All Agencies Great and Small: Part 2

I'm not sure that authors understand the structures of literary agencies much better than they understand those of publishing companies. For those of you who are shopping for an agent or thinking of switching agencies, or who are simply interested in organizational dynamics, it might be interesting to compare agencies of different sizes and structures and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type. In the first installment of this piece we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of sole practitioner literary agencies.

With the introduction of a second person into the agency - even a secretary with no discretionary power - the dynamics of the firm usually alter sharply

To read more, click here.

Sixty Years Later, the Lesson of Korea Still Goes Unheeded

This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach is the most comprehensive single-volume history of the Korean-American conflict that began in 1950 and is still affecting United States' foreign policy,. This ill conceived action tells us as much about how not to conduct a war as how to conduct one. The action was gritty and often brutal, with hand-to-hand combat in the middle of moonless nights to defend naked patches of hillside. Fehrenbach easily shifts from killing ground to the highest precincts of Washington power, chronicling the decisions that led to military and political blunders resulting in a profligate loss of American lives.

The author, an officer in the conflict, provides us with accounts of combat that could only have been written by an eyewitness in the thick of the action. But what truly sets this book apart from other military memoirs is the piercing analysis of the global political maneuvering behind the vicious ground warfare. Tragically, the Korean War has been all but forgotten in public memory. But not in the minds of military leaders, who reverently study Fehrenbach's book at West Point and in the Pentagon as a model of historical narration.

Hailed as "a must for all soldiers and former soldiers" by an Amazon.com reviewer, This Kind of War restores the Korean War to its rightful place in American history - as a touchstone for United States foreign engagement and a lesson for politicians ready to shed American blood on faraway soil. Judging by Vietnam and Iraq, the lesson has not been learned at all.,

"This Kind of War has been studied by two generations of soldiers. Fehrenbach describes good decisions and bad ones with insight and expertise. But what he does best of all, and what is so memorable, is his eloquent, sometimes painful description of the GIs who must bear the burden of those decisions. That is the awful beauty of this book - it cuts straight to the heart of all the political and military errors and reveals the brave souls who have to bleed and die for mistakes made. A timely reissue of a military classic."
--General Colin L. Powell, Former Secretary of State

During World War II, the author served with the U.S. Infantry and Engineers as Platoon Sergeant with an engineer battalion. He continued his military career in the Korean War, rising from Platoon Leader to Company Commander and then to Battalion Staff Officer of the 72nd Tank battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. His most enduring work is Lone Star, a one-volume history of Texas that E-Reads is also honored to publish. He now devotes his time to writing a political column for a San Antonio newspaper.

- Richard Curtis

Amazon Releases "Missionary" Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has gone public with the company's annual message to shareholders highlighting its achievements with Kindle and congratulating the company for all that it has achieved in the past ten years.

"We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools," says Bezos. "I realize my tone here tends toward the missionary, and I can assure you its heartfelt. It's also not unique to me but is shared by a large groups of folks here. I'm glad about that because missionaries build better products."

Though the company has attracted battalions of critics, as any giant and powerful corporation will do, the congratulations are well deserved. Amazon has not only revolutionized bookselling, it has revitalized the publishing business.

As an e-book missionary myself (with the scars to prove it), I hail Bezos and his Amazon team and look forward to more of his zealous annual letters to shareholders, customers, and publishing people.

- Richard Curtis

Amazon Goes "Back to Press" With New Supply of Kindles

Amazon announced today that has replenished the stock of Kindles, and they're available for immediate supply to customers. According to Amazon's press release, the retail behemoth has added some 25,000 new books, blogs, newspapers and other items, bringing the total available selection to 115,000.

Although Amazon reported some 2000 reviews of the Kindle since its release, there was no mention of plans to upgrade the device, though bloggers and critics have pointed out lots of ways Kindle could be improved.

- Richard Curtis

A War Game Called on Account of War

War games are essential to simulating battle conditions without anyone getting hurt. In order to test the U.S. Special Operations Command's ability to respond swiftly to a threat by China, a computer genius simulates a retaliatory strike. But a political crackdown in China so enrages the programmer that he converts his simulation to the real thing. To forestall a massive US attack on the People's Republic, Dragon Team leader Dave Riley must infiltrate China's borders and execute a treacherously dangerous mission.

