Deborah Woehr

Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity. I spent all morning developing and designing a single-page website for Prosperity with the Freeway program I mentioned in a prior post. There was a bit of a learning curve, and I’m still trying to figure out how to link to my PDF file so visitors can download the ebook version. Otherwise, the site is up and running on my server as of midnight.

You can click on the image to get a better view or follow http://www.deborahwoehr.com/Prosperity/index.html to see the site in action. I’m very interested to know what you think of it.

Update: The link for the download is fixed.

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

I decided to do a little research on BookSurge to see what authors can expect, should Amazon prevail. What I read did not sit well with me at all. I’ve been a loyal customer of Amazon since 1996 because they’ve provided an excellent service. You would think they would have revamped BookSurge to match the reputation of their online bookstore. Nope.

The Good

A Review of BookSurge, by Website Publisher Blog

The Bad

Self Publishing with Booksurge: This forum has a great comparison between BookSurge, Lulu, LSI, and Kyodo

The Downright Ugly

Quoted from the Self Publishing with Booksurge thread, post dated 12/9/07:

BOTTOM LINE: Whatever you do, do NOT publish at BOOKSURGE. It is a pain and (in the short-run as well as the long-run) outrageously expensive! They will make more mistakes that you can count (including pricing, royalty, affiliate etc.) and that will hurt you not only financially but also your reputation when your customers see that the prices are changing everyday for your books. I don’t know why things are so bad with them, but based on my experience and everyone I personally know who has published through BookSurge, we all were left feeling pissed off by their lack of customer service, lack of responsiveness, and lack of interest in helping their authors succeed. They are only committed to one thing: short-term profits for themselves rather than building long-term mutually rewarding relationships with their authors (and customers!). After all the negative comments, feedback and remarks, you would think they would improve, but what is weird is that they have only gotten worse. Very unfortunate, because their basic business model was good (close relationship with amazon.com), but their execution has been terrible. From what I hear this has to do with the leadership (founders/owners/ceo) of the company, but I do not know this for a fact. All I know that the ceo could not give a damn when I complained about getting ripped off by his salesperson. Neither he nor his salesperson had the courtesy to apologize or to clear up the misunderstanding (if there was one). They could not care less, and as a result they lost me and about 4 other people who I personally know who were looking at BookSurge vs others. Where did we all go after BookSurge? We ended up going to different POD publishers (some of which have been listed here) as a result of this horrifying experience. While none of them are perfect, at least we get treated with respect and are not finding ourselves with poor quality books (incorrect types/fonts, poor binding, terrible paper etc.) as we did with some of our BookSurge experiences.

Big warning about POD sales (Booksurge, etc.) and Amazon etc., by Writers Net
Another Lawsuit Against Amazon: Author April McDonald Sues Amazon for $10.5 M

A Mixed Bag

Absolute Write Water Cooler - BookSurge You’ll find some good testimonials as well as bad ones on this forum.

Based on everything I’ve read, I have no desire to publish my future books via BookSurge or CreateSpace (which is free). What alternatives does this leave me, if Amazon decides to disable the “buy” button for my books’ listing? I’m looking into that right now.

Unsurprisingly, there is still no word from Lulu’s management about their position regarding Amazon. I also wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t find anything about this publishing coup on Amazon or BookSurge. This hasn’t stopped stopped people from reacting, both inside and outside of the blogosphere. The list below is from Beyond Niche Marketing, who has compiled a list of 62 people who have commented on this development.

