

I'm assuming that Koontz thought of that and he or Amazon will hire a very good editor to work with him.