Amazon, the digital river

I’ve been thinking a lot about Amazon’s BookSurge thing, and am increasingly convinced it’s ultimately an ebook move.

The New York Times this morning gave me  for that theory. Brad Stone looks at all the Amazon digital initatives since 2006 – Amazon Unbox, the Kindle, the MP3 store, to which I would add the Audible.com acquisition. As Apple became the #1 music retailer (unseating Wal-Mart) this year, laying the groundwork for digital delivery of all media – music, movies AND books – makes a lot of sense. The horse has left the barn – books are not getting any LESS digital.

So I think that using BookSurge as a platform to distribute book content digitally – whether it’s ultimately an ebook or a POD title – and controlling that aspect of the supply chain very tightly for Long Tail reasons…is the ultimate goal here for Amazon. But that’s my reading of the tea leaves today – as the Times article says, "As is typical of executives at Amazon, its digital chiefs are stingy with details about their plans."

HarperCollins Roundup: Is It Good for the Writers or Bad for the Writers?

The jury’s still out about the new HarperCollins imprint, but no matter what your position is, you’ll find plenty of support for it online.

Maya Reynolds analyzes the new HarperCollins unit’s business model.

Barbara Kyle looks at returns. Maya Reynolds does also.

John Kremer asks if it’s good for authors.

Erik Sherman wonders if the emphasis on internet sales, and the attempt to get out of returns, is at all sustainable.

The Authors’ Guild responds; AAP hasn’t yet

A member of the Authors Guild posts their latest letter on her blog:

Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the "long tail" of publishing — the enormous number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate, make a lot of money for the aggregator. Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it’s uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount — or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books — to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.

We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on the industry, are authors — since many are paid for on-demand sales based on the publisher’s gross revenues — and publishers.

Meanwhile, Pat Schroeder emailed me that the AAP has "no response at this time."

The Big Picture Specials!!!

Our "Useful Resources" section of the site now includes a couple of special items!

Book Industry Acronym Glossary
A compilation of initialisms and acronyms that proliferate throughout our business. Sitting in conference sessions, gathering at industry events, we’re frequently confused by all this alphabet soup – this glossary (BIAG?) is an attempt to put definitions at our fingertips. We’ve also included two useful flowcharts: Tracking the ISBN and Book Industry Metadata Supply Chain.

$35.00 ($25.00 for subscribers to The Big Picture)

Harper Unit Not Paying Author Advances, Allowing Returns

The WSJ just posted an article by Jeffrey Trachtenberg saying that HarperCollins is starting up a new business unit that won’t take returns from bookstores or issue advances to authors:

Instead, the unit, which hasn’t yet been named, will share its profits with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet. In recent years, Amazon.com Inc., the nation’s largest online book retailer by sales, has gained market share from bricks-and-mortar stores. News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., which publishes The Wall Street Journal.

NewsCorp also owns MySpace, which launched its today. (The link is working now.)

MySpace Taking On iTunes

launched its much-rumored downloadable music service today, offering DRM-free music for sale, free streaming music, ringtones, and other digital music products. Striking deals with 3 of the top 4 music labels (EMI was the lone naysayer), MySpace brings a real threat to iTunes (finally) due to its user base of 110 million.

It’s interesting to note that the new head of EMI’s digital group is former VP of Engineering at Google, Douglas Merrill.

From CNet:

James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, said MySpace could help modernize the music industry.

"MySpace has the audience and environment to enable the music industry to get to the next digital level," McQuivey said. "What iTunes offers is a good buying experience but that’s not all people do with music. They they talk about it, they share it, they try things out. Remember, this is the kind of activity that (record label) Universal Music Group was suing MySpace for previously."

McQuivey continued: "I think the labels said to themselves,’Oh, if we enable fans to have a fully immersive experience, they might spend more on music. MySpace can offer a place where all aspects of the music experience can be expressed. Imeem was getting close to this but MySpace, if they don’t mess it up, should take the music industry to Music 2.0"

However, if you try to go to MySpace’s music site now, .

Yeah, I know that Muze post is messed up

I fixed it on the back end – it takes a while to run through the servers and update, though. Check back later in the day, or hit the press release for the full scoop.

Get Your Lightning Source Title While You Wait

On Demand, the company that produces the Espresso Book Machine, has signed a deal with Lightning Source so that bookstores housing the Espresso will be able to print Lightning Source titles on the spot. (Borders tried this sort of thing a number of years ago, but the wait time was excruciating. The Espresso can print and bind a book in 15 minutes.)

Says Judith Rosen in PW:

If the machines catch on and proliferate like so many Starbucks outlets, the marketplace would become radically decentralized and book distribution would require simply an Internet connection.

This is true – given that of the 7 Espressos currently out there, only 2 are in bookstores. The rest are in libraries, which traditionally have not been in the business of selling books but this would certainly allow them to. (Or would they simply lend on-site-printed books until they fell apart?)

It’s interesting to think about – as the machines get smaller and faster, will people choose to buy them for home use? Or neighborhood use? (I know that on my street in Brooklyn, when one person’s printer is down, others pitch in and print documents until the malfunctioning printer’s up and running again. But Park Slope is notoriously communal – even socialist – that way.)

As to whether or not this is yet another incursion into Lightning Source’s business, I don’t think so. Increasingly, LS seems to be edging towards digital distribution anyway.

Muze launches new database

Seriously, there IS more to say

I’ve posted on O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing blog about Amazon/BookSurge, Ingram, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Baker & Taylor, and – lord help us – the customer.