In 2008, Amazon tried to strong arm independent publishers into changing printers. Amazon had just recently acquired BookSurge, a POD print provider with a decidedly bad reputation (you can still Google BookSurge and find reams of complaints). Amazon merely changed the name of their new acquisition to CreateSpace, but didn’t bother to address issues of quality or consistency. We know this from personal experience as recent as last year.
Because of the aforementioned complaints, CreateSpace wasn’t doing the business Amazon thought it should, so Amazon decided to call certain independent publishers on the phone and threaten them with removing the buy buttons from their books’ pages at the Amazon site if the publisher being targeted didn’t knuckle under to their demands.
A brave independent publisher by the name of Booklocker took on the 800-pound Amazon gorilla in court and WON their case. So, Amazon was forced to cease and desist.
The bright minds at Amazon needed a new plan.
Fear is a great cattle prod, better than a hotshot. Ask any politician.
Amazon’s ordering, like Barnes and Noble and other online book retailers, is automated, meaning the minute a consumer buys a book, any book, even one printed by a POD competitor, that book can be printed and shipped in less than 24 hours. Unless someone deliberately interferes with the automated ordering process.
1-3 weeks availability–yeah, that’s the ticket. Change “in stock” to “1-3 weeks” availability on a book’s sales page and that’s the kiss of death, or so Amazon thought, for an independently published book. Use social networking to scare…er, prod the prospective self-publishing author or independent publisher into jumping ship from the nation’s most popular POD print provider, Lightning Source, to Amazon’s substandard CreateSpace. Just change the availability on a few books’, allegedly at random, to feed the rumor mills and voila, herds will flock to be fleeced.
Slick idea, huh? Just like Facebook’s privacy issues, Amazon can readily claim “technical issues” or some such rot to cover for their crime. They can simply say they’re sorry and skate, just like Facebook has done numerous times now. Despite the fact everyone even the least bit Net-savvy knows they’re lying like cheap rugs.
Too bad the “bright” minds at Amazon, or even Facebook, aren’t being held to any standard of honesty and excellence by their CEO’s. What a difference for the better they might make in this world.
Attitudes in every organization, from government to corporations to small businesses, bleed down from the top.
Funny that none of the books printed by Amazon’s CreateSpace suffer from the new “availability issue”, even now. Only books produced by Lightning Source, CreateSpace’s number One competitor.
Maybe Amazon thinks we’re all so stupid–we being publishers, authors, readers, consumers–we just couldn’t possibly see through their new game plan.
If you see 1-3 weeks availability on any book at Amazon, published by Jigsaw Press or not, go look for that book at Barnes and Noble–they offer the same free shipping for a purchase of $25.00 or more, and they aren’t suffering from the same “availability issues” as Amazon .
We’ll bet the reading public is generally unaware of the fact that for an independent publisher like Jigsaw Press to offer our eBooks for .99 on Kindle, we’re forced to give up .64 cents of every sale to Amazon. We did it anyway, we lowered our eBook prices at places like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords for one reason–to benefit our readers. Not only that, Jigsaw Press is giving the whole profit to our participating authors, and taking nothing for ourselves. Our authors make more if you buy our eBooks anywhere but Amazon.
Now, if we wanted to charge $2.99 or more per eBook, Amazon would give us around 70% of that money to split with our authors, less their digital file fees (whatever those are), and delivery (yes, Amazon charges us per sale to deliver our eBook file to your Kindle). Ain’t that a racket? And let us not begin to discuss the “technical issues” surrounding sales reports for eBooks on Amazon’s proprietary Kindle.
Sure makes the Nook by Barnes and Noble worthy of more than just a passing consideration, doesn’t it?
In these tough economic times, we’ve all had to make sacrifices. We at Jigsaw Press would rather get a good night’s sleep, but then we have a conscience, we have morals and ethics, and a reputation for honesty and fair dealing. We care about both our authors and our readers. Unlike Amazon. Apparently.
Jigsaw Press