That's the premise of Dragon Sim 13 by Bob Mayer, a West Point graduate, Special Forces veteran and author of numerous thrillers. He wrote Dragon Sim 13 before the "Sleeping Giant," as China was known in the 20th century, awakened. It awakened with a vengeance in the 21st century, and today Mayer's scenario is almost too frighteningly real to contemplate.

- Richard Curtis

Burn, Which, Burn!

The good news is that book editors are now reading manuscript submissions on Sony E-Book Readers and Amazon Kindles. But agent Richard Curtis reminds us that one unwelcome byproduct of this innovation is that Word for Windows documents, the format of choice for most authors, display typographical and grammatical errors in the form of glaring red and green underlines that distract editors and might even make them question your writing skills. To read Curtis's analysis of what writers should do about all those "Reddies" and "Greenies", click here.

The Faithful - Chapter Six (Obamentum)

In Chapter 6 (Obamentum) of The Faithful, New York Times reporter Jilly Norton is hot on the trail of sex scandals in the campaign workers, and now a spy in the Obama organization has confirmed every sordid detail. He -- or is it she? - is referred to only as X. But Thomas has a wicked ploy up his sleeve to thwart the dogged journalist's expose.

Roberto Clemente: The First and Still the Best

Pittsburgh Pirate superstar Roberto Clemente died doing the two things he loved best: playing ball and helping people. His death in 1972 is as large a legend as his life. He was active in providing food, medicine and baseball equipment to underprivileged Latin American countries, but tragically his plane went down delivering aid to Nicaraguan earthquake victims.

His body was never found. But his memory lives on, and so do his Major League records. He played in twelve All Star Games and won twelve Gold Gloves. He led the National League in batting average four time and was its Most Valuable Player in 1966. During the course of his career, Clemente was selected to participate in the league's All Star Game on twelve occasions. He won twelve Gold Glove Awards and led the league in batting average four different seasons. And he was the first Latin American player to be recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yet, none of this captures the charisma of the man. But Kal Wagenheim's Clemente! does, and we commend it to you.

- Richard Curtis

All Agencies Great and Small - Part 1

I'm not sure that authors understand the structures of literary agencies much better than they understand those of publishing companies. For those of you who are shopping for an agent or thinking of switching agencies, or who are simply interested in organizational dynamics, it might be interesting to compare agencies of different sizes and structures and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type.

To read more, click here.

Heidi Betts' A Promise of Roses

I am so excited that A Promise of Roses is being re-released as an e-book by E-Reads!
When this book (the second in my “Rose” trilogy) first came out in 2000, I heard from many readers who enjoyed the story. But since the title went out of print soon after its original release, I have been contacted by even more readers who want to know why A Promise of Roses is so hard to find and where can they buy a copy.

Now, finally, I have an answer for them! I can’t wait to be able to point them toward E-Reads, letting them know that this story is now available again in an e-book format, and will soon also be available in trade size at Amazon.com, with more of my hard-to-find titles to follow.

Heidi Betts

An Interstellar Manhunter Scores His First Bounty

William C. Dietz's bounty hunter Sam McCade has been chasing the scum of the Terran Empire since 1986 when Dietz turned him loose in War World, now entitled Galactic Bounty. Dietz brought his ass-kicking hero back for three more novels (Imperial Bounty, Alien Bounty, and McCade's Bounty), which E-Reads is happy to be releasing in e-book form for the first time ever. (You can also buy Ace's paperback editions, McCade for Hire and McCade on The Run, which embrace the first and last two volumes respectively.) In time we will be issuing other Dietz classics, so watch this space for news in due time.

We asked Bill Dietz to write something about our e-book edition and here's what he had to say:

“I’m going to write a novel by the time I’m forty. Even if it isn’t any good, even if it doesn’t sell, even if it just sits in a drawer and rots! But at least I’ll finish one.” That’s what I told myself for more than fifteen years. But I woke up one day to discover that I was thirty-nine, and hadn’t written a single page yet!

To read more, click here for the complete special introduction to Galactic Bounty.

- Richard Curtis

A Missouri Feminist Captures Shanghai

I don't usually send visitors away from our website to visit another, because I'm afraid they may never come back. But I'll take my chances by telling you that you absolutely must must must read the Wikipedia entry on Emily Hahn. You may be so entranced that you forget to return to our website. But please do come back to hear about China to Me: A Partial Autobiography, a memoir by one of the most remarkable women of the Twentieth Century.

