Holiday Book Sales Could Determine Amazon’s Publishing Future

Amazon is in an interesting position. The company lost money last quarter, despite taking in more than $13 billion in that period.  That’s about $150 million in revenue every day. On the other hand, they are investing in their infrastructure. By building warehouses to speed up their delivery capabilities they will be an even bigger force soon.

It owns a good chunk of the book market – about 1 in 4 books sold in America come from Amazon. For e-books, it owns 55% of the market. But its new publishing line (Amazon Publishing) is largely being boycotted by most independent bookstores and all 689 Barnes and Noble stores.

Amazon’s biggest book will be released November 29^th, The 4-Hour Chef by Timothy Ferriss. The industry eagerly awaits the results. Amazon continually pushes for exclusivity deals with authors, literary agents, and other publishers, prohibiting stores from offering certain ebooks to its customers. As a result, the stores and some publishers have fought back.

The arbiters of the publishing wars will be the consumers and they will dictate what the book publishing and retailing landscape will look like when they vote with their wallets this holiday season. Depending on the outcome of this cliffhanger, the story may be turned into a movie.

Or at least a book, one in which one of the current big players won’t get a chance to sell.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This blog is copyrighted material by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2012 ©