New York Times:
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.
Book publishing continues to undergo nothing short of a seismic upheaval as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and others change the rules. I’m sure that some will lament these changes as the end of publishing as we know it, but change is inevitable.
Good. This trend needs to overtake the music industry too. Cut the lawyers out of the equation.
It already has extended to music, to some extent. Look at CD Baby for example. You can get your music on their without requiring a publisher. The one thing publishers bring to the table that independents do not have at their disposal are large marketing campaigns.