Call for Amazon Boycott

YouWriteOn.com, a popular UK site for new writers, run by the UK's Art Counsel, is calling for a boycott of Amazon. Apparently Amazon is expanding its punitive efforts beyond just the arm-twisting to force publishers that use print-on-demand technology into buying the services only from Amazon's own offering, which is anti-competitive and an attempt, in my view, to force monopolistic vertical integration into the industry.

Now, at least in Britain, the company is angry with publishers selling their own wares at a discount on their own web sites. To be fair, such channel conflict - when the sources of product undercut the price of a reseller - is considered by retailers to be poor behavior. After all, the reseller cannot possibly match the price of the vendor. But there is talk that Amazon may move beyond what I think might be reasonable dislike of the practice:

There are fears that Amazon may retaliate by regarding a publisher’s online price as the recommended retail price and applying its trading terms to that. If a publisher discounts a £20 book to £15 online and Amazon has a contract for a 50 per cent discount on the full price, Amazon would pay the company £7.50 instead of £10. Publishers say that this would be unfair and could ultimately drive up prices.

In addition, there are more rumors over what Amazon is demanding from the POD publishers whose buy buttons it has disabled:

One source claimed that the online seller recently removed the “buy buttons” from a book on its website to prevent users from being able to purchase it. “They then went to the publisher and said, ‘Give us an extra 2 or 3 per cent or we won’t put the buy buttons back’,” the source said.

An Amazon spokesman said: “It is speculation. We never talk about discussions with suppliers.” He declined to comment further.

So when will the pressure start ratcheting up in the US? Maybe it is time for all of us to take our purchases someplace other than Amazon - and to email Jeff Bezos (email address from Small Publishers Association of North America, or SPAN, whose executive director sent this email) to let him know how many people in the industry are distressed by his company's actions.

New Amazon.com Service No Bargain

Someone on a private email list mentioned seeing CreateSpace, an Amazon manufacture-on-demand and fulfillment service that can print books, CDs, or DVDs as people order them without your doing any fulfillment. I just looked at the pricing model they have and can say pretty confidently that using this service would be a good way for a self-publishing writer to quickly go broke.

The only giveaway is the pricing page. They get a percentage of the sale plus a fixed per copy price. This cost rapidly adds up. As an example, say that you have a 264-page B&W book. According to the chart on the page, the fixed charge per copy would be $6.78. In addition, they want 20% of the list price if you sell through them or direct, and 40% of the list price if you sell through Amazon.

Let's say that you set the price at $20 a copy. If you sell through the CreateSpace page, you pay 20% plus the per copy price, for a total of $10.78, or over 50%. That's hardly a way to do well in self-publishing, because you'll have the editing and design costs, marketing, etc.

If you sold through Amazon, they'd want, 40% off the list price. Now, it's not clear whether that's the only percentage they want, or you'd also have to have one of the Amazon Advantage accounts as well. Say you don't. That means the cost is 40% of list, which is $8. But you still have to take out the $6.78 per copy cost, with a total of $14.68. You'd effectively pay close to 73% royalties to Amazon, and that not quite 27% isn't going to cover all your costs of creating the book in the first place, so you could conceivably lose money on each sale. Better to find another way to get yourself into print.

Comparing POD Choices

Someone on a private writers' discussion group mentioned a site that I pass along. Print on Demand Publishing was put together by some NWU members. I haven't double-checked the facts, but it does bring up some basic condierations of using print on demand and compares some of the more popular providers.