The Book Industry Is So Scared of Amazon, No One Will Talk on the Record Except these people

BY LAURA BENNETT @lbennett - The New Republic

George Packer’s epic 12,000-word piece on Amazon and the publishing industry in the current issue of The New Yorker is full of memorable reported bits—the culture clash between Amazon’s editorial staffers and its programmers, insider accounts of the company’s hiring process, the story of an Amazon employee who was handed a printout of a Slate article about Amazon’s stingy philanthropy with the words “Fix This” scrawled at the top in Bezos’s hand. But for a wide-ranging survey of the new publishing landscape, its cast of characters is a notably familiar one.

There’s Macmillan CEO John Sargent, last seen in the pages of The New Yorker pedaling on an exercise bicycle as he contemplated Amazon in Ken Auletta’s 2012 story on the war over the e-books market; in Packer’s piece he also features prominently, recounting his early impressions of Bezos and his own struggles with Amazon. There’s Dennis Johnson, publisher of Melville House, a longtime outspoken critic of Amazon who has appeared in countless articles about embattled indie publishing houses. There’s literary agent Andrew Wylie, whom I interviewed for The New Republic’s books issue several months ago, who gives Packer some choice quotes about the business model of bookselling.
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