The New Yorker called her "a Forgotten American literary treasure" and she certainly was that. But she was a treasure in so many other ways that it's almost impossible to wrap your arms around them. If I tell you that she was a revolutionary, a radical feminist, an adroit diplomat without portfolio, a sociologist, a chemical engineer, and a lover (she was the concubine of a Shanghai poet who hooked her on opium), I will have merely grazed the surface. As a feminist she fought tooth and nail against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the Victorian Era (and didn't do much for her in China, you may be sure). And she was an advocate for the environment until her death at the age of ninety-two.

Oh - and did I mention she was drop-dead gorgeous? That's her picture on the cover.

China to Me takes you on a breathtaking journey through the China of the 1930s that extends from the highest courts of political power to the personal lives of Asian prostitutes.

The best way to reconstruct her life is through her fifty-two books, of which E-Reads currently has two with more on the way.

- Richard Curtis

The Faithful - Chapter Five (Obamania)

In Chapter Five of The Faithful (Obamania), the game of musical sex partners comes to an abrupt halt after a stunning public announcement, and Chloe is left standing alone. And there's major trouble on the horizon: a New York Times journalist has gotten wind of the behind-the-campaign high jinks, and if she actually has the real goods it could blow "Obamentum" sky-high.

Do Agents Have Clout?

Whenever authors gather to discuss the merits of their agents (it may legitimately be wondered whether they ever discuss anything else), the word "clout" inevitably enters the conversation. Clout is the measure of an agent's influence over publishers, and though it is by no means the sole criterion by which agents are judged, it is certainly the ultimate one. What is clout? How do agents wield it? And is it everything we crack it up to be?

To read more, click here.

The Cannibal Who Dined on Democrats

In 1873, Alferd Packer (that seems to be the way he spelled his name) led 21 men from Utah to the gold fields of Colorado. Three months later he came back to civilization alone, guarding the terrible secret of what he had done there. To this day, no one knows what really happened on that fateful expedition. But there is strong evidence that when the party got hopelessly lost, ran out of provisions, and became snowbound in the Rocky Mountains, one of starving men satisfied his appetite by roasting some of his companions. Packer claims he killed the miscreant, and there was no one to contradict him when he returned. But he himself was subsequently tried for cannibalism, and the judge is alleged to have burst out, "Packer, you depraved Republican son of a bitch! There were only five Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate them all!"

Western novelist and journalist Ken Hodgson has reconstructed this story in Lone Survivor and unless you too have a stomach for roasted Democrats, you may find yourself off your feed for a few days after reading Hodgson's gripping account.

- Richard Curtis

"The best constructed hard SF epic yet."

That's how The Washington Post greeted Greg Bear's Eon.

The passing of the colossus Arthur C. Clarke reminds us that Greg Bear has frequently been mentioned as the heir to Clarke's mantle, and it was novels like Eon that inspired what would otherwise be considered a presumptuous comparison. But in the dimension of its concepts and Bear's vision, his near-encyclopedic command of science, government, civilizations ancient and future, the mantle clearly fits comfortably on his shoulders. Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, said, "Sharing aspects of Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, its uniqueness arises from Bear's bold imagination. Bear is a writer of passionate vision. EON is his grandest work yet." Isaac Asimov Magazine's reviewer was even more fulsome: "The only word for it really is blockbuster. It is big and breathtaking; the story and the concepts are ambitious to the point of mind boggling."

Download the E-Reads e-book edition or buy the Tor paperback.

- Richard Curtis

The Two Worlds of Literature

I'm happy to announce that E-Reads has created a space for me to share my observations on the current publishing scene and to reprint previously published articles and chapters from my books about writing.

The inaugural post is an essay I wrote some years ago addressing the artificial distinction between serious and popular literature. It's called The Two Worlds of Literature.

"When I went into the publishing business after graduating from college, I discovered a literary culture so lastly different from the ones I had studied that I could scarcely find any common ground between them. This world was populated by romance, science fiction and fantasy, and male action-adventure writers, by pulpsters, pornographers, and countless others who earn their living producing genre books.

Since then, I have become a citizen of that world, both as a writer and as a literary agent representing other writers of category fiction. I have come to know and respect, to admire and even love this world and its denizens and have had the privilege of attending the birth of some works that have come to be regarded as masterpieces of their genres. But I have also become increasingly concerned about how little is known about this world by the writers and critics who dominate the world of serious literature. And I've concluded that we are all a little poorer for these gaps in awareness, appreciation, and communication."

