In the few days since the last post here about Big Five publishers and agency pricing, I have been challenged on two specific points by comments sent privately. Both of these comments are right and therefore lead to this corrective post. One powerful literary agent, who is inevitably informed by publishers about negotiations that affect […]
Archives for February 2016
If Amazon pricing of ebooks is the problem, is agency actually the right solution?
In the past week, I’ve had conversations with leading executives at two of Amazon’s competitors in the ebook space. They had strikingly different takes on whether the agency pricing regime, which is now in place by contract with all five of the biggest trade publishers, helps keep competitive balance in the ebook marketplace or prevents […]
Now Kings of ebook subscription, what will impede the ebook share growth for Amazon?
With the news this morning that Scribd has thrown in the towel on unlimited ebook subscriptions, Amazon is the last player standing with an “all-you-can-eat” ebook subscription offer for a general audience. The juxtaposition of the publishers’ insistence on being paid full price for ebooks being lent once and the late Oyster’s and the now thrice-hobbled […]
Agents who come to Digital Book World will learn a lot they can immediately apply
The mission of the Digital Book World conference is industry education around digital change. There is a plethora of programming for this year’s event that will serve that purpose particularly well for literary agents. Of all the people in the industry, it would seem to me that agents would get the fastest and surest “return […]
On Amazon stores and publishers accepting standardization; two unrelated commentaries
When the “Amazon-opening-400-stores” rumor landed a week ago, many people were gobsmacked. It took me a minute to get past that, which also required getting past my firm conviction when they opened the Seattle store last year that it was an information-gathering exercise, not the opening move of a bigger retail play. But, when you […]