The Amazon announcement which I wrote about earlier in the week is generating a great deal of debate. Mark Thwaite, who is managing editor of The Book Depository has contributed an interesting piece with good comments to the Bookseller blog with the same title as I've used here.

I have also been granted permission to reprint an excellent article about it by Dan Penny at Outsell. The only place where I fundamentally disagree with Dan is his worked example showing that an author would earn a royalty of $12.35 on a $25 book. The truth is that a 100-page paperback work of fiction will not sell for $25. If you do the maths at a more realistic $10, the author would receive $1.85 per copy. A more typical extent for a $10 novel would be 200 pages and in this case the author would actually have to pay Amazon 15 cents a copy sold, if I understand the deal correctly.

'* Amazon has launched its CreateSpace Books on Demand service, which allows authors to upload content and publish direct. How radically might this change the publishing landscape?

Important Details: CreateSpace is Amazon's new name for CustomFlix Labs, Inc., which it acquired in 2005. The new service will compete with Print On Demand companies such as Lightning Source, Xlibris and Antony Rowe, which have agreements with many STM publishers. Amazon severed its
existing link with Lightning Source in 2006, in anticipation of this new service. However, CreateSpace is not partnering with publishers, but is instead inviting authors to contribute content directly.

CreateSpace has been offering customers single CDs and DVDs on demand since 2002, and it is envisaged that its new service will provide books in just the same way, aiming to ship books within 24 hours from when they are ordered. Customers pay the standard paperback price for a book, set by the author, with no setup fees or minimum orders. For authors, books must be uploaded to CreateSpace as PDFs, and he must then purchase and approve a proof copy of his book before titles can be produced on demand.

Amazon's share of each sale is calculated by taking a fixed charge of $3.15 per copy, plus a charge per page ($.02 per black and white page or $.12 per color page), plus a percentage of the list price (30% for sales through
Amazon.com). For example, a 100-page black and white book sold on Amazon with a list price of $25.00 would earn an author a royalty of $12.35 per sale.

Implications: Timo Hannay at Nature suggests that this announcement "may just prove to be the publishing news of the decade." By accepting content direct from authors, the traditional middle-men are excluded, mirroring online self-publishing services like Lulu and as Hannay says, opening the way for Amazon to become "the ultimate clearing house for books of all kinds (and much else besides)".

But it may be a long time until this new world becomes a reality. Certainly the advantages of CreateSpace are clear - its speed of distribution, and its low cost. Authors using the service will also see its royalty rates compare favourably to those associated with traditional publishing models.

There are also a number of challenges which Amazon faces, and perhaps the main one will be looking after its content creators. Blogs about CreateSpace have expressed  dissatisfaction with the time it takes to put uploaded content for sale on Amazon (officially, "up to 21 days", but sometimes longer), and higher profile authors will want to see a certain
level of marketing activity surrounding their book. At present, Amazon runs promotional e-mails by grouping together books that correlate according to individuals' purchasing habits. It's unclear whether CreateSpace books are to be included in these campaigns - but even if they are, authors may find
that that their books are frequently squeezed out because they lack the head of steam that traditionally published books build up through newspaper or television reviews and printed bookshop sales. It's doubtful too whether the majority of authors will be as skilled as seasoned publishing organisations at producing high-quality metadata to elevate their books in
search results listings.

This is the central question - is the CreateSpace initiative, and others like it, going to create excessive amounts of network noise that will make finding high-quality content more difficult than it is today? Searching for a book on Amazon is straightforward at the moment, but once books, journals, articles, blogs and websites merge into one big amorphous blob of information, picking out the best content will not only get more difficult, but will start to become more highly valued as a service. Online peer-ranking will be important, but this is easier to do well in vertical sectors than it is across the entire international publishing landscape. Brand and long-standing author loyalty will continue to count.

In today's Wal-Mart world there may be room for specialist shops that offer higher quality products and better service - but only for those that know their products and customers better than anyone else. Online, that's where Amazon's data advantage threatens the traditional publishing industry the
most - so that's where the battle must be fought.'

I think this is the appropriate time to mention a seminar being organised by Book Marketing (BML) on the afternoon of 21 September at the offices of DLA Piper at 3 Noble Street, London (application forms from BML and more info here) entitled provocatively 'Dinosaur or Dynamo: does the bookseller have a role in the digital era?'