From Publishing Perspectives:
The trade publishing house of Amazon, called Amazon Publishing, has operations in many parts of the world, particularly through the work of AmazonCrossing, the translation imprint.
Second to its United States headquarters, the UK arm of “APub,” as it’s called, is the most prominent branch. In the UK, Amazon Publishing operates with four imprints currently, with an eye to growth. The Stateside division has just added its 15th imprint this year, Topple Books in association with filmmaker Jill Soloway’s production company.
Eoin Purcell, formerly the editorial director of Dublin’s New Island Books, was named to head up the London-based division in September 2014. That spring, Amazon vice president Jeff Belle had said in a memo to agents that Amazon Publishing would be releasing more than 500 titles that year in the UK, comprising both its own acquisitions and books published by the US arm of the company.”
The news, as reported by Sarah Shaffi at The Bookseller, sent ripples through the British industry, and one of the key emphasis points made by executives of the company then was that Amazon was keen on adding UK authors to its lists.
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What Copeland outlined for the press at the time as a rationale has become only clearer in the years since: the sheer sales power of the world’s largest retail operation means, as the agent told The Bookseller in its lead feature coverage in February 2014, “It can create huge successes for authors without even breaking sweat.”
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And when you hear Purcell talk about the charts, he’s referring to sales performance in the Amazon universe. The most recent Official UK Top 50 from The Bookseller and Nielsen may not show an APub title, but because Amazon doesn’t report digital sales, action on many of the house’s offerings could be much bigger than is evident.
If anything, it might be helpful if amazon.co.uk had the Amazon Charts functionality that amazon.com offers in the States. Both the “most read” and “most sold” digital titles in fiction and nonfiction are updated weekly there. Indeed, UK industry players may enjoy seeing that, at this writing, seven of the Top 20 “most read” books in fiction on the US website are by J.K. Rowling.
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The “global store” can be seen as threatening to territorial copyright boundaries. While Amazon’s position has been that it intends for sales to be conducted correctly and that it means to remove infringing editions of books, critics say the response can be too slow and that the problem is growing, exacerbated by the advent of “international shopping” in the Amazon app.
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And yet, of course, the work of Amazon Publishing is not the same as that of Amazon-the-retailer, any more than Simon & Schuster can be held responsible for the actions of the CBS Corporation that owns it. The part of the Amazonian empire controlling sales apps, buy buttons, and Prime delivery isn’t the part making books.
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One wide-smiling blessing of being a creature of a multinational technology power seems to be a capacity for patience. There’s a sense as you talk with Purcell that time is on his side. “Long-term” is among his favorite phrases.
After all, a publishing company that was able to open shop in a new market with some 500 titles annually can afford to wait. If APub blockbusters haven’t shot to the tops of the trade rankings in London, Amazon’s team is focused, Purcell says, on cultivating good relationships in the business.
He’s similarly sanguine about how so many booksellers in the UK, as in the States, have been staunchly resistant to Amazon, although they can order its books from Gardners, because of its retail dominance. Getting APub books into high street store windows remains largely a fiction. But this, too, isn’t something that seems to concern Purcell and his associates: they can wait.
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“When I think of challenges in that area” of strained bookstore relations, “I have two responses. One, publish great books that readers will read. And, two, whenever we work with retailers, make sure their experiences are good. Again, this is long-term thinking, focusing on relationships with these retailers and being sure those relationships go well. Over time, that’s going to have an impact.”
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“Today, we’re publishing between 70 and 80 titles of our own in the UK,” he says, “and we’re also marketing the vast majority of what the US team publishes. That keeps us very busy.”
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“We’re particularly happy with the progress we’re making with authors. We’ve had really good experiences,” Purcell says, pointing to many of the writers working in mystery and thrillers on the Thomas & Mercer imprint.
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“I think if you concentrate on acquiring good books and then making sure you’re really delivering for the author, you’re going to end up with advocates, and that’s what we like to do.”
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“All these authors are really kind of advocates for us, and we love to hear them sing our praises, although we don’t like to do that kind of thing, ourselves,” Purcell says with a smile. “One of our newer authors, Caroline Mitchell, seems to be putting out the word for us, as well.” Mitchell’s Silent Victim (Thomas & Mercer) was released on March 1.
“I think if you concentrate on acquiring good books and then making sure you’re really delivering for the author, you’re going to end up with advocates, and that’s what we like to do.”
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
Territorial copyright boundaries?