Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for April 10th, 2008

Attack of the 800-Pound Amazon

Got to hand it to Amazon.com — she’s a bitch on wheels! Writers of self-published books done print-on-demand have recently run afoul of Amazon’s new policy of only allowing on-demand books printed through their on-demand service to be sold on their e-tailer site. Phew! That’s a mouthful. Seriously, though — Amazon is a pisser!

Can’t say I’m surprised by this new policy. Anyone who’s done business with Amazon in the last few years should’ve seen the writing on the wall. Let’s face it, Amazon started it’s rise to the top buying-out other Internet properties. They own BookSurge and Createspace — 2 of the top on-demand publishing services. Is their latest move really so surprising?

My own experience with Amazon began with the publication of my own chapbook, Snake Oil. I signed-up with the Amazon Advantage program so I could sell books published by Asterius Press on the Amazon site. It was hardly a fair deal — Amazon basically takes a limited amount of books on consignment which the publisher ships to Amazon’s warehouse at it’s own expense. Then, if you happen to sell a book, Amazon takes a whopping 55% of the retail price. Needless to say, the publisher doesn’t make much money. In fact, over time, I discovered I was actually losing money. And then, as if Amazon wasn’t taking enough out of my pocket, they decided to charge an annual fee. At this point, I’d had enough and decided to stop doing business with Amazon and quit the Advantage program. Next, having also come to the end of my relationship with the traditional printing company I’d been with, I decided to try on-demand printing. So, I signed with Digitz.net. I liked the fact that they not only worked with self-publishers, but with small press publishers. Initially, the relationship was fine. I began working on my first project with them and things seemed to go smoothly. Then, they were gobbled-up by BookSurge and Digitz.net ceased to exist. I accepted the relationship with Booksurge because I was assured that nothing would change. Six sales reps later, I began to suspect something was amiss. Much time went by and I hadn’t done a second book with them, although I had one in the works. Finally, I get an email from sales rep number seven telling me that Booksurge was now owned by Amazon.com. This was followed by a postal letter and contracts to be signed, faxed and . . . oh shit! I’m getting a headache. It was clear to me that Amazon was not only greedy, but bent on destroying small press publishers like me.

But let’s be honest, shall we? Amazon isn’t the only company casting it’s big fat shadow upon the landscape. While Amazon’s practices are greedy and monopolistic, all the broohaha over Amazon’s latest move misses the larger point — that the self-publication services are moving in the exact same direction traditional publishing has gone. Ingram, the largest distributor of printed media owns Lightning Source. Author Solutions Inc. owns AuthorHouse, WordClay and iUniverse. Other on-demand companies will have no choice but to go on a feeding frenzy just to compete. What that means is fewer options for writers with all the power in the hands of a few media conglomerates. It was bad enough when writers were being squeezed from the top, but now we are being squeezed from the bottom as well, with nowhere to turn.

In truth, the writers are just pawns in the chess game. What else is new?