The publisher is a very odd beast -- the services you are citing as their primary benefit are the kind you would expect an author with money to simply pay for t

The publisher is a very odd beast -- the services you are citing as their primary benefit are the kind you would expect an author with money to simply pay for themselves. Or to put it another way, publishers are a combination of: 1. Angel investors / Talent scouts (insert moneyball reference here) 2. Labor pool for book completion (cover design, editing, etc) 3. Marketing assistance 4. Physical printing 5. B2B marketing to get printed books on bookshelves. Five distinct businesses. Why are they commonly grouped? My guess is a combination of most authors not being very business oriented / not wanting to not think about these sorts of things (30%), and most authors not having the money to hire their own #2 (the other 70% of the story). Amazon already has a product for #5 on its own, and a separate product providing #4 and #5 together. This story is about them adding on the #1-#2-#3 punch that is currently the exclusive domain of publishers. Stross is a technical and successful guy -- he should probably just hire his own #2 and #3, and then use amazon's #4 and #5 service. He probably won't, out of loyalty to the angel investor that pulled him out of obscurity (or the contract his angel made him sign...), but hopefully future Strossi will!