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Through the years you and I had developed a business relationship. You provided a web site that allowed me to post my books for sale for a fee to be paid to you. Understandable. You offered me reasonable incentives to use your web site services and I agreed because it kept the relationship working responsibly. I was able to choose who I used to print my books and everything moved along merrily for both of us. I made money, you made money. A wonderful business deal. A freedom gained for both of us by others who had the insight and fortitude to stand up for the rights of human beings.

You made enough money that you thought it was a good idea to invest in a printer. I’m sure you did your due diligence prior to making this purchase but unfortunately you must have missed something because you purchased the very same printer who cost me money and reputation years ago by their screw ups. Oh well, it’s your money, shouldn’t affect me one way or another…

All is well for a time, nothing really changes (at least publicly or visually). I make money, you make money. We’re still both happy. But;

Behind the scenes, out of the range of my inquisitive mind and eyes, you begin planning something that will affect me! Only now you do it with a monopolistic, corporate mindset. Surely you don’t give me a hint that my livelihood is about to change – for the worse if I dislike your proposal. You sit at board meetings and discuss this plan among yourselves deciding that this is a way for the company to make more money and you leave me out of it.

The printer you bought out, the printer who has a bad reputation for quality control and damaging my works along with the works of others, is in a position where you see an opportunity. Well heck, this is America right? Capitalism at its finest eh? You have a right to make more money! Absolutely!

Yet, as in so many millions of relationships that end poorly, you neglect the respect and consideration I’ve earned to have you at least communicate your plans with me. You move ahead with only your best interests at heart and decide that I can be replaced or that I’ll cave in to your demands. Because I’ll have no choice…

Sorry, I do have a choice! Still. It may be fading in the shadow of a lawless administration or it might just be flourishing on the wings of the Internet for now, but I have it! I can tell folks across the globe of your pitiful and greedy actions or non-actions. I can bring suit against you in what is still a semblance of what our forefathers created despite all the external and internal efforts to bring it down. I believe I’m right and you’re wrong. I believe you’ve violated the rights our sons and grandsons and great grandsons fought and died for. And I’m not letting go!

Post from: EveryJoe

I Don’t Want To Use Your Da** Printer!!!

Reminded by “Author” at Deborah Woehr’s post, that Might Makes Right is an attitude (or a governmentally invoked perk, your choice), we follow up on the Amazon/Booksurge dealbreaker.

There’s an update from Angela Hoy; (a continuing update page can be found here.)

And Angela points us to a statement by the NWU here;

“The National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 strongly opposes Amazon’s new restriction on the print-on demand market and calls upon Amazon to immediately withdraw this monopolistic intrusion, or face our call for investigations by the Justice Department and Congress.”

Which actually hits the real nail on the head! Unfortunately though, we’ll have to consider whether this statement carries any weight any longer. The National Writers Union is how important?

Our own Anne Wayman, who sells her books on Amazon, received a response from the Washington State Attorney General (Amazon’s Home Office is in Wash.) that goes a long way towards an explanation. Except that the long way the AG actually goes to is to explain that a State Attorney General has no clue what exclusivity is because he/she can’t read simple English!

“No, there is no request for exclusivity. Any publisher can use Amazon’s POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels.”

Hard to believe? Not really. Easy to use one’s imagination to come up with something other than a kosher rational for this stupidity? Yep, easy as he**!

From O’Reilly Radar, this comment I’d not seen before today;

A former VP at the Time Warner Book Group, Jerry Simmons, was asked the question: “How do you predict the long-term effects of this as it relates to the small author and publisher?”

His answer: “The long-term effects for the author and publisher are devastating. With Amazon strengthening and securing their place in the distribution and sales channel, they can do anything they want. The next move will be to squeeze these small authors and publishers for placement fees, advertising fees, and eventually higher discounts. When you give in once, it never stops, this is the way of the publishing world and booksellers. It will get to the point where they start to lose money on each book sold. Only then will Amazon back off, but you can bet they are going to push authors and publishers to the wall and take every possible nickel out of the equation.”

Be prepared to get pushed to the wall…

Post from: EveryJoe

Might Makes Right – Amazon/Booksurge/Nation

Getting Started With B&N;
If you are a publisher who would like to sell your books through Barnes & Noble.com, you must become a Vendor of Record with our warehouse.

We also require bibliographic information to list your books, as well as other content to help promote each title. Find out how to submit bibliographic information along with covers, reviews, catalog copy, excerpts, and more in How to Submit Content.

Becoming a Vendor of Record
In order to establish a stocking relationship with our warehouse, you must print and complete our Publisher Information form. Return the completed form to Barnes & Noble Distribution. The address is on the questionnaire.

Initial Orders and Stocking Levels
After reviewing your list of titles, we will place an initial order for up to two (2) copies of each eligible title (those that have an assigned ISBN, a retail price greater than $1.00, and a hardcover or paperback binding). Subsequent demand will determine the proper stocking level. Once we establish your company as a Vendor of Record for the warehouse, you will receive an initial purchase order.

Frequently Asked Questions

Eventually, we’ll all discover whether Barnes and Noble might be “the” alternative because there are others. Here is more information regarding “Getting Your Book In Barnes and Noble.”

P.S. – There is a very interesting comment in the Amazon forums (if it remains) from what appears to be the PublishAmerica Support Team. (Got a screen shot…)

Part of which says: “PublishAmerica is intensifying its ties with BarnesandNoble.com as its primary online vendor. At the same time, we are devaluating our relationship with Amazon.com. Unfortunately, we are doing this under pressure.”

