Bloomberg Businessweek has a five-page profile on former publisher turned literary agent Larry Kirshbaum, who Amazon picked to head up its publishing division that is stirring up so much fear and loathing in the publishing industry. (The title of the piece, “Amazon’s Hit Man”, and the cover of the magazine issue featuring a burning book with the all-caps block-letter legend “AMAZON WANTS TO BURN THE BOOK BUSINESS” might be taken as some indication of that.)
For all that the title and magazine cover are a bit (literally) inflammatory, the article is a reasonably balanced look at Kirshbaum’s career and the history of the controversy and animosity that has sprung up between Amazon and the publishing industry.
Kirshbaum’s connections with Amazon go all the way back to 1997, when he introduced Jeff Bezos to publishing-industry magnates at a party thrown by Rupert Murdoch. He had been in publishing since the early 1970s, and became chairman and CEO of Warner Books, where he spent three decades before retiring to become a literary agent. However, publishing was where his heart really was, and when Amazon offered him a position heading up its own internal publishing imprint, he jumped at the chance.
Needless to say, many of Kirshbaum’s former colleagues in the publishing industry have not been terribly enthusiastic to hear that he has joined the company whose pricing practices are in danger of putting their companies out of business. But the literary agents who have worked with him over the years are much happier about it:
As he began to work on Amazon’s behalf last summer, agents, at least, were excited, because getting deep-pocketed Amazon into the game of bidding for books could translate into larger advances. “I want to do business with Larry wherever he is,” says agent Scott Waxman, who sold Amazon the Bob Knight book. “Do I think this is something that would make the Big Six publishers uncomfortable? Yes, with a big capital Y.”
It was interesting to see the description of Amazon’s Kindle launch wherein Bezos sprung a big surprise on the publishers who had up until then been extremely cooperative in preparing e-book editions for Amazon to sell. Bezos’s promise that New York Times bestsellers would go for $9.99 or less did not endear him to those publishers, as this was the first they had heard about it.
Another point that caught my attention was that Kirshbaum was an early proponent of e-books, and convinced Time Warner to invest $10 million in publishing for the Rocketbook. (As an aside, I’d just like to mention how old it makes me feel to hear the Rocketbook referred to as an “early e-reading device.”) Of course, it took the Kindle to make e-reading really popular.
At any rate, Amazon clearly could not have picked a better executive to head up its publishing division. It remains to be seen how well its publishing efforts will go over when it tries to place its books in the bookstores that it is also trying to put out of business, but given where Bezos’s razor-sharp business acuity has led him so far, I’m not about to say he’ll fail just yet.
(Found via Galleycat.)
