POD Braces Itself Against Amazon

OMNIpotusCOM writes "As we've previously discussed, Amazon is in the process of taking the 'Buy' buttons off of published on demand (POD) books that were not created by Amazon's in-house publisher, BookSurge. PODdy Mouth has been reporting reactions throughout the week (including an open letter from Amazon), culminating today in letters to Amazon and their board by the Author's Guild, Small Publishers Association of North America, and the Publishers Marketing Association. Possible lawsuits are looming ... is it enough to change Amazon's mind?"

Comments

Amazon or ebay incognito?

[sakdoctor]

What is up with Amazons latest strategy?

In the past there was always products sold by amazon, and then a link to 'used & new' which I never touched because when I go to amazon, I'm looking specifically to by a NEW item from amazon themselves, and for amazon to take direct responsibility if there are any fuck ups.

Now they are trying really hard to blur the lines between their own products and those of other vendors.
I only noticed this after I bought an item which I had no reason to believe was *not* coming from amazon, when I got an email saying:

Would you like to leave RIP_U_OFF_4_THE_LULZ feedback on your recent purchase?

This is not a good direction, but hey, they practically have a monopoly on cheap online books so what am I gonna do.

Re:Amazon or ebay incognito?

[alen]

for cheap tech books, bookpool.com is the way to go. way cheaper than amazon

Re:Amazon or ebay incognito?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple years ago, Amazon started allowing third party sellers to create product pages (what Amazon calls detail pages) on the Amazon site. More recently, Amazon started allowing sellers to create pages for pre-ISBN books (books that were published before the ISBN system became standard).

I.e. many of the books that don't have an Amazon presence would not be listed on the site otherwise, because the book itself is out of print and Amazon can't get copies from the publisher.

I'd be interested in seeing an example product where there is no indication that the product is not from Amazon. That sounds like a bug. The usual experience is like http://www.amazon.com/Webkinz-Black-White-Panda-Plush/dp/B000HPNK6Y/ -- note that it clear says "Ships from and sold by ABCTOY4me" above the Add to Cart button.

This whole exclusive POD thing is odd in that it is a restriction on *buyers* more than on sellers. Sellers can still sell POD on Amazon, but now the buyer has to jump through an extra hoop to make the purchase. How does that help Amazon? Third party sales offer Amazon a 15% commission without any manufacturing liability. What makes the Booksurge sales more valuable than that? Also, will Amazon actually sell copies of these items? Or are they just chasing selection off of their site?

Re:Amazon or ebay incognito?

[Foobar of Borg]

This is not a good direction, but hey, they practically have a monopoly on cheap online books so what am I gonna do.

Well, there is powells.com (which is the website for a bookstore in Portland, OR) and abebooks.com, which is a conglomeration of independent bookstores. And that's just off the top of my head. Seriously, there are quite a number of other choices. You just have to look.

This is a problem for the Nmap book

[fv]

This is a major problem for my upcoming book documenting the Nmap Security Scanner. I was planning to print Nmap Network Scanning with Lightning Source POD and sell it through Amazon. Now Amazon says I need to use their own BookSurge company instead. Leaving aside the anti-competitive nature of this, there is the issue of BookSurge's terrible quality reputation. They are known for missing pages, printing covers upside-down, etc. So people who buy my book through Amazon will be stuck with the shitty BookSurge version, and they will surely blame me for this. I really hope Amazon relents, or I will have to rethink my whole distribution plan. I'm now against using BookSurge on principle. If Amazon keeps playing these anti-competitive games, at least there is always online distribution. Almost half of the book chapters are already online for free:

• Nmap Reference Guide
• Nmap Install Guide
• Nmap Scripting Engine
• Remote OS Detection
• Version Detection
• Zenmap User's Guide

And I hope to free more chapters in the coming week. Amazon may not care about losing my Nmap book, but I hope enough people stand up to Amazon that they really feel the effect!

-Fyodor

Re:This is a problem for the Nmap book

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this only apply to POD? If you're printing more than 500, which I assume you will be, then this isn't a big deal. You can use your favorite local printer and ship them in batches of 50 to Amazon who then redistribute them to their supply depots. Amazon aren't saying you must only use their printers for everything, just low volume print on demand.

Besides, this is only limited to the "Buy now" option on their website pages. You can still list a book with Amazon as a reseller, link it to your own web page and then sell them from there. In fact you would make a greater profit by doing that because you wouldn't be paying Amazon 30%-40%.

Finally, do some research and you will see that there's a pattern amongst all authors like you Fyodor. Because I like to give the author the maximum money for their efforts I always buy direct from them if I can. O'Reilly, McMillan, Elsevier etc have all scaled back their production of textbooks in the last few years so recently I've noticed a pattern where for numerous books on niche technical subjects the author does:

1) Write a quality textbook
2) Publish it on your website and do the marketing yourself (people buy the book from where _you_ tell them to)
3) Once you pass the 2000 mark and students start ordering through bookshops a distributer like Barnes & Noble _come_to_you_ !!!
4) You are in a position to negotiate a non-exclusive distribution and continue to sell from your website in competition
5) Now you're in a win-win situation, you get the Amazon listings via the distributer and the larger profit for the 20-30% of
customers who still come through your website
6) Once you pass the 5-10000 mark you will find publishers start to serenade you, again you can negotiate a non-exclusive deal
because you've done all the work/marketing and the publisher can offer no real consideration, you have them where you want.

So, the first step when you finish the book is to register a company as a small publisher, buy a small block of ISBN numbers (10), print 500
or 1000 (not POD) and list yourself on Amazon as an traditional independent producer, ship some to Amazon on return and place a link to your site.

Re:Vote with your wallet

[CRCulver]

The FSF and Stallman called off their boycott of Amazon nearly six years ago. Get with the times.

Re:Do not pass Go?

[Pollardito]

maybe because they don't have a majority of the market, even this computerworld article critical of the move and claiming monopolistic tactics says they have 15% of the market

Re:Self Published Dreck

[Fieryphoenix]

POD isn't really about self publishing, even though it lends itself well to it. It's about books always being "in print", no matter how obscure or small the demand.

Re:Thin end of the wedge

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I feel obliged to point out for anyone who doesn't know that Beautiful Code is a compendium of chapters written by many different contributing authors. I mentioned Peyton-Jones by name, but he was only responsible for that one (very good) chapter; the disappointing material I mentioned came from some of the other contributors. Sorry for not making this clear in the parent post.