To read more, click here.

The Faithful - Chapter Four (Star Power)

In this week's installment, Chapter Four (Star Power) of The Faitfhful, an Obama campaigner reveals a passion for rough sex and the bruises to prove it.

The Royal Kennedy Men

Unparalleled by any other family in the history of our nation, the Kennedys have become a legend for the scandals, the love and the mysteries that surround them. The Kennedy Men: Three Generations of Sex, Scandal and Secrets uncovers the truth about this long-admired family. Learn what they have endured and the truth about the men who play by their own rules: JFK’s rumored first marriage; President Kennedy’s Oval Office tapes; the night Marilyn Monroe died and the subsequent cover-up; the Good Friday rape case; Teddy Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick tragedy. Unfortunately, not long before publication of the original edition, another celebrated Kennedy man, JFK's son John-John, died in a plane accident.

Nellie Bly is author of the New York Times bestseller, Oprah: Up Close and Down Home, as well as biographies of Barbra Streisand and Marlon Brando.

Here's what one Amazon reviewer says:
Nellie Bly details the peccadilloes of the Kennedy men from the 1900's to the 1990's. We get the lowdown on Gloria Swanson, Marilyn Monroe, Judith Campbell, Chappaquiddick, Joe II's jeep accident that left a young woman paralyzed, the drug use and the arrests of the third generation men, and so on. Joe Kennedy Sr. told his sons "If there's a piece of cake on your plate, take it". You have to admire the women that stuck it out with these guys. A good read for those interested in the Kennedys.

- Richard Curtis

Direct Sales: British Pubishers and Amazon Throw Elbows

My prognostication of war between publishers and retailers is less than a week old and the first clash of arms has already taken place. A price war, pitting a powerful publishing group and Amazon, has broken out in England over the very issues aired in my blog, Direct Sales: Publishing's Last Stand. Penguin, Bloomsbury and several other publishers are offering some titles directly to the consumer at discounts higher than those offered by retailer Amazon. Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent for The Times (of London, not New York) reports (Amazon Furious After Publishers Undercut Its Book Prices Online) that, "Penguin’s online store has reduced a boxed set of 20 Penguin Epics from £100 to £55. Amazon sells the collection at £98.64. Bloomsbury offers a 25 per cent discount on all its books, with free postage and packing on British deliveries over £20."

Publishers fear that Amazon will retaliate, and publishers on the other side of the pond will be watching anxiously. Publishers on this side of the pond should be just as attentive. This is no small matter. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers have a lot to lose if publishers gain a toehold in the competition for sales to consumers.

Watch this space for more news. Helmet and body armor recommended: you are entering a war zone.

- Richard Curtis

Dead Men Fighting

Originally published in 1980, The Eternity Brigade was thrice ahead of its time. Author Stephen Goldin wove themes of cryogenic freezing, cloning and genetic engineering into this compelling story of an army of near-dead warriors suspended cryogenically until the call to arms raises them from their slumber to hurl themselves into battle with an evil foe. But Goldin puts a twist into their stories: these warriors are not treated as men but as fighting machines to be endlessly duplicated and used up. By having had their genetic patterns programmed into a computer, they are doomed to live over and over again, as part of an army that will not die and cannot escape.

One man is determined to break the pattern and free himself, truly believing that there must be a way out...of eternity.

Raegan Butcher, reviewing the book for Amazon.com, hailed it as a "Near Classic":
"I first read this book when it was published back in the early 1980's and it is easily found in 2nd hand shops all over the country. I think I've purchased about five copies so far over the course of my life but keep giving them away as gifts; Along with Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, this is the best depiction of disenfranchised victims of the corporate-imperial combine ever depicted in the science fiction genre. This book is really much more layered and complex than the lurid cover illustration of the old paperback edition from the first printing in 1980 would seem to suggest. One of the books that this reminds me of the most is All Quiet on the Western Front, believe it or not, particularly in the passages that describe the soldiers difficulties in adjusting to life outside the war; they remind me very much of the feelings of alienation experienced by the doomed protagonist from the earlier novel when he is sent home on two weeks leave."

E-Reads carries other first-rate Stephen Goldin novels and I hope you'll tackle them after you finish -- and contemplate -- The Eternity Brigade.

