Amazon.com, in its quest to be all things in book publishing, has now introduced its newest venture, Amazon Encore. This new Amazon entity takes self-published books that have been sold on Amazon, but which Encore deems have the potential for more sales, and republishes them for a wider audience. With this move, Amazon clearly enters the book publishing business. And since Amazon has a very good idea from analyzing its data about what readers like, the company should be able to establish a very good track record for the books they choose to re-launch.

This news should be of great interest to authors. Last year, for the first time, more books were self-published in America than through traditional publishers. This trend will continue to increase as more books that are published by their authors successfully find niche markets and as the stigma of vanity publishing, now largely gone, predictably fades into oblivion. Authors whose books are made available for sale on Amazon.com can be picked up by Amazon Encore, and from there promotion of the book on the Amazon bookstore site and availability on the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader, availability on Audible.com, a leading audio books company recently purchased by Amazon, and availability on Stanza, an e-reader application for the iPhone now owned by Amazon, should be all but guaranteed.

All of this should make traditional book publishers very nervous. Traditional publishers may be left to publish only books that have either extremely high literary or scholarly merit but not much market potential or well-known authors with whom they have long standing relationships and contractual agreements. These publishers are already finding Amazon’s discounts and terms to be oppressive. More pressure from the bookselling giant may be too much of a squeeze. Or it may be that the competition between self-publishing and traditional publishing will open up more avenues for everyone.For now, it is just good to know that there is yet another opportunity for enhanced exposure available for authors who publish their own books and hope to see them enjoy wider distribution.