Barnes & Noble gives DC Comics the finger!

Well the digital world is heating up a bit.  Last week DC Comics made an announcement that they would be offering 100 new comics exclusively to the Kindle Fire.  Apparently that hit a nerve with the nation's largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, because they've retaliated by yanking all DC Comics from their brick & mortar locations and now it's on like Donkey Kong!

According to a Barnes & Noble executive, "To sell and promote the physical book in our store showrooms and not have the e-book available for sale would undermine our promise to Barnes & Noble customers to make available any book, anywhere, anytime."  Customers won’t even be allowed to special order the comics unless they have them delivered to their own homes.

Ouch!

Honestly, B&N's position sounds reasonable but this still feels like watching a particularly vicious game of dodge ball at recess.  Who’ll chicken out first?  Who knows but the consumers are the ones inconvenienced in the meantime.

Stay Naughty,

Minx

Larry Kirshbaum Will Head Amazon's NYC office

In a surprising move, Amazon has taken the final step toward establishing a New York presence. They hired  literary agent and former Time-Warner CEO, Larry Kirshbaum to head their publishing house, effective July 5, 2011.

For many, Amazon has been a symbol of the "anti-publisher", the independent publishing movemement's mascot in a way. It will be interesting to see if Amazon starts to cut back on options for independent publishers and tries to refer them to one of their own imprints.  Amazon already has genre-specific imprints for romance (Montlake) and mystery/thriller (Thomas & Mercer).  No one was threatened by the original imprints Amazon Encore and AmazonCrossing. 

With RITA winner Connie Brockway as the debut athor for their Montlake imprint, it seems as if Amazon is taking over the world.

Let's just hope it's a world that indie publishers are still welcome to play in too.