Amazon is further expanding into the realms of traditional publishing with a new deal with niche children’s publisher Marshall Cavendish. 450 full color picture books have been added to the companies repertoire such as – The Night Before Christmas,” illustrated by Gennady Spirin; “Chalk” by Bill Thomson; and “My Name is Not Easy” by Debby Dahl Edwardson. Incidentally the Debby Dahl book was a finalist for a National Book Award in the young people’s literature category this year.
Online retail juggernaut Amazon benefits from this expansive list of books with its kids and teen project AmazonEncore. With the advent of the Kindle Fire tablet the company seems to be making a push for the lucrative young adult market that Barnes and Noble has corner-stoned until this point with Nook Kids. It is ironic that with this purchase Amazon does not have a full time children’s editor on staff.
“This is our first attempt to get organized around a children’s books strategy,” Jeff Belle, the vice president of Amazon Publishing, said in an interview, adding that the company intended to convert all of the titles to e-books, a segment of the children’s market that has been slow to take off. “This is a case where there’s a great list of books that have not been digitized.”
Meanwhile with the liquidation of their entire catalog of books Marshall Cavendish will be focusing more on the educational market for young adults. The company told Good e-Reader that the deal with Amazon will be completed in around six months.
Amazon this year has been expanded at an accelerated pace to publish its own books and acquire established collections from companies willing to sell. This is mainly attributed to the fact they can skirt the Agency model that lets publishers determine the price on books and will allow the company to undercut the competition.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
