Amazon's Secret Weapon.... Larry Kirshbaum

It is no secret that Amazon is going head to head with the big six publishers, but what most don't know is they have a secret weapon. His name is Larry Kirshbaum and has been involved in publishing for nearly 40 years from all perspectives: as an author, publisher and agent. So when Larry retired last year from Time Warner it was a surprise when he was hired by Amazon shortly after. Bloomberg has a great article on Larry and Amazon today see an excerpt from below and CLICK HERE to read it in full. 

"Over the last six months, Kirshbaum has been making slow, steady progress on behalf of Amazon. His division has signed authors such as Timothy Ferriss, the self-help guru, James Franco, the actor and budding novelist, and Bob Knight, the volcanic former basketball coach who will pen a business book, The Power of Negative Thinking. Even Nancy Pearl, the popular librarian and author of the Book Lustreading guides, announced she was partnering with Amazon in a project to publish 12 of her favorite novels that were no longer in print. In their biggest splash so far, Kirshbaum and Amazon paid an advance of more than $800,000 for a memoir by actress and director Penny Marshall, whose name hasn’t been mentioned so frequently in New York media circles since the days of Laverne & Shirley. By pursuing authors directly, Amazon can cut out the middleman and pass on the savings to authors in the form of higher advances and royalties, and to readers in the form of lower book prices. Executives at the major publishing houses see all of this and conclude that Amazon aims to put them out of business."

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