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Amazon is pursuing more direct relationships with literary agents and authors, targeting them with a newsletter for its Kindle White Glove digital publishing programme which bypasses established publishers.
A "White Glove summit and workshop" for agents was also held in New York last month.
The inaugural newsletter, sent via email last night (20th February), pitched itself as a way "to stay closely connected with literary agents and their authors", describing agents as "our close partners" and inviting an "ongoing conversation".
It said: "We make publishing to Kindle completely friction-free for agents. Just send us the books for which your authors hold the digital rights, and our team will scan, convert, QA, and upload the finished files to your account—absolutely free for qualified agents."
The newsletter also included details of a new programme, Kindle Serials for Agents, whereby stories are published in episodes, with readers automatically receiving future instalments of a book once they've bought the first episode. It invited agents to sign up to a further White Glove summit in New York this autumn.
UK literary agencies Curtis Brown and Andrew Lownie both recently launched their own publishing programmes, Curtis Brown Creative and Thistle respectively, using the Amazon technology. The programme offers royalty rates of 70%, if the retail price for the e-book is set between £1.49 and £7.81.