Amazon Publishing

So Amazon is not only dominating the online retail market, but now it wants to specialise in the creation of its products, namely books. Amazon has become its own publishing company, creating a number of imprints, particularly The Domino Project, devised by Seth Godin who is working with Amazon to roll out a series of manifestos for use in the business sector as thought-provoking manuals for various industries and their companies. This is an imprint that will publish books to target a niche audience and cater for a particular business with a set requirement; this is very much consumer-focused publishing, something mirrored in numerous business models across the publishing demographic.

Similarly, the Unbound Project caters directly to the consumer; what they want, they get. The model works on a bidding concept. Readers will bid on the author and the work that they want to see published; if enough people back the bid by pledging various amounts, then the book will be published and those who pledged will be rewarded for their donation with free signed copies, author lunches, and so on. The landscape is becoming highly focused on what the readers want, and using the imprint as an identity to cater for user needs and their reading habits, taking a great deal of autonomy away from the publisher in a user-centered environment, which once saw more power in the hands of the publishers.

It has been revealed that Amazon is now giving authors access to the highly coveted Nielsen Book Scan database which records book sales and details of consumer behaviour and reading trends. This is another example of the strengthening of the relationship between the author and the reader, leaving the role of the publisher slightly out of joint, misplaced even. The publisher needs to reassert their role in the world of digital publishing, to find their strength in this new field of book production.