Waterstones sign Kindle deal with Amazon | e-books on the High Street

James Daunt, the MD of Waterstones, has announced a deal to sell the Kindle through the chain of bookshops.

Waterstones is the only big player left in books on the British High Street. The immediate reaction has been one of shock and disbelief. Many seem to think that the arrangement is great for Amazon, terrible for Waterstones.

James Daunt, Managing Director of Waterstones, said: "At Waterstones, we are committed to improving our bookshops quite radically to offer the best possible book buying experience. It is a truly exciting prospect to harness also the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers.

"The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop. With the combination of our talents we can offer the exceptional customer proposition to which we both aspire."

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO, said: "Waterstones is the premier high street bookseller and is passionate about books and readers - a dedication that we share deeply. We could never hope for a better partner to bring together digital reading and the physical bookstore."

The pessimistic take is that Daunt appears to be inviting book buyers to browse his bookshops, then buy what they like the look of on their Kindle. This may well be why the chain is investing heavily in coffee shops. People will want to buy a coffee while they are at Waterstones. They may not be buying books.

The really surprising thing about the deal is that Daunt has made it clear in the past that he isn't an Amazon fan. The Telegraph reported comments in December in which he likened the Internet behemoth to Old Nick himself.

Most of Twitter seems to have decided that this is a terrible one. But perhaps it is inevitable. Most ardent readers will embrace the Kindle in the same ways as people embraced paperbacks: as an inexpensive, convenient medium to read books. The challenge for the likes of Waterstones but perhaps even more so for the publishers, is to stay relevant in this new arena.

Self publishing | Kindle | Can you make money out of ebooks?

How to make a million out of ebooks

I have to credit Ben Goldacre for alerting me to this one. It's a story about a young woman who has built up such a following for her books on Kindle that she is well on the way to becoming a millionaire - and yet she has never been published by a traditional publisher.

Check it out here.

I've been pretty well anti-Kindle from the start. The idea of giving up my beautifully made hardbacks and paperbacks for a strange, corporate looking eReader (that will no doubt be obsolete in a couple of years) has been anathema to me. What the hell am I going to put on my bookshelves if I have an eReader? And do I really want to take a device worth £150 to the beach?

But the example of Amanda Hocking has got me thinking. Her books are there to download now. She apparently sold over 100,000 copies last month. So she's making money, she has a following - built up in no small part by her twittering, blogging and facebooking - she is a one girl industry. Publishers really ought to wake up to this.

Not just publishers, writers too. Over the last few years we've seen writers get smaller advances. And yet sales haven't really declined. Some costs have gone up. But the writers are getting squeezed. Kindle offers authors 70% of the take. Lower prices, but there is the potential of higher volume.

(Beatrice Colin has discussed this on her blog too. You'll also want to check out this blog here, written by a Chicago based thriller ebook author called Joe Konrath)

It's a big dilemma though. What would life without publishers be? It might be harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. Publishers are great filters and a good editor is worth their weight in gold. But in many cases, you have to say, you wonder what the publisher does bring to the party. Do they really contribute so much for the author to be stuck with a mere 10 per cent royalty?

So I've just downloaded my first ebook, a Hocking called Switched (Trylle trilogy, book 1). Apparently it's about trolls but the Amazon reviewers are in love with it. Oh yes, and it cost me a mere £0.49 (including VAT, apparently ebooks, unlike paper ones, are not exempt). I got charged more than that the other day for a Mars Bar.

I'll let you know if it is any good when I finish reading...