Yesterday, Seth Godin announced his new venture The Domino Project powered by Amazon. There is a blog post that philosophically describes his move into publishing (or actually back into publishing; he was a book packager in a past life) and a FAQ page to cover some of the details.
Seth is making some distinctive bets:
- Amazon is a large enough platform to support a publishing company.
- Speed matters.
- The distance between creator and receiver needs to shrink.
- Distribution should be global from Day One.
- Digital matters just as much as print (maybe more).
- Books still matter.
Most publishing professionals would say they agree with most of these too (except the Amazon point), but no one has made as big a move as Seth toward solving those problems (with the exception of a handful like Richard Nash’s Cursor).