Amazon Scales Back NYC Book Publishing Operation

When Amazon Publishing launched its general trade imprint in New York in 2011, the goal was to go head-to-head with the big traditional publishers here. The company announced in May of that year that it had hired industry vet Larry Kirshbaum to run the new general publishing division. Kirshbaum said at the time that Amazon was "going to back [the imprint] significantly" and that he would run it "in the vein of a major publishing house."