James Franco is publishing a novel! And not only that, he has abandoned traditional publishing houses to publish with Amazon. The book is called Actors Anonymous and was acquired by Amazon’s fiction editor Ed Park from Mr. Franco’s agent, Richard Abate. Read More
Ed Park was hired to acquire fiction titles for Amazon’s new New York publishing house in September, but it was not clear if his new job meant his days as an editor at The Believer, the magazine he helped found, were over. Well, it turns out they are. Read More
Over the past year, Amazon Publishing has developed most of the mass market and trade imprints that comprise a full-service publishing house, but they were lacking in one key area: children! The latest jewel in the Amazon Publishing crown is Marshall Cavendish, a children’s book imprint which supplies Amazon with a backlist of 450 children’s titles. As Amazon puts it in its press release, “The acquisition creates the foundation for Amazon Publishing to further expand into picture books, chapter books and Young Adult novels.” Read More
Crown Publishing Group might have given Deepak Chopra his very own imprint this past spring as a reward for having produced so many bestsellers, but Mr. Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws for Success do not apparently include a binding clause to tie him to his longtime publisher. Over the weekend, it was announced that Dr. Chopra and his brother Sanjiv Chopra have signed a “major” deal to publish a memoir with Amazon, which seems to concord with Deepak Chopra’s “Law of Detachment.” Read More
Amazon Publishing has been pushing its image as an author-friendly publisher, with one of the advertised perks being the ability for authors to access sales data for individual markets from Nielsen BookScan — at least for sales of physical books.
For most publishers, however, authors have gauged their sales on a day-to-day basis by either Read More
Wait, did you say Amazon is publishing books? So The New York Times has discovered! And on the front page no less. Publishers Marketplace referred to today’s story as “Things You Know About Amazon’s Publishing, Rounded Up Into an Article.” On Twitter, Knopf publicity director Paul Bogaards had a small outburst of commentary, Read More
Amazon has added to its stable of genre fiction imprints with 47North, an imprint specializing in Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Like the company’s Montlake romance imprint and Thomas & Mercer thriller imprint, 47North’s name derives from a Seattle-specific location, in this case the the city’s latitude. Read More
NPR’s Morning edition had self-publishing advocate turned Amazon publishing advocate Barry Eisler on for an interview today. He talked about his decision to walk away from a six-figure book deal with St. Martin’s Press earlier this year and to publish his book with Amazon’s thriller imprint Thomas & Mercer instead. Read More
Gregg Housh and Barrett Brown’s book about Anonymous, the online activism collective known for digital protests and acts of civil disobedience, has been sold to Amazon Publishing editorial director Julia Cheiffetz.
According to the notice on Publishers Marketplace, Anonymous: Tales From Inside The Accidental Cyberwar was “pitched as Barbarians at the Gate for the digital era” and tells “the story of the ordinary people who became hacker-activists and successfully brought down government agencies and multinational corporations around the world.” Anonymous recently secured local notoriety by releasing the personal data of pepper spraying New York City Police officer Anthony Bologna. Read More
Amazon Publishing fulfilled expectations a few weeks ago when it announced its first big book deal, to publish The 4-Hour Chef by kickboxer and tango dancer Timothy Ferriss. It was the kind of book one would expect Amazon to acquire: written by a bestselling self-help author who will sell hundreds of thousands of e-books, extensively self-promote on the internet and likely be less remembered for his contribution to literature than for his showmanship. (He will also be one of those writers who have a guaranteed place on the shelves of every used bookstore in America until the end of time or of used bookstores, whichever comes first).
What was less expected was Amazon Publishing’s latest move: hiring one of the editors of The Believer to acquire fiction for the imprint. Ed Park, whom The New York Times once called “The Wizard of Whimsy”, will now represent the literary side of the Seattle company’s New York publishing house. Read More
