Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy’s Agent Fears Amazon

As the Kindle 2 ships to customers today, GalleyCat spotted a new interview where super-agent Amanda Urban criticized Amazon’s business practices. Urban represents such major authors as Toni Morrison, Bret Easton Ellis, Nora Ephron, and Cormac McCarthy.

She explained at Haaretz: “Amazon prices books at $9.99. Books in hardback cost $30.00, and the stores give a discount and the price goes down to $15.00. Amazon is not regulated the way retail outlets are, so they can do whatever they want … They can definitely wipe out the publishers. The problem is that the publishers need them. Amazon isn’t an easy company to do business with. It’s a very secretive company; they will not share any of their sales data.”

Interestingly enough, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos used one of McCarthy’s novels to illustrate the new e-reader’s dictionary feature at the Kindle 2 press conference. The long interview also includes insight into Morrison’s writing style and McCarthy’s appearance on Oprah Winfrey‘s Book Club. (Via Literary Saloon)

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