Agent Submission To Amazon

Amazon has been making inroads into publishing by starting up their own house, with former agent Larry Kirschbaum at its head.

It didn't take long for bookstores to declare that they would not stock an Amazon title on their shelves. Why help the competition that threatens to eat you alive? Especially Barnes & Noble, which is going head to head against Amazon online and losing.

The first big release from Amazon Publishing, Penny Marshall's memoirs, did not fare well in hard copy, to the glee of those who need the venture to fail if they are to survive. As anyone in the trade would tell you, getting a book into an actual, physical store is what drives sales. People see it, pick it up, thumb through a few pages. If it isn't there for touching, it's out of sight and out of mind.

As an author, would that not cause you to think twice before your literary agent submitted a manuscript to Amazon Publishing?

Maybe David Shapiro is completely in tune with the online world. He's editing his magazine there, after all.

Now he's written a book, and his agent Paul Lucas has sold it...to Amazon Publishing.

It will make for an interesting marketing campaign, with no bookstores stocking the thing when it's laid down. All the buzz will have to be generated in cyberspace, but can digital experiences match that of picking up a book in a shop and cracking it open to read the first pages?

Thus far, it's all part of a grand experiment, to see which direction publishing will take and if a new competitor can make inroads.

Is Amazon hoping that demand for Mr. Shapiro's tome will force bookstores to stock it, pushed by their clientele who will demand it?

Or is it a case of Amazon outbidding everyone else, and Mr. Lucas taking the bigger payout for his client. After all, if the book goes anywhere, there's a better chance that a major publisher will pick up the next one, and then Mr. Shapiro can walk into his nearest bookstore and see his work sitting on the front table in a place of high traffic.

Mr. Shapiro has a platform to promote his upcoming debut, a large online presence with an audience. Whether or not that will be enough to generate book sales will not be known until it happens. Or doesn't.

Odds are, the losers in the auction for the book are hoping for the latter.