(2011-05-10) Book Publishers Vs Retailers Montlake Vs Bookish

Mike Shatzkin notes 2 events from last week adjusting the Book Publishing industry structure. Amazon, which had previously established imprints for author-direct publishing and for translations of foreign works and had created a relationship with Houghton Harcourt to address their prior inability to get brick store distribution for books they owned, announced a new romance imprint called Montlake Romances. (Personally, I thought it was a bit strange that they announced it with just one book coming this Fall, rather than 10 books coming next week!) That put them squarely into the publishing business in a new way, and one could only imagine that the mystery shoe and thriller shoe and sci-fi shoe will be soon to drop... On Friday, we learned about a new business called Bookish, which will be the “new digital destination for readers.” In its announcement release, Bookish promises to use content and software tools to promote discussion and discovery around books and to answer the reader’s question: “what book should I read next?” What was most eye-catching about Bookish was its backing by three of the Big Six: Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, who have apparently been planning this move for quite some time.

Guy Le Charles Gonzalez questions the point of Bookish. As Carolyn Kellogg noted at the L.A. Times‘ Jacket Copy, “[Bookish] sounds a little like Good Reads. But Goodreads is about community first, book-selling second — while Bookish seems to be the other way around.” And therein lies my main concern: Bookish solves a problem that only exists for publishers, not readers.