Russ Grandinetti, senior vice president at Amazon & head of Kindle, thinks that the publishing industry is experiencing a major shift.
In an interview with The Guardian published over the weekend, the Amazon exec said: ”The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.”
This interview was published a week after more than 900 authors ran a letter to Amazon chief Jeff Bezos as a full page ad in The New York Times yesterday. The letter, which included signatures from bestselling authors Stephen King, Malcolm Gladwell and Suzanne Collins, asked Bezos to end the company’s dispute with Hachette. Amazon responded with an email to readers, calling readers to email the president of Hachette and demand lower eBook prices.
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Authors Janet Evanovich and Kathryn Stockett have each sold more than a million Kindle books, joining what Amazon has termed the “Kindle Million Club.”
The authors join the likes of Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly and John Locke, who have also passed the million mark in sales of their eBooks in the Kindle Store. According to the release, Stockett is the first debut novelist to reach this milestone.
Evanovich’s latest novel Smokin’ Seventeen has spent more than 100 days on the Kindle Best Seller list. Stockett’s novel, The Help, has been No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list and was just adapted into a film.
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Today Amazon unveiled a new eBook format, Kindle Singles. While no examples are being sold on the site yet, the bookseller hopes “serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers” will contribute shorter works.
Here’s more from eBookNewser: These new books, which are categorized as between 10,000 and 30,000 words –or about 30-90 pages– will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced less than a typical eBook. Amazon did not yet say how much these works would cost, but perhaps $.99 –the typical price of an iTunes single– would be too low.”
Kindle Content VP Russ Grandinetti had this statement: “Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format,” said , Vice President, Kindle Content. “With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.”
What do you think? As eBookNewser notes, at least one author has already tried the single format.
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