• A New Amazon Mandate? Say it ain’t so, Jeff by Morris Rosenthal
• Amazon Forcing POD Publishers to Make a Hard Decision, Virtualbookworm
• Amazon Tightens Grip on Printing by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
• Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company’s Own Service by Rafat Ali, The Washington Post
• Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge by Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly
• Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publishers by Linda Rosencrance, Computerworld
• Amazon pulls a Microsoft by Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld Blogs
• Amazon Puts the Squeeze on Publishers by Betsy Schiffman, Wired Blog Network
• Amazon Gets Demanding with Print-on-Demand Publishers, O’Reilly Radar
• Amazon.com puts the screws to small publishers, Valleywag
• Amazon’s POD monopoly, booktwo.org
• Is Amazon Getting Greedy? , open…
• Oh, REAL nice, Amazon.com, Beatlegirl’s Blog
• Market Report — In Play,MSN Money
• Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch
• Amazon & BookSurge, words count
• Urgent News for Authors, The Holistic Writer
• Monopoly - It’s Not A Game by Jean-Marie Hershey, Print CEO Blog
• Of oil lamps, Print on Demand, and e-book machines: Amazon’s Bezos as a would-be Rockefeller by David Rothman
• Deal Breaker? Amazon - BookSurge - POD - No Choice?, Workboxers
• Amazon.com’s POD land grab, BookFinder.com Journal
• Amazon Changes POD Tactics, Removes Velvet Gloves by Kassia Krozser, Booksquare
• Amazon The Monopoly, PersonaNonData
• Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services, web2bite.com
• Use BookSurge or Die? by Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware
• Amazon/Golliath takes on the little guys by Helen Gallagher, Release Your Writing
• Amazon Bullies POD to Use Booksurge — or Else., Shadowhelm’s Journal
• Amazon Says It Will Only Sell Print-On-Demand Books That It Gets To Print, Techdirt
• Amazon deletes competition, LibraryThing
• What’s Amazon Up To Now? by Tawny Taylor
• Amazon Shaking the POD World Big Time, Juno Books
• A hearty “F$%k you!” to Amazon by Elf M. Sternberg
• A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Inhabitatio Dei
• Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge, Media Mensch
• Self Publishers and Amazon, Writerly Stuff
• Amazon Tightens Grip On Printing, booktrade.info
• Amazon to Block Other POD Services from Using Amazon Marketplace, Dear Author
• Amazon trying to screw small presses?, lupabitch
• Dear Amazon, What are You Thinking? by Monica Valentinelli, Words on the Water
• Will Amazon Hurt Small Pagan Publishers?, The Wild Hund
• Amazon and us by Gill Polack
• Will Amazon Become the Google of the POD Industry? by Deborah Woehr
• Down with The Zon! by Celia Kyle
• Beyond the POD grab: The IDPF should fight Amazon’s new eBabel, look for anti-trust violations, and reach out to Google by David Rothman, TeleRead
• Amazon blocking books of competitive publishers?, electronista
• We are not amused–veinglory, PODPeople
• Bully on the block?, The Pearlsong Letter
• The monopolists: You need to worry about Amazon too by Eion Purcell
• Amazon owns the marketplace: return of the distributor, Thudfactor
• Is Amazon trying to monopolize the empowering Publish-On-Demand market?, Chris Boese’s Weblog
• 500 pound gorilla, Idle musings of a bookseller
• Bye-Bye “Buy Buttons” for POD Authors?, The Backroom at Dehanna.com
• Amazon Making a Big Mistake by Cheryl Pickett
• Amazon to force POD publishers to use Booksurge, Murder by 4
• Amazon.com’s dirty little deed, pds_lit
• Amazon’s Stupid Anti-Competitive Move, Principled Profit
• Amazon Bullying POD Writers and Publishers Unfairly, A-ha
• A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Resurrection Life
• Amazon.com Is On Drugs, Thought Patterns
• Amazon launches their weapon of mass destruction, steps on the long tail of independent authors by Mark Riffey
• Amazon puts the Squeeze on POD Publishers by Easy Author Web Sites
• An Important Lesson from Amazon on How NOT to Treat Your Customers by Virtual Impax

Amazon plus BookSurge WTF?, by AuthorNation.com
Just Remember Amazon.com that karma is a beautiful thing, by Jupiter Gardens

You’ll find more reactions on the Lulu forum: Does Lulu Have Any Comments on the Latest Amazon Development? Lulu author, Anita Stewart has set up a petition for anyone who is interested. You can access it here.

When Marti sent me the link to the Washington Post’s article, Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers, I just about fell over in my chair when I followed the link to read what Writer’s Weekly had to say about it. Basically, Amazon is forcing authors to sign up with BookSurge if they want their books to be sold directly through Amazon’s website. I drove home from work, pissed and worried about my listings for Prosperity and the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology. I’m happy to report that as of right now, you can still buy these books (and any others published by Lulu) from Amazon.

Authors who chose Publish America as their route for publishing are not so fortunate, unless they had their books formatted for Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. Although their books are still listed, they have to either rely on third party vendors to sell their books or enlist in Amazon’s Advantage program.

Will the same thing happen to Lulu publishers in the future? No one knows right now because management has yet to respond, but it’s a strong possibility if Lulu doesn’t adhere to Amazon’s terms. One author on the Lulu forum commented that Amazon isn’t the only avenue to sell your books, and he’s right. But Amazon has become a household names to millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t know of your book’s existence. That’s what really hurts, the lost book sales and for a POD service that is inferior.

I can’t help but feel that Amazon has joined the ranks of Google and Microsoft.