Post from: EveryJoe

Barnes and Noble [There Are Others]

From The New York Times;

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)

“It’s not easy to write a book. First you have to pick a title. And then there is the table of contents. If you want the book to be categorized, either by a bookseller or a library, it has to be assigned a unique numerical code, like an ISBN, for International Standard Book Number. There have to be proper margins. Finally, there’s the back cover.

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.”

I love the facetiousness :)

So, it appears that someone has solved the “problem” of having to write all that stuff in the middle!

“Philip M. Parker… Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, ‘the most published author in the history of the planet.’ And he makes money doing it.”

And – he makes money doing it!!! One of his books? – “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages). I sure hope $495 is a misprint because I’d never spend that kind of money for any book much less that one!

“Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.”

And he doesn’t think its cheating. Wonder if he has to use Booksurge…

Post from: EveryJoe

All That “Stuff” In The Middle – The Writing?

Angela Hoy has published comments in response to her follow-up article about the Amazon “policy” changes. (Has anyone noticed all these policy changes by the hot shots large, successful corporations lately?)

One in particular caught my eye because it says the gentleman speaks from 30 years of experience in the publishing field. Hal Zina Bennett speaks to the realities of having Booksurge publish your work and says: “Two of the authors I’ve worked with did their books through Booksurge. Both were absolute disasters. I would never have anything to do with Booksurge again.”

That appears to be simply a statement of fact based on experience. What he says next is where I find the true nature of the motivation of human beings;

“Amazon’s move to require us to use Booksurge is going to do one thing–give those of us in independent publishing a new push in the second leg of alternative publishing, that is, to bring more readers to our websites and introduce them to the real adventure of browsing for the thousands of books available from non-mainstream channels.”

Mr. Bennett adds;

“Amazon’s move with Booksurge will ultimately hurt them. But it will also push authors, publishers and readers in the direction of seeking alternatives to Amazon. That’s good news for most of us. Amazon has been a good service, in spite of its many flaws, but their strange affair with one of the worst POD companies on the internet is surely going to hurt them in the long run. It has certainly fanned the passions of many of us in publishing to develop new marketing, new technologies, and a new consciousness to take the next step.”

Reminds me of an old saying – “I don’t get mad, I get even.”

Post from: EveryJoe

I Enjoy Positive Thinkers – Do You?

They are trying to account for their actions. A better idea might have been to explain the change prior to implementation, but, what the hey. Mark Riffey’s right – “Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to contact all your publishers and authors BEFORE this flap? That way, you could explain what is about to happen, rather than creating a firestorm and having to respond in defense of actions that I suspect were not made on a whim. Get them in on the plan, get some feedback, find a win-win, and so on.”

Respect is certainly losing [lost?] its place in our society nowadays. Amazon didn’t cause that. Let’s forgive them and move on…

In a nutshell, this is the deal;

“Speed of shipping is a key customer experience focus for us and it has been for many years. Amazon Prime is an example of a successful and growing program that is driving up our speed of shipment with customers. POD items printed inside our own fulfillment centers can make our Amazon Prime cutoff times. POD items printed outside cannot.”

Of course customer satisfaction is the key! They simply neglected to remember that we’re all customers :)

Too many hat tips – most notable for me was Rebecca’s comment and Deborah Woehr’s March 31st entry. (Along with Mark’s above)

Post from: EveryJoe

Amazon POD [Pause and Relax A Moment]

I didn’t see his source for the announcement so I did a little digging…

Jumped over to Crunchbase and found a link to Techmeme then another link to paidContent and finally found reference there to WritersWeekly. I might have eliminated the middlemen had I known that Angela Hoy had commented on Duncan’s original post – but what do I know? lol…

Angela gets down to the nitty gritty of this deal, beginning with;

“BREAKING DEVELOPMENT: We were notified by a PublishAmerica author that her book was available for purchase through Amazon on Tuesday but today the “buy” button for her book on Amazon is gone. We researched some other PublishAmerica books and it appears the “buy” button on Amazon has indeed been removed from the vast majority of their book pages.“

Yeah, I suppose that would get your attention, wouldn’t it?

Quickly, Angela tells us;

“Reports have been trickling in from the POD underground that Amazon/BookSurge representatives have been approaching some Lightning Source customers, first by email introduction and then by phone (nobody at BookSurge seems to want to put anything in writing). When Lightning Source customers speak with the BookSurge representative, the reports say, they are basically told they can either have BookSurge start printing their books or the ‘buy’ button on their Amazon.com book pages will be ‘turned off.’”

Anne, did you know there is a POD underground?

Angela was able to take this to a phone conversation with John Clifford of Amazon/BookSurge at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 2008. She mentioned to John “we heard a rumor that POD publishers who didn’t use BookSurge would have the ‘buy’ button on their Amazon.com book pages turned off.” In quite the “political” manner, John replied “What? Who told you that? That’s not true!”

Later, in the same conversation, he amended that when he “finally admitted that books not converted to BookSurge would have the ‘buy’ button turned off on Amazon.com, just as we’d heard from several other POD publishers who had similar conversations with Amazon/BookSurge representatives.”

Angela gives us quite a bit more in her article. I’d suggest giving it a good read. I’m not here to pass judgment, but this feels like it would make those using POD and selling at Amazon extremely uncomfortable not to mention the loss of profits.

Post from: EveryJoe

Deal Breaker? Amazon – BookSurge – POD – No Choice?