James Atlas Joins Amazon Publishing, Will Focus on Biographies

Posted on March 3, 2012

Publisher's Weekly reports James Atlas, the founder of independent publishing Atlas & Co. has been hired by Amazon.com. Atlas will stop publishing new titles. Instead, he will publish several biographies for Amazon Publishing, and report to Larry Kirshbaum.

Atlas would not confirm the new arrangement, but PW has its sources and seems quite confident that the deal has been reached. W.W. Norton told PW that it will be distributing Atlas' backlist, but not any new titles. So, essentially, Amazon just bought Atlas Publishing.

James Atlas himself is a biographer of some note. He wrote Bellow: A Biography and Delmore Schwartz: The Life of An American Poet. He launched the fabulous -- alas, now discontinued -- short biographies under the Penguin Lives imprint, as well as the Eminent Lives series for HarperCollins. His addition to the Amazon Publishing line adds gravitas and perhaps give a hint of where Amazon wants to go in the future.