Amazon is aggressively trying to woo some top authors away from their publishing houses, chipping away at services that publishers and agents currently provide, according to an article in The New York Times.  

Amazon plans to publish 122 books this fall, according to the article by David Streitfeld, putting the online retailer in direct competition with the New York publishers that are also its biggest suppliers.

Amazon is apparently willing to pay big advances to secure certain titles. It recently announced it will publish a memoir by actress and director Penny Marshall. Amazon reportedly paid $800,000 for the deal.

Richard Curtis, a veteran agent who is also an e-book publisher, tells The New York Times:

“Everyone’s afraid of Amazon. If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.”

Read the full article here. 

Impulse, Avon’s digital imprint, has put out a call for submissions about soldiers returning from war.

Here is the substance of the posting by editor Erika Tsang on the Avon Romance blog:

Around her hair she wore a yellow ribbon
She wore it in the springtime
In the merry month of May
And if you ask her why the heck she wore it
She wore it for her soldier who was far far away

Calling all writers! Avon Impulse is looking for manuscript submissions for a collection of Yellow Ribbon romance. Just as the song indicates, we’re looking for stories where a soldier is returning home from war. Who is waiting for him/her? What was left unsaid? Where do they go from here?
If you’ve got a story (up to 25k words), we want to read it. Be creative. Be sexy. Ready. Set. Go!

How much can romance writers earn?

According to a recent post, “Show Me the Money!” by author Brenda Hiatt, it all depends on who you sign with.

According to Hiatt, advances range anywhere from zero (Wild Rose Press) to $2,050 (Sourcebooks) to $80,000 (MIRA).

Among the big publishers, here’s the rundown of the average advances, in most cases, for the first book:

Pocket
$10,400

Ballantine
$40,000

Bantam/Dell
$17,000

Berkley/Jove
$8,100

Dutton/Signet/NAL
$9,400

Grand Central Publishing
$7,100

HQN
$22,700

St. Martin’s Press
$18,500

For more numbers and details, check out Hiatt’s blog by clicking here.