Self-Publishing through Amazon

Check out this fascinating article in the NYTimes about how Amazon is partnering with authors to publish their books directly to readers - without publishers. To wit:

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. ... Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.

Amazon has started giving all authors, whether it publishes them or not, direct access to highly coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records how many physical books they are selling in individual markets like Milwaukee or New Orleans. It is introducing the sort of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans that used to happen only on book tours. It made an obscure German historical novel a runaway best seller without a single professional reviewer weighing in.

In short, not content with killing off bookstores, Amazon is going after the publishers as well.