Looks like Amazon is making it even easier for authors to circumvent publishers. Along with Audible, the company recently announced a new audiobook program that pays authors directly. For those of you unfamiliar with the traditional publishing model, all royalties typically go directly to the publisher printer, and are then distrubited to the author.

From the piece:

As you may have imagined, Audible is not just doing this out of the good of its heart. CEO Donald Katz tells the Guardian, “The fact is people buy a Neil Gaiman, not a HarperCollins or a Simon & Schuster, so it is for us to connect with the writers and hopefully wake them up to what they can do. If it works it can become a channel of membership and sales.”

The trend is unmistakable: traditional publishers grow less and relevant every day.