Juno Books

According the the Wall Street Journal Amazon is going to shaking be up the print on demand publishers in a big bad way.

So big, I don’t even think THEY realize it. And there are some holes to the story do far, but –

To quote WSJ: “Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon’s Web site.”

Okay, *I* am a POD publisher and no one has notified me. I started Writers.com Books in 2003 (an started first with short-run, not POD), Infrapress and Caelum Press in 2004. I’ve published 13 books (some in two editions) through Lightning Source (LSI). The books are distributed through Ingram. These books sell steadily in small to minuscule amounts. Perfect for true POD. This is what print-on-demand is about. The authors are not getting rich, but they do get royalties. Having the books available for one author has also resulted in two movie deals.

I do not supply books *directly* to Amazon, although I used to, thorough Amazon Marketplace. When you first start out with only a title or two, that’s the only way to do it. It gets pretty inefficient — Amazon has this automatic system that orders from several locations, so you might get a book order for 1 book at 4 PM on Monday, another copy of the same title at 6 PM the same day, and then, on Tuesday, they order three copies. Once I could avoid that, I did.

So, Amazon orders the books like any other bookseller — they place an order with Ingram; LSI prints the books and ships them and keeps track of what they printed and shipped; deducts printing, shipping and handling and keeps my account. I get (automatically deposited) a check every month (delayed by three months) for the books. I can check online at any time to see what’s selling. (Curious? Okay, this month, as of today, eight books have sold at least one copy. One sold 39 copies. Another, that sold maybe six copies all last year sold 12.) I have no idea who ordered the books. That data is not available to me. But all these books do sell through Amazon. Perhaps the majority of them do. I have no way of knowing.

Now. I haven’t published a new title since April 2006. I’ve been a little busy editing Juno Books, among other reasons. But this is still a viable little business, operated professionally, that brings in a few bucks for me and the authors and I have no intentions of shutting it down. It epitomizes what can be done by keeping good books that do not sell enough otherwise to be kept in print.

So, is Amazon going to shut me down? Maybe. Angela Hoy has a more frank and alarming report at . Other comments are at and Virtualbookworm

Let’s hope Amazon comes to its senses. I don’t think they have any idea themselves what they are asking here.

Update #1 (3.30.08): First off — I thought it would be obvious that these posts have NOTHING TO DO WITH JUNO BOOKS. I do occasionally blog about publishing-related news and even personal stuff. But perhaps it was not obvious, so: Is it obvious now?

O’Reilly Radar examines the aggressive explicit lock-in attempt

Publishers Weekly’s article contains an interesting sentence: “An Amazon spokesperson . . . said for publishers that don’t use BookSurge for pod, they can still use Amazon’s Advantage Program (which works on a consignment model) or third party vendors to sell their pod books.” As noted, Advantage is not something I’d go back to (nor would most, I would think), but is “third party vendor” a code phrase for “Ingram Distribution”? Will Amazon suddenly provide a loophole?

Booktwo notes: “POD has been turning from a vanity publisher’s niche into a mainstream printing option - Cambridge University Press recently passed the 10,000 title mark (pdf news release) with Lightning Source. Big publishers are increasingly turning to POD to support backlist titles, while new publishers use the technology to bypass the industry’s traditional (and traditionally expensive) high print run, warehousing and return mechanisms…Have no doubt that POD is only going to grow. 50% of all books printed are never read - that figure, coupled with the growth of ebooks (another potential monopoly for Amazon), ensures that POD will account for the majority of books published at some not-too-distant point in the future. At the moment, there are price and quality issues, but these are rapidly changing….What Amazon is attempting to do is build a print/bookseller monopoly as POD enters the mainstream. As Amazon is the largest online bookseller, POD publishers are going to have to use BookSurge even if there books are sold in plenty of other places. And using BookSurge involves higher costs, and being locked into Amazon’s crippling discount rates.”

LibraryThing notes: “For book-industry bloggers, and particularly the POD people, this has become something of an I-am-Spartacus moment. (Of course, those guys all died.)” Okay, I already WAS Spartacus. But then, I’ve been crucified before.

Update #2 (3.31.08): Some of the hysteria being blogged out there seems to be overlooking the fact that Amazon.com is not as monolithic as Microsoft and that books are not as profitable as software. Further, although self-publishers may rely on Amazon for 75% (a guess) of their sales, legitimate POD publishers don’t. Again, a guess, but maybe 25% of sales? Scam vanity publishers probably don’t sell that much through Amazon, either, but having a book on Amazon means something to authors they are trying to take advantage of.

Publishers (not me, haven’t bothered) who have contacted LSI are reporting they are being told not to worry and that LSI will have more information later in the week.

Update #3 (3.31.08):Amazon’s published an official letter. Still not terribly clear, though. (1) They don’t address the cost of setting titles up. (2) They don’t address the matter of Booksurge quality/cost/service. (3) Nor do they mention how they will pay/account for copies sold. (4) They mention. “If the POD item were to be printed at a third party, we’d have to wait for it to be transhipped…” — which makes no sense. But Amazon stocks POD books just like other books. As I explained above, they order them from Ingram and stock them. They don’t wait for a customer to order one book THEN order it from Ingram. That’s why the books say “In stock and available from Amazon.com”. Weird.

However — do a search for PublishAmerica titles — looks like all 23,699 ARE no longer available through Amazon.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed