An email to Amazon
In light of what's happening there, I sent the following email to Amazon.com through their customer service area:
I learned today that Amazon.com is planning on discontinuing sales from all POD publishers except their own in-house publisher. I strongly object to this tactic. I am an author publishing with a small POD press and while we have some sales through brick and mortar stores, much of our sales are through online bookshops.
Amazon's POD publisher discounts are not as good as the discount that the press I'm printing with uses. My publisher, Immanion/Megalithica, is unlikely to be able to remain in business if it is forced to use Amazon's POD provider and I have no intention of letting this happen without a fight.
In light of this issue, I am going to recommend to all my readers that they no longer do business with Amazon unless and until this issue is resolved. I will take my book purchasing business over to Powells instead of using Amazon, and I have spent thousands of dollars here over the years that will now be going elsewhere. I will remove my 300+ item wishlist from Amazon so that anyone wanting to buy me gifts will be purchasing for me on Powells or other non-Amazon sourced online retailers. I buy dozens, possibly hundreds of books every year, usually expensive specialist books that often come from small presses, so this issue is of great importance to me as a reader as well as an author. I have no desire to see you drive specialist presses out of business and throw the breadth of the book business to the wolves.
I will also encourage my readers to contact you about this issue. I hope that this attempt at an Amazon monopoly of the publishing business fails miserably. Variety is what you originally built your business on. I would like to see you continue to encourage a wide range of presses and topics rather than attempting a stranglehold on the publishing and bookselling business.
Erynn Laurie
author
If you have any interest in this issue, I encourage you to write to Amazon as well. These days a lot of quality Pagan and occult books are coming from small presses that use POD technology. If the authors and publishers of these books are forced to use Amazon's press, they're likely to loose what income they do get from these publications. Please support small Pagan publishing and write to Amazon. I don't know if it'll do any good, but I know I'm not giving them another penny unless they give up on the idea of monopolizing the book industry in this manner.
I learned today that Amazon.com is planning on discontinuing sales from all POD publishers except their own in-house publisher. I strongly object to this tactic. I am an author publishing with a small POD press and while we have some sales through brick and mortar stores, much of our sales are through online bookshops.
Amazon's POD publisher discounts are not as good as the discount that the press I'm printing with uses. My publisher, Immanion/Megalithica, is unlikely to be able to remain in business if it is forced to use Amazon's POD provider and I have no intention of letting this happen without a fight.
In light of this issue, I am going to recommend to all my readers that they no longer do business with Amazon unless and until this issue is resolved. I will take my book purchasing business over to Powells instead of using Amazon, and I have spent thousands of dollars here over the years that will now be going elsewhere. I will remove my 300+ item wishlist from Amazon so that anyone wanting to buy me gifts will be purchasing for me on Powells or other non-Amazon sourced online retailers. I buy dozens, possibly hundreds of books every year, usually expensive specialist books that often come from small presses, so this issue is of great importance to me as a reader as well as an author. I have no desire to see you drive specialist presses out of business and throw the breadth of the book business to the wolves.
I will also encourage my readers to contact you about this issue. I hope that this attempt at an Amazon monopoly of the publishing business fails miserably. Variety is what you originally built your business on. I would like to see you continue to encourage a wide range of presses and topics rather than attempting a stranglehold on the publishing and bookselling business.
Erynn Laurie
author
If you have any interest in this issue, I encourage you to write to Amazon as well. These days a lot of quality Pagan and occult books are coming from small presses that use POD technology. If the authors and publishers of these books are forced to use Amazon's press, they're likely to loose what income they do get from these publications. Please support small Pagan publishing and write to Amazon. I don't know if it'll do any good, but I know I'm not giving them another penny unless they give up on the idea of monopolizing the book industry in this manner.
*sigh*
Do you have any good sources about this shift, just out of interest?
Other than that, thank you very much for the support on this! *hugs*
Edited at 2008-03-30 01:09 pm (UTC)
After looking through your posts on this outrageous tactic and realizing that one letter or 10 *saying* that you will buy elsewhere isn't going to hit home. I'm thinking that for the next month or so every time I buy a book elsewhere, I'll let Amazon know: send them a brief letter why I bought elsewhere with a copy of the receipt :-) If enough people do this maybe the bean counters will have something interesting to say at the next staff meeting *wink*.
Rose