To all Fox and Quill members that are published with Infinity Publishing:
Every title that Infinity Publishes is in the Amazon advantage program.
Infinity prints all the books sent to Amazon on consignment, in fact we have
over 10,000 Infinity books sitting in five Amazon distribution centers. In
the advantage program, we have to give Amazon a 55% discount and for that
favor, they only pay us when they actually sell one of our books that are
sitting in their warehouses. Every Monday morning we get 5 emails with
orders for books that are needed to maintain inventory levels in each of the
warehouses. We are the only POD publisher that prints their own books and
we were the first to sign up for the advantage program when it was first
introduced. All of our competition prints with Lightning Source and is
being forced to either join the Advantage program by shipping 5 of every
title they publish on consignment (which in the case of
Authorhouse/Iuniverse would mean printing and shipping a quarter of a
million books to Amazon) or having Booksurge do the printing for all books
sold by Amazon. Authorhouse, Iuninverse and Lulu have signed the
Amazon/Booksurge contract. The terms for this deal is a 48% discount off
the list price of the book and then paying Booksurge to print the book.
This will not leave very much for the Publisher to pay a Royalty and to make
any kind of profit.
Infinity Authors will not be affected at all by this move by
Amazon/Booksurge and we will continue to print the highest quality books in
the industry.
Thanks for your attention,
Tom Gregory, President
Infinity Publishing
These posts are from a Yahoo Newgroup.
Go to the Self-Publish group for a complete postings.
This is the essence of responses to get a flavor of what's being said on the
Internet:
Here is the complete text:
April 1, 2008
Dear Customer,
Lightning Source has been following the recent press coverage and
discussions about Amazon.com
and BookSurge. We are aware of the concern this is causing the
publishing community. The issue centers around Amazon.com tying the
availability of your books and terms of sale at Amazon.com to the
production of books at the Amazon.com subsidiary BookSurge,
specifically requiring you to use BookSurge in order to sell on
Amazon.
Like you, we are very concerned about any conduct that would serve to
limit a publishers choice in supply chain partners and to negatively
impact the cost of your products to consumers. We believe that
choice and selection of best of class services are critical to the
long term success of publishers and a vibrant book market.
Lightning Source continues to provide the highest quality digital on
demand print and distribution services for every one of our
customers. All your titles continue to be available to all of our
channel partners, including Amazon.com, with immediate availability
for shipment within 24 hours.
We are committed to providing you with the best of class quality
product and fastest distribution service in the market, and will
continually work to develop new channels and new offerings.
Lightning Source will continue to monitor this situation and let you
know when we have more information.
Please feel free to call your Lightning Source point of contact, if
you have any additional questions.
J. Kirby Best
President & CEO
There is no other supplier on Amazon that is required to produce their goods at an Amazon company or pay that company to produce the goods.
Amazon sells computers, electronics, toys, apparel, for example, and offers Free shipping, as they are "shipped from Amazon," and does not require the merchandise be manufactured by an Amazon company at an Amazon premises.
It would be an unfair trade practice to single out Publishers as a group from any other supplier or manufacturer of goods who sells direct from Amazon.
Can't help with the time/expense of converting files to meet their
specs--sorry! But, that should be a one-time occurrence (hopefully).
There would be considerable unmaintainable expense to 1) convert
formats, 2) setup charges in two places, 3) keep maintenance fees
annually in two or more places, 4) have contention when book set ups
are made about who is actually selling the book to amazon, b&n, other
online stores, ingram and where the income is accounted from.
I note that you're published with the UK version of Lulu and your
book is priced at 22.50 pounds sterling on the UK Amazon, which is
about US$44.50 -- so there may be another factor in play.
Amazon picks up listings from the Ingram data base. So, if Author
House set the book up for print with Lightning Source, Inc., then it
would be entered into the Ingram data base very quickly. Even if you
don't do any of the marketing services with the subsidy publisher, if
you choose to distribute the book "to the trade" then they will print
it with LSI -- and LSI will put it in the Ingram data base. No
collusion between Amazon and the subsidy publisher at all ... indeed,
no direct contact, either.
There's something strange with amazon. When my book "Cracking the
Glass Darklly" was published by AuthorHouse, which is another POD,
in late December, I was waiting for the first copy off the presses,
when someone pointed out it was already on Amazon, and I hadn't
even seen it. I didn't go for any of the marketing services AH
offered, so I'm wondering what is the inside track the amazon has
with these publishers.
Publishing discussions and answersI disagree with someone's statement that "Civil
Liberties and Rights under the Bill of Rights only apply to government."
Civil Liberties apply to fair trade in Interstate Commerce. Companies are obligated under the law to practice fair trade.
AT&T could not establish to discriminate, for example, that it would only provide Long Distance service to Registered Voters in the State of Kansas IF they called long distance from the Kansas City Telephone office, because it would save ATT money by callers using the phone at the KS office. There are two things here. ATT could not single out a group to deny service to. ATT could not provide a condition of full or equal service based on a cost-saving measure that denied equal rights.
Q&A: Amazon.com's new POD move
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Question from reader: Is POD still a valid way to publish a book?
Answer from John: Yes, POD can be a very cost effective and valid
way of publishing, especially if you don't have a distributor. But, given
Amazon.com's new policy of only selling POD books produced by its
sister company BookSurge, I'd sign up with BookSurge to service
Amazon.com and sign up with Lightning Source to service Ingram, and
through them, most bookstores. Do not offer an exclusive to either
company.
As for Amazon's change of policy, they make a good argument for
making the change. It really does make sense for them to print the
books at their warehouses and to send them out from there rather than
wait to get books from Lightning Source (the main source for most POD
books sold right now by Amazon.com). By printing in-house, they can
ship orders more quickly and also make sure that the entire order goes
out right away rather than having to send a single book later after they
get it from Lightning Source.
Of course, it also make enormous financial sense to them to keep all
the money in-house.
Lightning Source, with the power of Ingram, will fight the change. It
will be interesting to see if they can sway Amazon's decision.
John Kremer, editor, Book Marketing Update newsletter
author, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, Sixth Edition
Open Horizons, P O Box 2887, Taos NM 87571
575-751-3398; Email: JohnKremer@bookmarket.com
Web: http://www.bookmarket.com
More to come I'm sure... Check out other listings across the Internet for more
information.