Amazon Set to Publish Tim Ferriss

[pnathan]

I've spent hours trawling Amazon for cheap e-books, and I've come to the conclusion that self-publishing is not a model that produces high-quality books.

Editors provide significant value to me as a reader. Whatever strategy Amazon is using, I certainly hope it includes a competent editing arm.

[markmccraw]

It's not that different than an app store, youtube, itunes, etc. where there's virtually no barrier to entry. Most of it will suck, but so far we've done a decent job of separating the wheat from the chaff. The only thing that would worry me about books is how much longer it takes to review them compared to the other forms of media I mentioned. That will result in smaller sample sizes on reviews and a less accurate picture.

[duggan]

I wonder if it's simply that it will require volume and curation like a lot of other free/cheap content?

Book reviews are coming back, eh!

[bennesvig]

I guarantee it produces higher quality books. You simply mean the market is saturated with mediocre books. When you open the floodgates, you get more of everything. It might be harder to find the quality books, but I guarantee there are more of them.

[steve19]

Really you have come to the conclusion that self-publishing does not produce cheap high-quality books.

[matdwyer]

"Some independent bookstores have already said they do not intend to carry any books from the retailer, not wanting to give a dollar to a company they feel is putting them out of business."

Oh no! How will Tim Ferriss recover from the 2% of books he'll lose from the mom & pop stores? His market is 99% 18-35 probably haven't stepped foot in an independent bookstore in ages.

Good news for him, I enjoy reading his stuff, even though some of it goes too far in my opinion.

[trickjarrett]

Tim is pure infotainment. Some of his stuff is crazy and over the top, and it is mainly there as great fodder for talk shows.

[JonLim]

I know this article is supposed to be centered around Tim Ferriss but the meat of it, to me, was about how Amazon was walking right into the turf of book publishers and setting up shop.

Hey book publishers, you shouldn't be concerned at all, because you've seen this coming for years. They made and popularized the Kindle, and you could have made a huge and radical shift toward digital copies of books and including them in your contract negotiations.

Oh, but I guess you could have never seen this coming. Learning from the music and movie industry must not have been an option.

Come on guys!

[gwern]

You are completely wrong. The publishers saw this coming a long time ago (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_...) and attacked first (http://blog.laptopmag.com/ebook-price-war). This is just Amazon slowly following through on its threat of personally entering publishing, which so spooked the publishers years ago.

[grey]

Ok, It's been a while since I read 4HWW, but how is there so much praise for this guy? That book was like a how-to on being an amoral, freeloading douchebag.

[btucker]

"the wildly popular self-help guru for young men."

This strikes me as a rather bizarre characterization and somewhat sexist. I haven't read his second book, but the first one was in no way geared to men only & I'm pretty sure the second wasn't either. Odd.

[matdwyer]

He certainly carries himself in that young man thrill seeker type way, which probably appeals on a mass scale more to men. The 2nd book did focus on males (weight lifting, giving women orgasms, etc) a bit but wasn't exclusively for men. To me, he comes across as a guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with.

[quinndupont]

I'm always surprised how Tim Ferriss sells so many books. He's such an aggressive self-promoter it's shameful.

[adrianwaj]

Before Tim Ferris, the only other Ferris I'd ever come across was the fictional Ferris Bueller. If he'd been Tim Smith, would've that affected his success?

He comes across as some kind of Ferris Bueller character too!