Thanks to the readers who came through on yesterday’s request for a copy of the NYT profile on Random House CEO Peter Olson! I didn’t find quite the foreshadowing of the Random House Films deal Sarah and I were looking for, but it was fascinating reading nonetheless…and I was reminded of that recent deal between Little Random and the American Program Bureau, in the sense that both deals are ways Random (big and small) can mine additional revenues from their catalog.
Which brings us to yesterday afternoon’s big story, considered so hot that both PW Daily and Publishers Marketplace put out special editions, but we’ll go with the WSJ account: Amazon’s entry into the “pay-per-page-view” market and Random’s response. Unlike Google Print and Google Print Publisher, Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade will give you access to digitized books for a fee. That’s fine by Random, which acknowledges that it’s talking to Amazon and other vendors about its participation in such programs, and being very upfront about their own financial goals, as laid out in this announcement (which Michael Cader’s hosting on Publishers Marketplace). In the Reuters version of this story, it’s noted that “the book industry” seems to like Amazon’s plan much better than Google’s; the Journal adds a comment from the head of the Authors Guild: “The book industry has to find its equivalent of iTunes, and maybe this is a step in that direction.” (Now I’m thinking it might be very cool if this instigates a renaissance in poetry and short stories…)