Amazon POD: Friend or Foe to Indie Publishers?

Peter Brantley
May 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

An interesting editorial by Lloyd Jassin from the NY Center for Independent Publishing relating to the Amazon print-on-demand (POD) move:

Physical distribution of books is largely the preserve of large conglomerate publishers and a handful of large independent distributors. It’s not a pretty business. It employs the equivalent of Yankee peddlers who hand-sell books to brick and mortar stores, with full return privileges for oversold books. If we extrapolate, the BookSurge gambit may be seen as a relatively painless first step in managing the digital distribution of titles to e-tailers and licensees. Amazon has the amazing ability to manage and organize content. It also offers a painless online experience for the consumer.

Instead of Amazon merely being the recipient of digital assets, it’s easy to imagine Amazon providing comprehensive consultancy services to our members, helping them prepare their content for digital distribution for and beyond the traditional Amazon platform. Is the Book Surge gambit a disguised opportunity for indie publishers? Perhaps. Indie publishes are the small furry mammals scurrying around the legs of large dinosaur publishers. The digital meteor has hit. To survive, indie publishers need to be able to present content in a variety of digital formats. Is Amazon a friend or a foe? Only time will tell.

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1 Comments

Yvonne DiVita said:
May 9, 2008 1:57 PM

Hmmm...Amazon as a friend to small publishers... perhaps, so. What about those publishers, such as myself, who partner with authors to produce high quality books they can use as brochures or business cards? Yes, that's publishing, also. And, we do get paid. The vanity is not in the author's desire to be published - our authors are investing in their future, as much as they are publishing their books.

Why should they be forced to use Booksurge, just because Amazon wants a bigger piece of the pie? Is Booksurge going to go the extra mile after the book is released, as we do? I doubt it.

We are not affected by this turn of events, yet. We are advantage customers...we give Amazon the lion's share, anyway. But, we feel for those small POD publishers who are affected by this.

Seems to me that Amazon is just taking up where the big distributors left off: nailing the little guy because they can.

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