Despite the backlash from irate authors, Amazon is standing firm on its decision, although they clarified their reasons in a letter which they posted on their site. I’ve included the link below.
Open Letter to Interested Parties
The major reason why people got upset was Amazon’s reported stance of exclusivity. They have denied this.
No, there is no request for exclusivity. Any publisher can use Amazon’s POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels.
After reading the entire letter, I’ve come to a better understanding as to the reasoning behind Amazon’s controversial decision. Simply put, they want to ship our books to their customers faster, instead of relying on a middleman (such as Publish America and Lulu) to supply them with our books. I totally understand this, given my frustration at Christmas when I was forced to wait two weeks for Lulu to ship my final proof for Prosperity. Lulu normally takes a week to ship books to their customers (my experience) during the off-season. During the Christmas season, it can take up to three weeks. I’ve ordered books and other items from Amazon as last-minute as a week before Christmas and got them just in time to wrap them and stick them under the tree.
Figuring that Lulu was going to be next on the chopping block, I signed up for Amazon’s Advantage Program on Saturday, thinking that I could circumvent the inevitable disabling of the “Buy Now” button by supplying Amazon with a handful of copies for their warehouse. As it turns out, my intuition was correct. If you want to self-publish with the POD house of your choosing, then you’ll have to fork over $29.95 per year to Amazon if you want to make your book available on their website.
That’s nothing, compared to what people pay annually to host their websites and blogs. If you can market yourself and your books well, then the annual fee will more than pay for itself.
Related Articles
Publisher’s Weekly
Washington Post
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Tags: Amazon, Amazon monopoly, BookSurge
[...] UPDATE: Amazon defends its policy. [...]
[...] many hat tips - most notable for me was Rebecca’s comment and Deborah Woehr’s March 31st entry. (Along with Mark’s above) Tags: Amazon, BookSurge, POD Publishers, Print On DemandRelated [...]