Big news in the Secular Publinging-Book Industry
In the past week subsidy publishing businesses (charge fees for services) that use print on demand (POD) printing, self publishing authors, and small traditional publishng houses like my own (MWP) that will be impacted by Amazon’s new business policy……learned that Amazon is now requiring these businesses using POD printing to do their printing with Book Surge (owned by Amazon) or the books listed on Amazon currently will have their Buy button removed…. and future titles will not be listed unless the titles are printed by Amazon’s POD printer-Book Surge.
Subsidy publishers LuLu and AuthorHouse/iUniverse have already caved in to this Amazon demand and signed agreements with Amazon. Will others cave in and do the same? I sincerely hope not!
What will Amazon do in the future once it has a lock on these businesses? Demand higher discounts so it can sell books more cheaply? Thus making it difficult for other retailers to compete? Amazon won’t be paying for these deep discounts.. the publishers will and this directly impacts the publishers’ ability to provide fair royalty to authors. With Amazon taking a bigger piece of the list price of a book for its discount, plus cntrolling the printing cost… this leaves the publisher and author with little flexibility.
My publishing business uses POD printing and I chose to use the printing services of Lightning Source, Inc. I get excellent service, competitive pricing, and distribution that includes Amazon….but it also includes online giants like Barnes and Nobel where a buyer can get free shipping and discounts similiar to Amazon.
Most of my retail sales are to Muslim retailers and Islamic schools, where I offer the industry standard of 40% discount. MWP sales are primarily publisher direct and not through a distributor/wholesaler/or big secular online retailers like Amazon. MWP also sells to individual buyers-readers.
Amazon is NOT the only business”in town” although its latest decision for demanding POD printing with its owned and operated BookSurge division seems to have Amazon believing it is.
My business cannot afford to give Amazon a 48% share of a list price of a book or pay the $29 a year for Amazon’s Advantage program to get a listing at Amazon while also giving 55% disocunt if using this method to get listed on Amazon.
MWP is against giving one retailer (Amazon) an unfair advantage over and above all other retailers MWP does business with.
I encourage all my readers and customers who buy books online to consider the following online retailers for purchasing MWP titles:
www.IslamicBookstore.com -books are always discounted and service is excellent.
Barnes and Nobel online retail stores. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/index.asp?r=1&popup=0
Publisher Direct by contacting publisher@MuslimwritersPublishing.com or woodad@mindspring.com
If you are an author with a book and can’t seem to find a traditional publisher… you can self publish your own book….you can use the services of free-lance work-for-hire pros to do your design work and you can use POD printing services like LSI to get your book into distriution through the Ingram wholesaler and listed with Barnes and Nobel online retailer and other online retailers as well as network with Muslim retailers for listings and sales. You can offset print with LSI or other printing companies also.
There are still choices you can make that do not place your book/s business decisions under the control of Amazon.
Choosing a subsidy publishing business that is locked into Amazon’s new terms and conditions now and in the future may not be the best you can do for commercial sales of your book.
What do I personally think of all the recent (last couple of years) business decisions of Amazon?
Here are a couple:
–Creating the ebook reader Kindle and allowing only ebooks that use readers owned by Amazon to be listed on the Amazon website
–buying Book Surge a subsidy (fees for services) publishing business and POD printer
–Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Advantage programs requiring 55% discounts from publishers plus the publisher paying shipping costs and dealing with Amazon’s deep discounts that undercut retail sales of the publisher’s books with other retailers… the publisher paying for Amazon’s discount programs…
Amazon looks like, acts like, and now speaks like a typical subsidy business.
Just want you all to know that MWP will not be giving in to Amazon’s requirement to have MWP titles printed with Amazon’s Book Surge POD printing service too have active buy buttons for Amazon selling MWP titles. This will mean that eventually Amazon will not have Buy links for any listings of MWP titles Amazon leaves on its website.
I personally would like for Amazon to remove any and all listings of MWP titles from its website. It is one retailer/subsidy business I don’t want to associate with now or in the future unless its business practices are (in my opinion) more responsible and fair. There are too many other online and brick and mortar retailers where MWP titles can be/are listed and customers able to buy copies of MWP titles.
More information about Amazon’s lastes business actions go to: http://www.writersweekly.com/amazon.php
Tags: Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, Inc., Lightning Source, LSI, MWP, POD, printing
April 4, 2008 at 1:56 pm |
Personally, I am disgusted with what Amazon is doing. Now it’s being rumored that they are threatening legal action if a publisher offers title for less than they do. It’s nuts and has to stop. I ca only hope this hurts their business in the long run. Small and independent publishers need to stand together.