As celebrities choose Amazon, is this the end for publishers?

  Deal for James Franco book fuels fears that online giant has become too dominant.

By Guy Adams

Who needs publishers? Not James Franco, the artsy Hollywood star, who has just signed a deal to write his first novel; and not Amazon, the vast online retailer which beat the traditional giants of the industry to secure the high-profile author.

Franco, 33, has become the latest in a string of big names to join the increasingly glamorous stable of authors now on the payroll of Amazon. According to reports, his book, which has the working title Actors Anonymous, will be loosely based on his career in the film industry.

The deal, which was reported yesterday but has yet to be formally confirmed by either side, represents an ominous development for the industry, which in recent months has seen similar deals signed by the likes of New Age “guru” Deepak Chopra, self-help writer Timothy Ferriss, and the actor and director Penny Marshall.

For years, the rise of Amazon, which heavily discounts books, has been eating into the once luxurious profit margins enjoyed by mainstream publishers. There are therefore growing fears that the online giant could soon send their industry the way of the high street bookstore.

Since it was unveiled last year, Amazon’s publishing arm has launched an array of imprints majoring on genres from science fiction to romance, and has already released more than 100 new titles, in hardback, paper back and electronic formats. It has also shown itself willing to pay huge sums to secure the services of what it considers to be the stars of the writing profession, using aggressive charm to woo them from the clutches of their former houses.

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Is David Eagleman the cleverest man in America?

The professor of neurology, bestselling writer and former stand-up comedian wants to change the way we think about thinking. Guy Adams meets the Malcolm Gladwell of brain science.

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David Eagleman is a ‘Super Scientist’ who has published Incognito, a bestselling new book about the human brain, and Sum, a collection of short stories about the afterlife. That, at least, is how he’s billed on a chalkboard outside the bookshop in the Californian surf town of Santa Cruz where he’s due to talk about his discoveries in the field of neuroscience.

He is officially a professor, but doesn’t look much like a boffin when I find him hanging round near the cash register. Eagleman is young, well groomed, and wearing distressed denim with pointy shoes. As we head out for coffee, he catches sight of the chalkboard. “Awesome!” he announces. “They called me ‘Super Scientist’!” He whips out an iPhone, takes a photograph, and, with a few taps of his hyperactive fingers, e-mails an image to his wife.

Later, I find myself mulling over this little piece of pavement theatre. Or at least the part of it when Professor Eagleman said “Awesome!”. Since the comment was spontaneous, he didn’t really have to ‘think’ about speaking: it just happened. In other words, his brain quietly oversaw a hugely complicated process, by which vocal cords, lungs and mouth conspired to make air move in a way that produced an identifiable wave of sound.

Do we digress? Maybe. But digressions are what Eagleman explores for a living. As the head of the Laboratory for Perception and Action at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, he has become famous for deconstructing the everyday in a manner that helps ignorant civilians like you and me to understand relatively complex ideas about the intricacies of neuroscience, the branch of science which explores how our minds work.

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