What could the Macmillazon affair mean for authors?
Now that Amazon has started putting buy links back on Macmillan books, there’s no shortage of opinions on what it might mean for the future of publishing, retail, distribution, and so on.
But here’s a question that I don’t think is being asked: how will the the relationship between publishers and authors change, and more importantly, how can authors exploit the situation?
Here’s Andrew Zack on the subject:
But can we take this one step further? Could publishers just become “agents” of authors, where the author gets a bigger piece of net?
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So, could Macmillan’s face-off with Amazon benefit us all? Perhaps. But it could also come back to bite Macmillan in a tender place. Because if it makes sense for Macmillan to change the way books are sold and priced, why shouldn’t authors try to change the way they are selling books to publishers?
(I’m not sure on the some of the maths in the article, though.)
