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Confessions of a Publisher→

Sarah Lacy has a fascinating article on her newly launched PandoDaily site that provides an insider’s perspective on how Amazon may be planning on taking out book publishers altogether:

[Publishers] can’t pay $1 million for books anymore. Amazon could probably afford to lose $20 million/year in their publishing arm just to put the other publishers out of business. I think that’s what they’re trying to do–throw money around in an industry that doesn’t have any, until Amazon becomes not only the only place where you buy books, but the only place that publishes books, too.

So rather than getting a 30% of an ebook (with the other 70% being split between the publisher and author), they’ll be getting a 70% cut (with the other 30% going right to the author). Funny thing is that it’s actually better for authors.

Meanwhile, John Gruber of Daring Fireball goes one step farther by suggesting that Amazon’s dominance may be the opening that Apple needs to step into the market:

It’s occurred to me that Apple’s stunning successes over the last decade could be a hindrance to its ongoing negotiations with content companies — movie studios, TV networks, book publishers, etc. Imagine a weekly poker game where, week after week, the same player wins. Every goddamn week. Pretty soon that player is going to stop being invited to play. That’s Apple.

Apple’s opportunity with books is that there’s already a dominant money-winning bully at the table: Amazon.

I have no idea what Apple is going to announce at tomorrow morning’s event — and for the record, I’m not expecting much at all — but I’m definitely really interested in seeing how the future of publishing will turn out. [PandoDaily via Daring Fireball]