Just about everyone who visits Performancing and its blogs are in the business of online writing and publishing and/or freelance writing and publishing, either for themselves or for clients. Amazon's recent announcement that they would require all books produced by print-on-demand technology be printed by BookSurge should concern you.
Why worry?
Here's the announcement from Authors Guild which was sent to all its members on April 4, 2008. Since I'm a member of this watchdog for authors group, I'm happy to post it in its entirety, which they allow, so writers who aren't members can learn what the big deal is. And it is a big deal, especially for freelance writers who put together books for clients using POD technology and for small presses. Read on.
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AUTHORS GUILD INC. Statement
Last week Amazon announced that it would be requiring that all books that it sells that are produced through on-demand means be printed by BookSurge, their in-house on-demand printer/publisher. Amazon pitched this as a customer service matter, a means for more speedily delivering print-on-demand books and allowing for the bundling of shipments with other items purchased at the same time from Amazon. It also put a bit of an environmental spin on the move -- claiming less transportation fuel is used (this is unlikely, but that's another story) when all items are shipped directly from Amazon.
We, and many others, think something else is afoot. Ingram Industries' Lightning Source is currently the dominant printer for on-demand titles, and they appear to be quite efficient at their task. They ship on-demand titles shortly after they are ordered through Amazon directly to the customer. It's a nice business for Ingram, since they get a percentage of the sales and a printing fee for every on-demand book they ship. Amazon would be foolish not to covet that business.
What's the rub? Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the "long tail" of publishing -- the enormous number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate, make a lot of money for the aggregetor. Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount -- or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books -- to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.
We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on the industry, are authors -- since many are paid for on-demand sales based on the publisher's gross revenues -- and publishers.
We're reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon's bold move. If you have any information on this matter that you think could be helpful to us, please call us at (212) 563-5904 and ask for the legal services department, or send an e-mail to staff@authorsguild.org.
Feel free to post or forward this message in its entirety.
Copyright 2008, The Authors Guild. The Authors Guild (www.authorsguild.org) is the nation's largest society of published book authors.
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The Takeaway Truth
A corporation never changes its business model unless there's a big reward in it for them.
If you've ever written a book and self-published it and want to sell through Amazon, this has HUGE implications for you. Have you checked with the small press you may use or the self-publishing companies like CreateSpace and Lulu and the others to see if they are going to have to change their POD partnerships?
I don't know if any other professional writing organizations have done anything yet about it, but I know the attorneys for Authors Guild are looking into it. On a grassroots level, I don't know if anything is being done or if anything effective can be done, but I do know this issue is of great importance to all of us who write for a living.
Tell others why this is important for you as a writer. Start a petition. Get behind your writing organizations. If you're not a member of Authors Guild but are eligible for membership, join. They are one of the few whose full-time job is to look out for writers best interests.
If you're writing in isolation without belonging to any writing organization, find one. Most of us are little fishes in a great big ocean, but together we are massive. Collective power is always greater than individual power. Think about it.