- Richard Curtis

A Heart-Eating Monster You Hate to Love

One of the many wildly enthusiastic authors greeting Rex Miller's horrifying debut thriller Slob wrote, "...tasty as a blood sundae. The only question is, What does Killer Miller do for an encore?”

The answer is, he wrote six more novels featuring Chaingang, the vilest killer you will ever encounter in fiction, and E-Reads publishes all of them.

I realize that warning readers that "this book is not for the weak-hearted" is usually hype, but I urge you to take my warning literally. If you are timid about looking squarely into the eyes of death personified, click away before it's too late and visit our Romance section. Just to reinforce my warning, I'm reproducing below endorsements from the likes of Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Graham Masterton, Steve Rasnic Tem, Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Coyne, Tom Monteleone, Alan Nourse and Piers Anthony.

One of the most amazing things about these books is that Miller managed to make you feel sympathy and even empathy for its repulsive anti-hero, thus making Chaingang a cult figure that readers not only love to hate, but even more astonishingly hate to love as well.

And speaking of looking evil in the eyes, The cover of the original Pocket Books paperback edition of Chaingang, one of Slob's sequels, was so revolting that an associate of mine begged me not to display it in our offices, lest it give her nightmares. It was a "step-back" cover showing Chaingang's porcine eyes gazing hungrily at you through a slit in the door of his padded cell as if hoping your heart was his next lunch. But when you turned to the stepped-back cover (the one behind the jacket), you saw Chaingang in all his revolting, mesmerizing awfulness. I don't think I've ever seen a better example of an artist bringing a character to life, and to tell the truth it gave me nightmares too. If you look closely you can glimpse it on the spine of the Pocket Books jacket picture but if anyone can provide the full image of that step-back, you'll earn my eternal gratitude.

If you're curious about Rex Miller, click here.

- Richard Curtis

“Terrifying and original...Almost too crudely terrifying to be read...but it is too compelling to put down.... Marks the debut of a writer able to bring the dynamite in both hands.... A cause for rejoicing.”
–-Stephen King

“SLOB really smokes. It’s got muscle it hasn’t even used yet. It’s the place where old John D. used to work before Travis McGee got winded. Cain and Dutch Leonard and Jim Thompson and Jim Tully sing in these pages. Caniff’s rhythm and smart talk, Hemingway’s mean, Alfie Bester’s cinematography. It pulls the plow, this writing.”
–-Harlan Ellison

“Terrific! Rex Miller writes like a truck-driver tailgating you at 80 mph.... [Chaingang] induces genuine panic—-making you read faster than you wanted to—-too scared to go on, too terrified to stop.”
–-Graham Masterton

“Rex Miller is terrific. [Chaingang] scratches itches I didn’t know I had.”
--Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Graphic...unsettling...brutal...hypnotic...gritty ...riveting!”
–Rave Reviews

“We need these periodic trips into the human heart of darkness. Rex Miller undertakes this journey with uncompromising language and story. This is no fairytale vision of evil. This is the real thing.”
-–Steve Rasnic Tem

“Literally mind-stunning, a Hitchcockian chase through one man’s modern underworld!”
-–John Coyne

“Words like powerful, visceral and monstrous don’t even begin to describe the kind of book SLOB is. There is a primal energy at work here that won’t quit. When you open this book you are grabbed by the throat, yanked down into darkness, and dragged along on a gut-churning ride. From there, it’s a nonstop journey to the final page.”
-–Thomas F. Monteleone

“Flashes of real brilliance...scenes so chilling, so repugnant, so seamlessly portrayed in their intensity that they can’t help but tear a reaction from the reader...Astonishing.”
-–Charles de Lint

“Cheerfully malevolent...[Chaingang] was an abused child who then went through the meat grinder of state care, became a murderer, a Vietnam vet and, finally, a serial killer.... Fans for whom Stephen King doesn’t write fast enough...should have a ripping good time.”
–-Publishers Weekly

“A tour de force...tasty as a blood sundae. The only question is, What does Killer Miller do for an encore?”
-–Alan E. Nourse

“Intense, ugly, effective, and eerily persuasive. Rex Miller is a writer to watch!”
-–Piers Anthony

The Faithful - Chapter Three ("Yes, We Can!")

