Amazon Is Taking on Traditional Publishers

If you think Amazon is just for ordering books, DVDs and now household products, you haven’t heard about Amazon Publishing. First there was the opportunity for writers to publish their books on demand. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing allows writers to publish direct to kindle. Many authors are getting discovered by mainstream publishers and agents through their successful kindle sales. In a future blog I will give you some success stories.

Now Amazon is publishing literary fiction, story collections and memoirs under what they are calling a new literary imprint, Little A. There are several other imprints too, but you’ll want to focus on Amazon Children’s Publishing imprints Skyscape for young adults and Two Lions for picture books, chapter books and middle-grade fiction.

For example, Jean Haus’ originally self-published new adult novel, In the Band, was sold—along with the next two books in the series—to Amazon Publishing in what Publisher’s Marketplace calls a good deal. This is a clear example of how some literary agents are now shopping their clients’ manuscripts to Amazon rather than the Big Six. Read more here in upcoming posts. (Also coming up is the definition of New Adult, a whole new category of books for the not quite any longer a YA reader.)