James Atlas will be selling a series of short (25,000-40,000 words long) biographies for Amazon called “Amazon Lives.” He will buy and edit at least 12 of them. Aside from the Kindle Store, these books will be sold through eTail “[…] in all formats.”
In addition to working for Amazon, James manages Atlas & Co., an independent publishing company, but he will no longer publish new titles there.
The New York Times reports that the first title will be published in June 2013.
Amazon’s move to e-book non-exclusivity might change Barnes & Noble’s decision not to carry print versions of Amazon Publishing titles.
E-books are becoming more popular and available. Many libraries and colleges are lending e-readers and building their e-books collections. Kindle Owners’ Lending Library now offers more than 100,000 titles and anyone who owns a Kindle and an Amazon Plus membership can download one book a month for free.
Joe Lansdale, author of the “Hap and Leonard” stories discussed how he believed e-books would impact the prevalence of real books in an exclusive Q&A with WebProNews writer Chris Crum. In a recent Facebook update, Lansdale said, “I think there will always be real books, but they are going to be a smaller, and probably more collector type of market. Some publishers are even considering moving that way more and more, so this could be good for small presses, as far as real books go.” Lansdale also said that some of the growth of e-books can be attributed to people’s lack of desire to have books laying around in their homes, collecting dust and taking up space.
Despite e-book innovation, many people believe that real books will always have their place in the world.