In L'Express Emmanuel Paquette has a Q & A with French publisher Antoine Gallimard -- who warns: "Amazon veut tuer la concurrence" ('Amazon wants to kill (the) competition').
But don't worry: he bashes Apple, too, noting he refused to go along with iBooks -- not for financial reasons but as a matter of principle ("Nous avons refusé de travailler avec Apple sur sa librairie iBooks non pour des raisons financières, mais pour une question de principe").
He is amusingly dismissive of Amazon's forays into publishing (and touts the fact that: "Nous pouvons être une aide morale pour un auteur, voire un banquier" -- i.e. traditional publishers like Gallimard still provide 'moral support' -- and are willing to act like a bank, even extending credit lines to authors).
But they obviously haven't figured out the e-book formula yet: he notes that even the best-sellers, like David Foenkinos' Delicacy, have only had 'marginal sales' (a pathetic 4,900 copies shifted, in that case).
He is amusingly dismissive of Amazon's forays into publishing (and touts the fact that: "Nous pouvons être une aide morale pour un auteur, voire un banquier" -- i.e. traditional publishers like Gallimard still provide 'moral support' -- and are willing to act like a bank, even extending credit lines to authors).
But they obviously haven't figured out the e-book formula yet: he notes that even the best-sellers, like David Foenkinos' Delicacy, have only had 'marginal sales' (a pathetic 4,900 copies shifted, in that case).