Might Makes Right - Amazon/Booksurge/Nation
Therein lies the overriding, lawless attitude and it has sadly pervaded our society because the powers that be are in full accord. What is a writer or home worker to do? We’ll figure it out! There is an answer, somewhere. In the mean time…
Reminded by “Author” at Deborah Woehr’s post, that Might Makes Right is an attitude (or a governmentally invoked perk, your choice), we follow up on the Amazon/Booksurge dealbreaker.
There’s an update from Angela Hoy; (a continuing update page can be .)
And Angela points us to a statement by the NWU here;
“The National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 strongly opposes Amazon’s new restriction on the print-on demand market and calls upon Amazon to immediately withdraw this monopolistic intrusion, or face our call for investigations by the Justice Department and Congress.”
Which actually hits the real nail on the head! Unfortunately though, we’ll have to consider whether this statement carries any weight any longer. The National Writers Union is how important?
Our own Anne Wayman, who sells her books on Amazon, received a response from the Washington State Attorney General (Amazon’s Home Office is in Wash.) that goes a long way towards an explanation. Except that the long way the AG actually goes to is to explain that a State Attorney General has no clue what exclusivity is because he/she can’t read simple English!
“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.”
Hard to believe? Not really. Easy to use one’s imagination to come up with something other than a kosher rational for this stupidity? Yep, easy as he**!
From O’Reilly Radar, this comment I’d not seen before today;
A former VP at the Time Warner Book Group, Jerry Simmons, was asked the question: “How do you predict the long-term effects of this as it relates to the small author and publisher?”
His answer: “The long-term effects for the author and publisher are devastating. With Amazon strengthening and securing their place in the distribution and sales channel, they can do anything they want. The next move will be to squeeze these small authors and publishers for placement fees, advertising fees, and eventually higher discounts. When you give in once, it never stops, this is the way of the publishing world and booksellers. It will get to the point where they start to lose money on each book sold. Only then will Amazon back off, but you can bet they are going to push authors and publishers to the wall and take every possible nickel out of the equation.”
Be prepared to get pushed to the wall…
Tags: Amazon, Angela Hoy, Anne Wayman, BookSurge, POD Publishers, Print On Demand, Washington Attorney GeneralRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Online Money, Resources, Web Happenings
1 opinion for Might Makes Right - Amazon/Booksurge/Nation
A.F. Stewart
Apr 30, 2008 at 8:00 am
I started a petition against this stupidity. If anyone wants to voice their opinion, here’s the link:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protectPOD/index.html
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