Amazon as Publisher?

I remember when Barnes and Noble started publishing its own classics, competing in the public domain sector, and then in the non-public domain sector with its Spark Notes. Many thought this was an unfair advantage.

Now some, like Sramana Mitra at Forbes.com, think that Amazon's next move will be to cut out traditional publishers and become a publisher themselves. In her commentary, Sramana explains that with BookSurge, Amazon is in a position to cut out the middleman--e.g., the publisher--and offer the authors better advances than the traditional paradigm does.

There is already a discussion going on at Forbes.com regarding this, and I found it interesting to see how many of the commentors did not believe that Amazon would treat their authors better.

I agree that the author/publisher relationship should be reevaluated with the advent of new publishing models and technology, and HarperCollins' new imprint will be pioneering this, but do people not realize how much more than just printing a publisher does? Who will edit, copyedit, and proofread the manuscript? Who will design and market the book? Will Amazon hire all these resources? If they do, there goes the author advance.

My first publishing job was at an STM (scientific, medical, technical) publisher. My sister was studying to be a pharmacist at the time and often complained about the price of a textbook. I remember trying to explain to her what went into creating that two or four-color 400-plus page textbook, and how the publisher was lucky if they came out ahead and actually made a profit.

It costs money to put out quality products, whether they be books, automobiles, or clothing. With POD technology, the author can cut out the publisher, but as I've written before, unless he is than ready to hire the resources the publisher has and makes readily available to him, the quality of his book will suffer.

The ultimate question is, will the market be discerning enough to boycott these shoddy books? Only time will tell...but I personally do not buy self-published books for that reason.