Amazon.com, the world's biggest Internet bookseller and music retailer, is considering plans to launch Advantage, its US service which sells the work of self-published authors and independent musicians, in Europe.
Having already destabilised the books and music retail sectors with its rapid expansion, Amazon now threatens to upset the balance of power within the publishing and music industries by developing Advantage internationally.
Amazon, which is still loss-making but announced earlier this week that it achieved annualised sales of $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 1998, began business 31/2 years ago selling books by mail order over the Internet. It introduced music and videos to its product range last year.
Having begun by selling copyrighted material sourced from established book publishers, Amazon launched Advantage last March to enable aspirant authors to sell self-published work from its US site, alongside conventionally published titles.
Amazon saw Advantage as a way of extending its product range and of competing against the new wave of independent Internet publishers. Patricia le Roy's The Angels Of Russia, a novel published by Online Originals, a British electronic publisher, was accepted as a nominee, but not shortlisted, for the prestigious Booker Prize last autumn.
Advantage expanded in the US last November by selling compact discs from previously unrecorded musicians and independent record labels from the music section of Amazon's site, thereby offering a similar service to online jukeboxes such as MP3.com and Internet Underground Music Archive.
Record companies are already alarmed that hot young acts will distribute through these jukeboxes in future rather than signing recording contracts.
Advantage poses an even bigger threat because of the strength of Amazon's brand name and its large customer base.
Amazon declined to comment on the timing of Advantage's European debut. However, it is understood the service could be launched before the end of this year.
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