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Blogs by Kathy C Schultz
Strong Arm Tatics in the Publishing World 3/31/2008 6:22:44 AM
One Company demands, "Let me print your books or I will drop your books from my list. Today, I received a very sobering email from my publisher, Publish America, who finds itself confronted by the internet retail giant, Amazon, demanding the right to print each of Publish America's 30,000 authors. Apparently, Amazon has acquired in-house digital printing facility, Booksurge. If, PA does not give into their demands, Amazon will retailiate by disabling the "Buy" button on all of its Publish America listings. (PA has its own printing facility-Lightning Source, a daughter company of the world's largest book wholesaler, Ingram.)
This demand would force PA to submit 60,000 seperate book files(text and cover) and redo each of them in order to conform to Amazon's complicated technical specifications.
Also, Amazon is also demanding a larger profit-per-book amount for any Publish America book that they sell. (Book stores usually charge 40-45% of a book sale, so I am not sure how much more Amazon wants to take from new authors.
Amazon says that PA can pass it on to the authors. How is that I wonder since Publish America does not charge to print my books. The royalities that I recieve are based on the sale of my book. The average royality for a new, fairly unknown author, would be about $1.35 a book, so one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to calculate the finances on that one.
Suppose one only sold 400 books in a year. Not much and by the way, don't forget to deduct the expenses of travel to booksignings, handouts for the visitors, etc. By the time, it all comes down to the wire, authors, like myself, find satisfaction in knowing that someone smiled, cried, laughed out loud when they read our novels.
What do you think about this situation? It sounds like the old days of the Mafia trying to strong arm small business for protection money. To me this is a form of blackmail. I know business is business, but what if I came to your place of business and demanded that you do it my way or you would be punished? Needless to say you would kick me to the curb or something worse.
So, If you say this strong tatic is UnAmerican, ...You would be exactly right. There has to be some class and dignity in a business, because in the end, one reaps what they sow and as far as I am concerned Amazon is sowing weeds in its garden and losing its respectability.
