At the American Book Producer Association’s recent panel, Jon Fine, Director of Author & Publisher Relations for Amazon.com, spoke about the ways smaller publishers and self-publishers can use Amazon to produce, promote, and distribute books in what he anticipates will one day be an “inventory-free” process. The event reflected Amazon’s recent attempts to present its “softer, gentler side”—to publishers and, more particularly, to authors. Amazon hasn’t come out and said that the success of competing e-readers and the imminent launch of Google Editions are responsible for its new attitude, but Fine said that over the last year and a half, the company has awakened to the idea that “authors are crucial.”
Amazon currently sells books from over 40,000 publishers, and thinks of its customers as being in two groups: readers/consumers and authors—who are often self-publishers using CreateSpace (the company’s self-publishing and distribution program, which merged with Booksurge in 2003; see PT print issue 08/10) and Amazon Advantage (a self-service consignment program that enables users to promote and sell products directly from the site).
The company is taking steps to improve author searchability from within the site. Any author with a book sold on the site is encouraged to join and contribute to “Author Central,” where authors enhance their author pages to share information about themselves and their titles. Authors will soon also have consumer reviews of all of their titles available on one tab (currently, they must look at each individual title’s details page to see reviews) and will be able to see a history of their sales rankings, and thereby extrapolate which promotions increase sales. Authors can also list book tour information (including stops at bricks-and-mortar stores) and link the information from BookTour.com to feed onto their Amazon author pages. Fine said Amazon author pages have begun appearing toward the top of Google searches.
Meanwhile, data and analytics vary by portal. Amazon Advantage customers, for example, receive “basic” retail analytics. Fine suggested that at some future date, Amazon will present a “dashboard” of data for the author. He did not mention whether, or how much, Amazon will charge for this.
Another aspect of discoverability includes Search Inside the Book, which increases sales by 6.5% on average. Books that are available with SITB also have an advantage in keyword searches on the site. Say a book contains a significant amount of information about Milwaukee but doesn’t mention that city in its title or official description. If the book participates in the SITB program, it will pop up as a result for a customer’s “Milwaukee” search whether or not the SITB preview includes the section on Milwaukee.
Though Amazon is obviously promoting e-book sales through the Kindle (which will soon, Fine assured the audience, be able to ingest PDF files), it is also pushing its short run and POD program. The “fully landed” costs of a typical paperback are currently estimated (by Amazon) at $3.15, making the POD cost of $3.85 look like a good deal.
At the end of an informative hour, Fine also mentioned two publishing initiatives. AmazonEncore uses information like customer reviews to identify books and authors it believes have more potential than their sales indicate, and partners with authors to market and distribute them. Authors do not receive advances on these titles. There are eight titles on AmazonEncore’s spring 2011 list. And AmazonCrossing translates some of the bestselling titles from the company’s international sites (Japan, Germany, etc.) into English for the first time. The spring list has 6 titles. (Amazon also recently announced that it will underwrite Three Percent’s 2011 Best Translated Book Awards, providing $5,000 grants to winning translators and authors.) Encore and Crossing titles are available not only through channels like Amazon and Kindle but are also available in national and independent bookstores.
