Some smaller publishers have already moved into direct sales. When Colin Robinson co-founded OR Books in 2009, he decided to bypass Amazon and sell directly to readers, printing books on demand. He says Amazon would have taken a 60% cut on the list price, money that can instead be spent on advertising and promotion.

OR Books is “handselling” its books, he says, “like the person who works in the bookstore [and] knows you”. It is a model that suits the New-York based publisher, which Robinson says publishes books that are “written, edited, reviewed, bought and read by people with sympathy for ideas that are politically and culturally off-piste”.

Recent publications include an account of the rise of Isis (Islamic State) in Iraq, by a veteran Middle East reporter and a collection of short stories by Cuban authors. “The future of the business, especially for small to medium-sized publishers, who have got quite targeted audiences for their books, the future is is to sell direct.”

Read the full article at The Guardian.