Amazon strikes again. What's an indie to do?

Just the Macmillian-Amazon standoff cools down, Amazon picks yet another fight. Add threatening independent publishers to the growing list of loss-leader strategies, intentional Kindle incompatibility and removal of buy buttons. Amazon is on a role.

With Apple courting indie publishers as they prepare to launch the iPad and iBookstore, Amazon is attempting to curb any power over ebooks that publishers could possibly retain. While it can't pull these antics with the big six, the company thinks it can push the smaller presses around. Amazon is betting that indies, who rely heavily on internet sales, will not be able to survive without Amazon sales. So, the company is threatening to cut them off at the knees if they sign the (more fair and balanced) Apple contract.

But there are signs of hope. Perseus Books has signed on with Apple regardless of Amazon's threats. As the largest independent publisher and distributor of another 330 independent presses, Perseus is setting up a good line of defense. If most small publishers follow suit, Amazon will have to back down lest Apple appear to offer the broader selection. On its own, an indie is a sitting duck, but collectively, Amazon needs them more than they need Amazon.

Amazon's behavior is appalling. Over and over again, the company flexes corporate muscle in order to force the entire book industry to bend to its will. Simply put, the company is trying to determine how strong its monopoly hold is. It is absolutely necessary that publishers deny this corporate bullying now. If Amazon gets away with its behaviors in these early days of digital conversion, the company will be setting the pace and the unsustainably low prices for a long time. Singlehandedly, Amazon could dismantle entirely an all ready fragile industry.

Fear and Loathing in the Book Industry

It doesn't matter if you are a local plumbing company or a major record label, you are undergoing digitization in your industry. Understandably, a good dose of anxiety is accompanying this change. Will your new websites, blogs and digital products be worth the investment? What are the new standards? How necessary is digitization for you? Typically alongside this fear is enthusiasm and opportunity. The new media offer tremendous possibilities for both corporate and independent companies, but the publishing industry seems to have skipped the possibilities section of this brave new digital world.

The literary press holds its breath at every single development or upset. Whether it's Amazon throwing around its monopolistic weight or an indie press subverting the standard book release process, the industry watches with apprehension, fear and even anger. Many publishers do not have a level of digital fluency. E-books, blogs and twitter accounts are seen as an impending giant casting a shadow over their once peaceful village.

Their anxiety is making them resistant to changes that, for better and worse, are not able to be stopped. To quote the iconic Richard Nash:

The publishing business is not in trouble because there's no demand for books. It is in trouble because there are changes afoot in how best to satisfy the demand, changes to which there are suitable responses, two of which are fostering fan culture and generating a sense of occasion, and the leaders of the largest publishing organizations are failing in their professional responsibility to implement these responses. By reducing their participation in BEA at the same time the media participation has increased by almost 50%, by refusing to open the Fair to the readers on Sunday, these CEOs have effectively thrown in the towel. They are managing the demise of the book business, pointing fingers at any generic social forces they can find, failing to see the one place the responsibility can be found, their own damn offices.

Many publishers are becoming their own worst enemy. Absolutely, risk is implicit in experimentation, but risk, at least, offers a chance for success as well as for failure. Standing still is suicide.

In this interview, Don Linn offers thoughtful and sane advice for publishers. Start educating yourselves, start experimenting with the less expensive new media forms. Get in the game or you will get left behind.

The Replacement Press releases their first book

As an infant press in the Twin Cities, the Replacement Press is a publisher to watch. Composed of a husband-and-wife team, they publish out of their apartment, maintain day jobs and pour themselves into their venture. Both in their late twenties, Andrew and Sarah De Young have one solid advantage: an ease with the social media that makes other publishers cringe. They tweet, update their facebook status, post faithfully to their blog. They see ebooks and digital readers as a possibility to diversify literary voices rather than as a death blow to independent publishing. I see them as the potential of indie publishers' future: passionate, adaptive, glocal.

Perhaps I'm drawn to Andrew and Sarah De Young's adventure because their success could go beyond the personal. Starting from a vantage point inside the new digital era, they could begin to set the pace for 21st century publishing. After reading so many blog posts and news articles about the dim future of publishing, the Replacement Press offers an encouraging counterpoint. Yes, they are young. Yes, they are a fledging company, but they are creative, flexible and fueled by new possibilities.

As their first book launches this weekend, I wish them the best and will be following their progress.

Blogger to Publisher: The Daily Beast will print...eventually

This weekend Galley Cat has noted that The Daily Beast is in the midst of its first publication. For over a year, this comprehensive emag/blog has been covering current events, arts, politics and entertainment. (They even have weekly crossword puzzles). Partnered with Perseus Books, the Beast is launching their first book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America" authored by John Avlon.

Without even broaching political issues, the Daily Beast is ruffling the publishing industry's feathers, again. In the current, infant stage of literary digitization, most publishers stick to hard copy books first, and then, maybe, they will later release an ebook version. Not so with the Beast. Jumping right into ebook form, the Daily Beast promises a paperback to come.

While established publishers are upset at the Daily Beast's strategy, the move makes sense. Shaped from Avlon's blog posting, the book itself evolved in an untraditional manner; why should the publication be any different? The digital world is the Daily Beast's native environment. Here it has readership, presence and support, so extending its ventures first in cyberspace, where it is at its strongest, just make sense. For ink-and-paper publishers, digital moves are the ventures and experiments they must contend with; it is their last frontier. For a blogger gone publisher, the process is, more or less, reversed. Holding the book in their hands is the last unknown, the leap of faith, and the final proof the they have arrived.

Independent publishers engage in the new media era

The independent literary press has always had its work cut out for it. The publishing world, particularly in the last fifteen years, has become drastically concentrated into the hands of a few international media giants whose first order of business is turn-and-burn bestsellers. Now there is nothing wrong with a great story or entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but an overload of enjoyable, yet empty, diversions does not enrich us. Without a balance of voices that speak to the deeper chords of human experience, our lives are flattened, cheapened.

Struggling to maintain a presence in a publishing world dominated by fleeting amusements, small-scale publishing houses are gaining ground by engaging in new social media practices that, ironically, were initially popular for the quick entertainment they provided. The independent press now tweets, updates their Facebook statuses, diggs other publishers’ releases and blogs about the literary world (interesting that companies that survive by selling words now offer them for free).

Media Bistro’s Gallery Cat has declared that independent literary presses are actually leading the publishing industry’s transformation into the new digital era. Online, armed with social media tools, indy publishers have gone interactive. They have distinct personalities: some, like Soft Skull, are edgy and boisterous, others, like the Etruscan Press, are contemplative and graceful. Our smart phones, readers and notification boxes now light up with small updates that life is rich, exciting and full of great literature.