| The Amazon POD Conundrum |
| Amazon.com is apparently now requiring POD authors and publishers (that is, those who are using print-on-demand technologies to produce their books) to work with Amazon's sister company BookSurge to provide books to Amazon's site. Now, a lot of people and organizations are making a lot of hub-bub and fuss about this change in Amazon's policy, but personally I understand it. Amazon made a good argument for making the change. It really makes sense for them to print the books at their warehouses and to send them out from there rather than wait to get books from Lightning Source or other POD printers. By printing in-house, they can ship orders around the world more quickly and also make sure that the entire order goes out right away rather than being held up by waiting for the POD book to be produced. Now, the one nasty in this equation is that BookSurge has a hefty set-up cost which really isn't justified. If Amazon really wants to make their argument fairly, they should be providing much lower fees to authors and publishers who have already set up their books for POD (via Lightning Source or another provider). I think a $20 to $30 set-up fee per book would be fair. If Amazon had offered such a low fee for set-up, I expect they would have avoided all the charges of piracy, monopoly, scuzzy dealing, etc. being launched their way by various associations, bloggers, writers, etc. Perhaps they will still make that change. But all the fuss, hub-bub, ado, to-do, noise is way beyond what's going on here. The people who say "Give Amazon an inch and they will take a mile next week." are really pushing the noise level too far. Just my opinion. Much too fussy. Get some dogs. Walk them. Learn from them. I do that every day, and their wonder at life and joy for little things just make these Amazon hijinks seem so unimportant and the fuss about the hijinks even less important. Labels: Amazon.com, BookSurge, Lightning Source, POD books, print-on-demand books |
posted by John Kremer @
8:26 PM
5 comments |
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5 Comments:
John, I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. For small publishers selling at standard discounts, the switch might not make much difference in the long run. But many of us independent self publishers who work directly with Lightning Source have built our businesses around the short discounts Lightning allows.
The change in discount when moving to BookSurge, CreateSpace, or Amazon Advantage would mean a loss of 1/3 to 2/3 of our income. It could put a lot of us out of business, or at least send us scrambling back to paying jobs.
I have hopes that Amazon's decision may not reach all the way down to us small fish. But if it does, the results for many of us could be disastrous.
Aaron Shepard
Author, Aiming at Amazon
Webmaster, Sales Rank Express
Not only that, Aaron, but BookSurge quality is VERY suspect. Personally, I don't want my company's name on books that have skewed covers, glue or grease smears, or pages that fall out randomly (as BookSurge books have been known to do.)
My biggest issue is how Amazon went about this: by force.
If they were truly offering better service and products all the way around, people would flock to do business with them. Obviously, this can't be the train of thought because of their "or else" attitude.
It's sort of gone under the radar, but I believe Harper Collins is testing a new contract with authors that does a 50/50 profit split instead of an advance along with a couple other changes.
Keyword here is testing. They're trying it out, seeing if the changes will yield the results they're hoping for. They're not bullying everyone of their authors into this strategy.
Had Amazon showed proof the idea was good and gone about it professionally like HC, I don't think we'd have the issue we do now.
1. If BookSurge quality is really suspect across the board, then Amazon's actions are despicable and will work against them over the short and long term.
2. Amazon should not have come on like gangbusters. They should have offered alternatives that would work for them and their publishing partners.
3. I wrote about the HarperCollins new venture in a previous post. They are offering the new no-advance terms only to new authors they don't expect to do well. Sort of like offering no money to rookies, with a promise of a payoff later if they sell books.
If HarperCollins does its books like most major publishers, that 50/50 split of profits will be zippo, nada, zero. If I were a new author, I'd read their contract very, very, very carefully.
Whoops, I see in my above comment that I might be misinterpreted. When I commend on how HarperCollins does it books, I wasn't talking about printing or publishing books, but on how they do their accounting.
Unfortunately, when an author signs a contract with payments based on profits or net sales, big publishers can do many creative accounting tricks to come off paying very little to their authors.
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