SEATTLE - Amazon.com has taught readers they do not need libraries. Now it is encouraging writers to put aside their publishers.
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, as well as physical and e-book. This is a striking acceleration program that will edit retailer soaring Amazon squarely in competition with homes in New York who are its most important suppliers.
It has set up a flagship line led by a veteran of publishing, Laurence Kirshbaum, to release branded fiction and documentary. He signed his first contract with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week he announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which she paid $ 800 000, a person with direct knowledge of the agreement said.
The publishers say Amazon is aggressively courting some of the authors above. And society is eating away the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
Several major publishers have refused to comment on the matter on the efforts of Amazon. "Publishers are terrified and do not know what to do," said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, which is known for speaking his mind.
"Everyone is afraid of the Amazon," said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also a publisher of electronic books. "If you're a bookstore, Amazon has been competing with you for a while. If you are a publisher one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you. And if you are an agent, Amazon can steal your lunch because it offers authors the ability to publish directly and you cut.
"It's an old strategy: divide and conquer," said Mr. Curtis.
Amazon executives, interviewed at company headquarters here, declined to say how many publishers, the company employed or how many books he had under contract. But they minimized the power of Amazon and the publishers said in love with their own demise.
"It's always the end of the world," said Russell Grandinetti, one executive of Amazon. "You can set your watch it happen."
He stressed, however, that the landscape was in some respects, change for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book almost 600 years. "The only people really need in the publishing process is now the writer and the reader," he said. "All that stands between these two has both risk and opportunity."
Amazon started giving all authors, if published or not, direct access to the coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records the number of physical books, they sell individual markets such as Milwaukee and New Orleans. It is the introduction of the kind of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans was happening only on book tours. It was an obscure German historical novel a best seller, without a single runaway examiner professional weighing in.
Publishers caught a glimpse of a future they fear no role for them late last month, when Amazon introduced the Kindle fire, a shelf for books and other media sold by Amazon. Jeffrey P. Bezos, CEO of the company, Kindle mentioned several times as "a service from beginning to end," evoking a world in which Amazon develops, promotes and delivers the product.
To get an idea of how publishers are shaken by the breakthrough of Amazon in their business, consider the case of Kiana Davenport, a writer whose career abruptly derailed Hawaiian last month.
In 2010, Ms. Davenport signed with Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin, for "The Daughter of the Chinese soldier," a love story of civil war. She received an advance of $ 20 000 for the book, which was supposed to come out next summer.
If the writers have a message drilled into them these days, it is this: you shake. So Mrs. Davenport took on the shelf of several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packed in the e-book, "Cannibal Nights," available on Amazon.
Penguin discovered when he went "ballistic," Mrs. Davenport wrote on his blog, accusing him of breaking its contractual promise to avoid competition with it. He wanted to "Cannibal Nights" withdrawn from sale and all references to it removed from the Internet.
Ms. Davenport refused, then Penguin canceled his novel and continuing to get ahead.
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, as well as physical and e-book. This is a striking acceleration program that will edit retailer soaring Amazon squarely in competition with homes in New York who are its most important suppliers.
It has set up a flagship line led by a veteran of publishing, Laurence Kirshbaum, to release branded fiction and documentary. He signed his first contract with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week he announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which she paid $ 800 000, a person with direct knowledge of the agreement said.
The publishers say Amazon is aggressively courting some of the authors above. And society is eating away the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
Several major publishers have refused to comment on the matter on the efforts of Amazon. "Publishers are terrified and do not know what to do," said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, which is known for speaking his mind.
"Everyone is afraid of the Amazon," said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also a publisher of electronic books. "If you're a bookstore, Amazon has been competing with you for a while. If you are a publisher one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you. And if you are an agent, Amazon can steal your lunch because it offers authors the ability to publish directly and you cut.
"It's an old strategy: divide and conquer," said Mr. Curtis.
Amazon executives, interviewed at company headquarters here, declined to say how many publishers, the company employed or how many books he had under contract. But they minimized the power of Amazon and the publishers said in love with their own demise.
"It's always the end of the world," said Russell Grandinetti, one executive of Amazon. "You can set your watch it happen."
He stressed, however, that the landscape was in some respects, change for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book almost 600 years. "The only people really need in the publishing process is now the writer and the reader," he said. "All that stands between these two has both risk and opportunity."
Amazon started giving all authors, if published or not, direct access to the coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records the number of physical books, they sell individual markets such as Milwaukee and New Orleans. It is the introduction of the kind of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans was happening only on book tours. It was an obscure German historical novel a best seller, without a single runaway examiner professional weighing in.
Publishers caught a glimpse of a future they fear no role for them late last month, when Amazon introduced the Kindle fire, a shelf for books and other media sold by Amazon. Jeffrey P. Bezos, CEO of the company, Kindle mentioned several times as "a service from beginning to end," evoking a world in which Amazon develops, promotes and delivers the product.
To get an idea of how publishers are shaken by the breakthrough of Amazon in their business, consider the case of Kiana Davenport, a writer whose career abruptly derailed Hawaiian last month.
In 2010, Ms. Davenport signed with Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin, for "The Daughter of the Chinese soldier," a love story of civil war. She received an advance of $ 20 000 for the book, which was supposed to come out next summer.
If the writers have a message drilled into them these days, it is this: you shake. So Mrs. Davenport took on the shelf of several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packed in the e-book, "Cannibal Nights," available on Amazon.
Penguin discovered when he went "ballistic," Mrs. Davenport wrote on his blog, accusing him of breaking its contractual promise to avoid competition with it. He wanted to "Cannibal Nights" withdrawn from sale and all references to it removed from the Internet.
Ms. Davenport refused, then Penguin canceled his novel and continuing to get ahead.
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