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.
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