I do understand that.

I have mental associations with certain publishers: I’d say Harlequin has done one of the best jobs with that over the years. People want to buy a Harlequin romance…that’s probably more important and a bigger selling point than who the author is.

I have a sense of Ace Doubles, Penguin Classics, Black Lizard, and Del Rey (among many others).

However, websites are destinations…you have to choose to go away from where you are now and go there. I think that’s going to be a problem for Bookish. People are already going to Amazon…what will make them change that familiar destination to an unfamiliar one?

And that’s why I don’t care who the publisher is, and why I’ll probably not even look into bookish. I don’t care about author interviews, or being social about my books, I care about whether I’ll like reading the book or not.

You make good points.

I “gave some advice” to traditional publishers last year

http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/some-suggestions-for-traditional-publishers/

and one of my key points was that they should “put a face” on the business. A publisher has to be a person…sort of like some sports figures: think George Steinbrenner and the Yankees. The Huffington Post is part of this deal, and they get it…if we didn’t know Ariana Huffington, it would have had a very different and more difficult path to where it is now.

There might be concern about what happens when a public figure can no longer perform that duty, but the succession should also be an event.

Imagine Stephen King becoming a publisher…not just a blurbster for books published by other people. It wouldn’t just be his name, but his sensibility that would attract people.

Your idea of interconnected universes leverages strengths of the publishers…one of them being the ability to fail in some endeavours and still succeed overall. If you did one hundred books, some from established authors, some from brand new ones, you spread the risk. You find authors you can build, and that’s what they’ve done well.

I was thinking Amazon might do some kind of membership/subscription thing…they could do that effectively.

I don’t know that the publishers are out of it, but they have taken some solid body blows. They need to think about giving us a clear connection to a sensibility…and a person is the easiest way to do that.

I’m envisioning a whole swathe of micro-imprints that publish at the rate people consume books – very slowly, on average – but which have huge customer loyalty (like tv shows, or blogs) because their themes or series are tightly focused, and far better than the average indie. I don’t know how easy it would be to move from single-author-series to shared-universe to thematically-linked-collection while keeping customers. But if you could… Because the way charge for curational services is by subscription. I wonder how economical it would work out if you could charge a subscription for a feed of each imprint.

Interestingly, I actually wrote the word you used first…then changed it to “seduced”. Suckered suggests fooling people…I do like the stories about P.T. Barnum. “Suckered” is more one-way for me…when people followed the sign that Barnum put up that said, “This way to the egress”, not knowing that the word meant “Exit”, and ended up outside and had to pay to get in again…they weren’t really participating in the process. That’s one of the most complex sentences I’ve written here! When you seduce somebody, that person is participating, is wanting to get something out of it, too. One side is leading…but both sides are involved actively. The publishers thought they were putting something over somebody, too.

This is just what it connotes to me, but suckers are innocent…that’s why I went with seduced.

I’m with you…I’ve gotten the same public domain book twice (once from Amazon, once from Feedbooks) so I could have both the Kindle service and a better formatted version.

The question for me is, why don’t they put those author interviews on the author’s Amazon Author Central page? I mean, if the concern is people seeing it, won’t more people see it there?

It’s hard for me to come up with a reason why I would go to a publisher site to buy a book, when I already have a (happy) relationship with Amazon. Why have one more place where I have to create an account and give my credit card and risk it being stolen from their servers? Plus, I know the book is available on all the reading devices linked to my account, so I can read it on my Kindle, and my husband can read it on his Kindle, and my daughter can read it on her Kindle, and I can read it on my iPhone if my Kindle’s not available, picking up where I left off on my Kindle. Is a publisher site going to give me that? Or is their idea of enhanced content author interviews? (Not that I don’t like author interviews, just that I’d rather have Whispersync!)

I appreciate the kind words.

Yes, I understand. I did know who the publishers were, but that was partially informed by having been a bookstore manager. They should have seized the reins sooner. I do feel a bit like they were seduced by Apple on this…