In this week's installment, Chapter Three ("Yes, We Can!"), of The Faitfhful, a glamorous friend of Oprah solves the mystery of the missing engagement ring. And Kanesha turns up ravaged - was she attacked, or was it consensual?

Direct Sales: Publishing’s Last Stand

Amazon’s recent threat to coerce small presses into using its print on demand subsidiary BookSurge left the publishing community quaking. A coalition of Ingram, LightningSource, and publishers large and small - all escorted by mosquito squadrons of furious bloggers (like Angela Hoy) – has for the moment driven the beast back into its cage.


Lest you congratulate yourself, I have some bad news for you: BookSurge was merely a skirmish. There are war clouds on the horizon, and a decisive showdown between publishers and booksellers is shaping up. At stake: the revenue generated by retail sales of books to consumers. Publishers outsourced retail a long time ago, but now they want it back. In fact, they must have it back; it’s a matter of survival.

There are two ways to sell books today: one is through independent bookshops or bookstore chains, the other by mail order.

Bookstores

However quaint ye olde booke shoppes may once have been, modern bookstore retailing is dominated by behemoth Barnes & Noble. By aggressively building mall outlets and superstores to drive out competition, promoting frontlist blockbusters and superstar authors, and by maneuvering publishers into total financial dependency, B&N has aggrandized itself at the expense the publishing industry. It has also taken cruel advantage of the fact that books are returnable for full credit, placing the full burden of risk on the shoulders of publishers and contributing to a soaring return rate for trade books of 50% or even higher. To make things worse, B&N owns a publishing company, putting it in direct competition with its own purveyors and undercutting them with its own store-brand titles.

Mail Order

As for mail order sales, only a few decades ago these were a significant contributor to publisher revenues. The rise of book clubs largely took that function out of publishers’ hands, and Amazon.com finished the job - finished it with a vengeance. Capitalizing on the coming of age of the Internet, Amazon became not just the leading purveyor of mail order books; it became in effect the only one. Buying books from publishers at a discount of roughly 50% and reselling them at about a 20% markup gives Amazon its profit margin. Super-efficient service, brilliant marketing, first-rate catalogue information and ingenious bells and whistles like Behind-the-Book, peer reviews, bestseller rankings, free shipping on certain sales, and yes, even its used-book marketplace, have given Amazon a near monopoly over online sale of books.

Publishers have awoken to the horrible realization that by allowing themselves to be taken hostage by Barnes & Noble and Amazon, they made bargains with the Devil. As their profit margins wear down to transparent thinness, they understand they must recapture the advantage or risk being marginalized even more than they are now. The Amazon/BookSurge scare has made them realize that the slippery slope to total surrender is to let Amazon print their books for them. For, if Amazon becomes both printer and distributor, it will leave publishers with little to do besides acquire and edit, thus becoming glorified book packagers for the Amazon Publishing Company.

There is only one way for publishers to recover the initiative, and that is to sell books directly to the consumer. Which is precisely what they have started to do. Go to the websites of most publishers and you’ll see that you can indeed purchase their titles without having to go to a bookstore or logging on to Amazon.com. When you look at the prices, however, you realize there’s something wrong: most of their titles are sold at full list price or close to it. Wouldn’t they be more competitive if they gave their customers a discount?

Of course they would. But they can’t, for the simple reason that discounting their books puts them into direct competition with their retailers. As long as they depend on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other third-party retailers, they cannot cut prices.

Obviously, retailers hold the high ground and their position would seem to be all but unassailable, except for one critical factor: as big as they are, retailers are intermediaries in a world that is rapidly disintermediating. And, as we have seen in every major business from movies to music to banking to newspapers, no retailer is invulnerable to market forces bent on eliminating middlemen in favor of a one-on-one relationship between supplier and consumer.

Enter direct marketing. Today publishers are sticking a cautious toe in the water. But it will not stop there. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if the only source of profit (to say nothing of independence and dignity) left to publishers is consumer retailing, they will step up their activities in this area until in time they are in a position to challenge the Barnes & Nobles and Amazons. Though the only weapon they have is their content, that may be more than enough to vanquish these Goliaths.

Aux barricades!

- Richard Curtis

Pictured above: "Kong Versus Carnosaur," copyright 2004 by Joe Devito Artwork, LLC. All rights reserved. My heartfelt thanks to Joe for personally granting permission for this beautiful painting from his excellent book, Kong: King of Skull Island.