This e-mail was sent to me by a friend. I asked the original author,
Lenny Flank of http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
if I could use it as a weekly Musea Club E-mail. He said sure.
I've cut out some of the cussing at Amazon. Otherwise it is as he sent
it, and it shows how insidious the mainstream media/arts handful of
companies can get. And it deserves a bigger audience.
Posted by: "Lenny Flank" lflank@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
lflank
Date: Wed Apr 2, 2008 4:29 pm ((PDT))
Most of you have heard me talk previously about "print
on demand" publi****ng, which I do through Red and
Black Publishers and Mikey does with his book
"Antiquity of Man". One of the reasons POD publi****ng
can work for small publishers, is that it gives access
to Amazon.com, the largest bookseller in the world,
and at Amazon, it gives small micropublishers equal
status with the publi****ng giants, allowing us to sell
our books at the same terms and with the same
visibility that Simon and Schuster gets.
Well, now Amazon has thrown a Microsoft-style power
play and f* things up for all of us POD publishers.
Most of the print-on-demand outfits, like Lulu.com,
PublishAmerica or iUniverse, do all their printing at
a company called Lightning Source. And since
Lightning Source also does POD directly for publi****ng
companies, that's where I get all my printing done
too.
A few years ago, Amazon bought its own POD printer,
called Booksurge (and a smaller division called
CreateSpace). Booksurge was, alas, crushed into the
mud by Lightning Source, and has limped along for
years, unable to compete with Lightning Source's
better quality and cheaper pricing.
Well, this week, right out of the blue, Amazon decided
to do something about that, in the most brutally
bully-like way possible -- it announced that as of
April 1, it would no longer offer any print-on-demand
books that aren't done through its own POD printer.
No, that was no April Fool's joke. Publishers that
refuse to move from Lightning Source to Booksurge will
find the "Buy Now" button on their titles' Amazon
pages removed, disallowing buyers from buying directly
through Amazon, and eliminating the Free ****pping and
Amazon Prime options for them. It's a HUGE
disincentive for anyone to buy the book.
Unfortunately for us small publishers, Amazon has us..
The vast majority of my sales (and I
suspect of Mikey's too) are through Amazon.com . So
if Amazon.com refuses to sell my titles, I am well and
truly screwed. It's the proverbial "offer you can't
refuse".
Not coincidentally, it will cost me more to sell books
through Amazon that it does now through Lightning
Source. Lightning Source lets publishers choose the
discount rate for the book (the percentage of the
cover price that goes to the bookstore). All my
titles are set at a 25% discount, meaning Amazon gets
25% of the price, and I get the rest (minus the
printing costs). Amazon's POD operations, though,
will accept nothing less than a 40% discount, meaning
that 15% of the cover price which USED to go to me,
now goes to Amazon instead. I can either (1) raise
the cover price 15% to make up the loss, or (2) eat
that 15% and smile about it.
So basically, it's "pay Amazon more, or kiss your book
market goodbye". And yes, at least one of my titles
has already had its "Buy Now" button "disappeared".
Lulu and iUniverse have already given in.
PublishAmerica is, at last word, refusing. No word
yet on whether their titles have started disappearing
from Amazon yet. In the final analysis, though,
PublishAmerica will have to give in too. No POD
publisher can afford not to sell through Amazon. They
have us..., and there's
absolutely nothing any of us can do about it.
It's strongarm bullying of the very worst sort. It
may even be illegal under US antitrust laws -- but
that will take years to thrash out, and doesn't help
us in the meantime.
So . . . .
I'll be spending the next few weeks crying "uncle",
and moving my titles from Lightning Source to Amazon's
"CreateSpace" POD option.
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
IN HOUSE news at MUSEA.
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/ youtube.com / myspace.com/musead/
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The New issue of Musea - the History Issue is out and about.
Pick up a free copy now in Dallas or wait for the online version
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