Amazon, Authors Team Up For Big Money. Where Does That Leave Everyone Else?

They’ll be a direct link from author to publisher/bookseller. Nothing in between.

As Amazon exec Russell Grandinetti told the New York Times, “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.”

Risk, because if a writer can reach readers without going through a publisher—a publisher which employs editors, copyeditors, production workers, and more—why is the writer going to bother with an editor?

Opportunity, because books still need editors.