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POD Braces Itself Against Amazon

Posted by Zonk on from the oh-so-demanding dept.

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?"

3 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Amazon or ebay incognito? by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. This is a problem for the Nmap book by fv · · Score: 5, Informative
    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:

    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

    1. Re:This is a problem for the Nmap book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.