Amazon.com, BookSurge, and POD
The following is a letter I sent to Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO and the Amazon.com Board from myself and the Board of SPAN.
Scott Flora
SPAN Executive Director
April 4, 2008
Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com Board of Directors
1200 12th Avenue South, Suite 1200
Seattle, Washington 98144-2734
Dear Mr. Bezos and the Amazon.com Board,
I am writing you to inform you of the position the Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN) has taken regarding your policy to require that BookSurge print and ship all POD books sold by Amazon.com.
SPAN is a nonprofit trade association representing over 1,000 book publishers and authors. Our members are POD publishers, authors who use POD publishing, and traditional independent publishers. Most of our members are vendors of Amazon.com through one ofyour programs. It is fair to say that almost all of our publishers and authors who use POD to distribute through Amazon.com will be negatively affected by this new policy.
It is because so many of our members will be adversely affected that the SPAN Board is going on record as opposing Amazon.com requiring all publishers using POD distribution through Amazon to print with BookSurge.
I have always liked Amazon and have found you a good partner to independent publishers. SPAN has had an Amazon representative our last three national conferences and currently have an Amazon Advantage discount program as a benefit for our members.
I believe your new policy is not in the best interest of either Amazon or our members. Let me start with a couple of reasons why I believe this is not in Amazon’s best interest.
Customer Dissatisfaction
In the message to shareholders on the Amazon Investor Relations Web site you state that Amazon strives to “Focus relentlessly on our customers”. It seems to me this new policy is not a good move in supporting your customers.
I surveyed our members and most of the respondents expressed their concerns about the quality of the books produced by BookSurge. I also conducted an Internet search on the words “BookSurge, quality, and complaints”. From that search, I read about the myriad of problems many authors and publishers have had with BookSurge’s production quality.
As recently as this week, Angela Hoy in her April 2nd Writers Weekly blog wrote, “I purchased a BookSurge book last night and had it shipped overnight. It did indeed arrive this morning. It has a cover that isn't centered (the back is off-center by at least half an inch - very noticeable and very unprofessional) and a glue smudge on the back as well. I won't even get into the interior formatting.”
Bringing all of Amazon’s POD publishing to BookSurge at this time could significantly harm your company and tarnish your reputation as a quality, customer-centric company for years to come.
Short Term Profits
You also state on the Amazon.com Investor Relations Web site that Amazon will “make bold investment decisions in light of long-term leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations”.
Your initiative to move POD printing to BookSurge seems like you are bringing this process in-house to create short-term profitability. The free enterprise advocates would say that competition rather than vertical integration would work better at keeping prices low and quality high.
The Best Interest of Our Members
Many of our members use Lightning Source, Inc. to get POD distribution through both Amazon and Ingram. This works well for these members. The new policy will add a new layer of complexity to an already complex process. Chances are good that this will cost our members money in added staff time and electronic file preparation expense.
As an attendee at a recent publishers conference said to me, “All it means is that they will have to have two sets of files.” I would imagine it would not be that simple for many of our publishers with lean staff and tight margins.
Quality
In a survey of our members, many say they are concerned about a POD program with BookSurge because of printing quality issues. Publishers have two choices: risk poor quality printing or incur the expense and effort of changing to a different distribution model.
Why Should Amazon.com Care about
Independent Publishers?
As we all know, a significant part of Amazon.com’s business comes from sales of books not carried by a typical “big box” bookstore, and that a large portion of these books come from independent publishers. It seems to be bad business to alienate the vendors who contribute to so much of Amazon’s success.
Also, this new policy has already created a large amount of unfavorable publicity for Amazon. The world is a different place than when Amazon opened its doors in the nineties. Bad publicity doesn’t disappear as fast as it used to. The book buying public pays attention to the Web sites and blogs in their favorite niche and often these sites and blogs are run by and populated with publishers and authors. Because of the deep impact Amazon’s policy will have on so many publishers, large and small, this bad publicity will stay around for a long time.
I support our member publishers. I am also writing because I think Amazon is a company that has done good things for readers and publishers. I urge you to reverse this decision that I believe will hurt both Amazon.com and publishers.
I am interested in discussing this with you. Please give me a call or send an
e-mail if you have any questions or would like to respond.
Thanks,
Scott
Scott Flora, Executive Director
SPAN - Small Publishers Association of North America
1618 W. Colorado Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80904
719-475-1726 Fax - 471-2182
www.spannet.org
scottflora @ spannet.org
