14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon has started out as a bookseller and then branched out into selling other things to become the largest online retailer in the world. But, at the same time, it moved to become a content platform, helping generate and create new markets for goods, digital goods mostly, to be sold.
It has been a great strategy, its Kindle ebook store is the biggest around and ebooks are already outselling regular paper books at Amazon.
But Amazon still has a problem, inherent to any retailer, it sells other peoples' stuff and is therefore dependent on them.
It relies on book publishers to provide it with the rights to their titles, for example. Amazon would very much like to avoid it and has been taking steps in recent years to do just that.
First it enables authors to self-publish to the Kindle store, bypassing the need for a publisher and editor altogether. This is a model that has been working great for some and has made a couple of people very rich.
But there are plenty of times when an author needs a publisher for the services they provide, editing, marketing and so on.
Amazon has this side covered too. It has several editors and publishing units working on discovering books that may sell well, convincing authors to bypass traditional publishers and work directly with Amazon and also doing book promoting and marketing.
It is cutting out agents, publishers and bookstores in getting books from the author to the reader. And it's making good money from it.
Last week, Amazon debuted its seventh imprint, 47North which focuses on science fiction, fantasy and horror.
It joins AmazonEncore, the self-publishing program, AmazonCrossing, for foreign books translated into English, Powered by Amazon, for short books, Montlake Romance, romance fiction, Thomas & Mercer, mysteries, and New York, self help and guides.
Amazon has signed some notable authors across the board and is looking for more. Perhaps the most worrying thing for traditional publishers should be that authors are pleased to have an option and see Amazon more as a partner than a gatekeeper. That is, until Amazon becomes the gatekeeper itself, which it's well on its way of doing.