Writers and Publishers Fight Amazon Takeover

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Amazon is now making moves on monopolizing the kind of books that people can read or write.

This week they are in the process of discontinuing their offering of print on demand (POD) published books and are now putting in place their own POD monopoly. For those unfamiliar with POD, it's a way for people to publish their own books and for many voices to be heard apart from commercial publishers.

Anyone who dreams to one day write their own book would be impacted by this change.

Instead of allowing a wide range of writers and publishers to freely publish and offer their books for sale on Amazon, Amazon is now requiring that all POD publishers exclusively use Amazon's own service, BookSurge, which some authors have characterized as significantly higher cost and lower quality.

This puts a lock on diversity of books by imposing higher costs on authors and putting other established POD presses out of business. Some insiders claim that one day they will follow suit with commercial publishers, who will be forced to have Amazon print their books. While some in the independent publishing industry are kowtowing to the pressure, others are writing Amazon and/or switching to Barnes and Noble and other purveyors. Book lovers who value diversity of opinion might want to add their voices to discourage this monopoly in communication -- as well as reconsider where they purchase books on-line.

Comments

[Tags]

Oprah should boycott Amazon, then.

[SamThornton]

Don't want to belabor the point, but there's a reason this industry is called the "vanity press."

It takes considerable effort to write a book; even more effort if it's a bad book. While a book's inability to find a paying publisher doesn't necessarily mean it's unworthy, it's not a bad indicator.

Just spent some time at Amazon's vanity press site reading excerpts from the final 10 in their contest to decide the best self-published book. Depressingly easy to see why some people have to pay to have their writing published. In the case of the Amazon final 10, they should have to pay double.

[CircleofHealth]

Well, Sam, I can certainly confirm that many people can't write or that their ideas are derivative or uninteresting-- and that can even sometimes include those with published books.

But there is a second factor, which is that the increased monopoly and bottom line emphasis in the publishing industry has narrowed the parameters of what's considered saleable, excluding many topics, authors, and life arenas that are important. That tendency will only increase as the mega-giant companies outweigh even the giants, narrowing the information gate via books. That should concern everyone while it can still be stopped.

[cktirumalai]

Twenty years ago I knew of editors who prided themselves on the tiny proportion of the manuscripts sent to them they chose for publication. For some years T.S. Eliot decided virtually single-handedly which new English poets would see the light of day. He undoubtedly had fastidious taste but not one which accommodated all sorts of writers. (One disgruntled writer called him the Pope of Russell Square.) The Internet has done away with that steep editorial mountain. Anyone can publish these days. Attracting readers, who are confronted with myriad choices in what to read, is the problem. And maintaining standards which still allow for a very diverse literary landscape. It seems that Amazon wishes to return to some of the old ways of doing business.

[Shmuelman]

The technology is just not that complicated to replicate Amazon's functionality. So this is a pretty easy niche for someone to fill. Amazon, of course, has the long marketing arm, but for a niche like this, if Amazon can't hack it, someone else will.