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How many imprints does Amazon run?As Amazon launches a romance imprint, here's a look at some of its other publishing efforts.Update 5/18/11: Amazon continues to launch imprints at an impressive clip. Its fifth imprint, Thomas & Mercer, launched today — exactly two weeks after launching Montlake Romance (see that story, below).
In a post for the Guardian, Alison Flood noted a growing wariness in the publishing industry:
Taking a look at Amazon's other three imprints makes traditional publishers' unease understandable. Amazon launched its AmazonEncore imprint in May 2009. The press release described it:
This is like an indie handselling program on steroids. It gives self-published authors who garner good reviews an opportunity to be represented by a publishing house with millions of customers worldwide. The AmazonCrossing imprint was launched a year later on May 18, 2010, to take foreign titles and translate them into English. The program uses a similar acquisition and marketing approach as the Encore imprint. From the press release:
Some of the traditional publishing issues with foreign translation were highlighted by Emily Williams in a post for Publishing Perspectives. She first noted the "unforgiving economic calculations that publishers face in taking a translation to market," but she also touched on what might be the larger issue:
Williams mentioned several independent presses that translate foreign titles — Open Letter, New Directions, Other Press, Melville House, Europa Editions, Archipelago, and Graywolf — but said their business models generally depend on outside sources for financing. Amazon seems to have overcome these obstacles in a way no one else has yet figured out, establishing itself as the first major player to fill this niche. Last December, Amazon also teemed up with Seth Godin to launch The Domino Project. The imprint was created to publish a series of manifestos. The press release describes the project:
Steven Pressfield, who recently released a manifesto through The Domino Project interviewed Godin about how the project came about. This particular imprint is published through the Powered by Amazon publishing program (the first in the program, actually), so it's not really Amazon's imprint, but it's a noteworthy step in Amazon's journey to infiltrate the publishing industry in unique ways.
In addition to publishing titles in these ventures, Amazon also sells rights to some titles to traditional publishing houses. It recently sold rights to 10 titles from the Encore and Crossing imprints to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Combine the imprints with Amazon's hiring spree (search the "publishing" section here), its partnership with OverDrive, and the launch of its German Kindle store, and perhaps it's time for publishers to stop uneasily eying Amazon and instead get down to competing on what is rapidly becoming a large new playing field. Related:
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Amazon has launched is fourth imprint, 
Comments: 5
Richard A. McCullough [23 May 2011 06:46 PM]
Yes, Amazon is poised to become the single largest vampire of authors blood on the planet.
Authors may have to bend over for this epublishing giant but we don't have to like it.
Amazon demands far too much (at 30%) of an authors income for simply hosting a digital file on a server.
We writers will continue to publish on Kindle but only until we find a better deal.
Write on...
Richard
Chris Malburg [ 7 December 2011 11:42 AM]
What a great opportunity to promote overlooked authors. As a widely published hardcopy author, I can say that the 30% Amazon takes as a distribution fee is a helluva lot less than the 85% the major publishing houses take.
Bravo, Amazon. We'll continue working together on Car Wars and on Vision Machine.
--Chris Malburg
Henry [23 January 2012 12:55 PM]
Overlooked authors should come together to provide their own advertising for each other.
Rachel [23 January 2012 02:17 PM]
I love amazon they always have what you're looking for and you can get it shipped out quickly.
Cornbread [29 April 2012 03:49 AM]
Hiya! Listen, I don't mean to sound nasty or mean with what I'm about to say here in regards to some quotes in the article. But. Somebopdy said something about "unforgiving economic conditions that publishers face..."
I hate to be rude but nobody really cares about that & nobody wants to hear it. Whether or not Big Publishers are having an economic struggle is really THEIR problem, not author-problems. Paying authors lower advances because of this is punishing authors IMO. Authors just want to get paid, just like they do. This is business. They expect every aspect of an authors presentation to be "professional" until it comes time to get paid, then they think authors should put their "artist's" hats back on and be Bohemian about it, have a "live-off-the-land" attitude.
They have no mercy on authros. So why do they expect some from authors??? But this is of course, only my perception and opinion.
As for Amazon imprints, well, I don't know that much about them as these imprints are new and happening a breakneck speed. But one thing I think, too, is that Amazon's imprints aren't yet on the Blockbuster System that Big Publishers are on, so the''re more likely to take on a lot of off-beat or non-blockbuster material.