I asked both of my sons this question last month, particularly my oldest. He’s a freshman in high school and has a strong interest in becoming an architect. Back in October, I posted a picture of the replica he made of our house. For Christmas, my husband got him some home designing software. He signed up for sculpture and multimedia for next year. I was hoping that the Beginning Drawing class would be available to him, but I guess it wasn’t. So, I’ll have to sit him down and teach him myself, which is not a big deal because I need to brush up on my drawing skills anyway.

We’ve talked about college, although both my husband and I have serious doubts that he’ll go to college. Ron is his father’s son. He’s a very hands-on, visual learner. I’m still encouraging him go, despite our family history. My late brother was the only man in our immediate families that attended college. But in the event that he doesn’t, I talked to him about a back-up plan. If he isn’t able to realize his dream of becoming an architect, he would like to be a contractor.

I can definitely see him doing that. After watching him plan and execute the building of that replica, I think he would be very successful in this field.

I was ecstatic when I found an email waiting for me this morning, by paranormal author Pamela K. Kinney, who recently published Haunted Richmond. Below is a snippet of the full review that she wrote for Prosperity.

This book explores not only the theme of the paranormal kind of hauntings, but digs into those of the psychological kind that haunt both the living and even the dead. Lines between evil and good can be splattered by many shades of gray. That sometimes, a town is more than just s town, but the center of Hell itself. And that is why Prosperity will scare you.

I give Prosperity 4 Dragons.

I’ve been dealing with my first case of serious blogger’s block these past few weeks. Ideas for posts would come, only to disappear as soon as I clicked on the “Write” button. After several minutes of staring at the blank input box, I’d close the blog and return to my new WIP, which is gaining momentum inside my head. Or, I would read my friends’ blogs and some freelance writing and design blogs I’ve discovered recently.

I know the reasons for this block: physical exhaustion and too much going through my mind. I’ve just finished a major archival project at work and caught up on some much-needed sleep, despite the time change. The VP is supposed to arrive tomorrow. What changes, if any, in regard to my contract status I have no way of knowing until they tell me. My husband advised me to keep a status quo, which I’m doing.

In the meantime, I’m in the process of re-educating myself with design and building a solid portfolio to show prospective clients. I’ll also be working on my writing portfolio, as I’d like to offer both design and writing services.

This business card is the latest addition to my design portfolio. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out when I placed my order from Vista Print. My own business card was a disappointment, design-wise. Both Tom and I were pleasantly surprised when his order came yesterday morning. I’m discovering lately that what looks good on my computer screen doesn’t always come out the same on print.

I’ve been looking for an easy way to create websites for quite some time. But none of the software programs I tried (Mac or PC) worked the way I had hoped they would. They were cumbersome, and the end result was poor. I was elated when I discovered blogs, but you can do so much with blog software. WordPress is great for building simple sites, and I probably could do more with it if I had the patience (and time) to master HTML and CSS. Forget Dreamweaver; that program is way too intensive.

The fact is, I don’t. I’m a writer and a graphic designer, not a coder. Earlier last year, I found a program called SiteGrinder, which allows you to create websites directly inside Photoshop. I was ecstatic until I realized that the developers hadn’t upgraded their program for Intel Macs. The year went by, and I became busy.

Then in January, I got curious about SiteGrinder and found that they had since upgraded to include Intel Macs. However, I didn’t have the budget at the time. I was searching for Mac software on Amazon yesterday when I found Freeway. I had tested it back in 2003 with frustrating results, but the single review made me curious. So, I went to their website, read pages of glowing reviews, and decided to download their trial.

While I’ve yet to test out making roll-over buttons and other technical tweaks, I was very impressed with how easy it was to create my landing page. If you’re familiar with page layout software, this program will be a cinch for you to learn. The hardest part was coming up with the design concept. Once I solved that, it was a matter of importing the design I’d created in Photoshop. Now, I have to start all over again for the rest of the pages, but I will finally have the main site exactly as I’d always envisioned it.

When I wrote yesterday’s post, I honestly didn’t expect to see my book listed on Amazon before the month was up. Imagine my surprise when I found it up early this morning. There is no synopsis, and Amazon is listing it as temporarily unavailable. A year and a half ago, I had no problem uploading the synopsis for the anthology. But if you frequent Amazon as much as I do, you’ll know that they changed their interface again.

Even though I’m able to update the author information, date of publication, etc., they left out the synopsis section. So. I’ll have to look for a solution on Lulu forum to see how I can get around shelling out $25 for the Amazon Advantage program. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, here’s the link. Thanks to all of you who gave me moral support and/or offered advice. I would still be revising the manuscript if it wasn’t for you.