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Amazon strikes print deal with HMH

Amazon.com has struck a print licensing agreement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which will allow HMH to print and distribute titles from the internet giant's East Coast Group adult imprint.

HMH has set up an imprint, New Harvest, to publish the titles when they are launched in autumn 2012, with books to come from authors including Deepak Chopra, Tim Ferriss and James Franco. It will distribute in North America, outside of Amazon's e-commerce site.

Amazon Publishing's East Coast Group publisher Larry Kirshbaum said: "Our goal has been, and remains, to introduce authors to as many readers as possible . . . This new agreement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt enables us to broaden our distribution and get our books into more readers' hands."

Since April 2011, HMH has also sub-licensed a number of books from Amazon's Seattle-based imprints, which include AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Thomas & Mercer, Montlake Romance and 47North, and this relationship will continue, according to a joint statement.

The 400 children's titles Amazon acquired in its recent deal with Marshall Cavendish are not included in the HMH arrangement.

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It's amazing when the economics of a company, Amazon, are so great that the only way to survive as a company is to latch onto these huge interface-like companies who have their hands in just about everything. You rarely read about it in publications, but from time to time you'll read a good stock trading article that touches on the concept a little bit. The more people who side the Amazon, the greater its overall competitive advantage grows through economies of scale and the more ingrained it gets in our economic system... It's exactly what happened back in the days when Rockefeller was first starting his Standard Oil company -- and it's happening again!

It's amazing when the economics of a company, Amazon, are so great that the only way to survive as a company is to latch onto these huge interface-like companies who have their hands in just about everything. You rarely read about it in publications, but from time to time you'll read a good stock trading article that touches on the concept a little bit. The more people who side the Amazon, the greater its overall competitive advantage grows through economies of scale and the more ingrained it gets in our economic system... It's exactly what happened back in the days when Rockefeller was first starting his Standard Oil company -- and it's happening again!