We received quite a few responses from you about your thoughts and actions in response to Amazon’s controversial move. So, in continuance from last month’s hitch news edition and article on Amazon, we are following up with your views and the views of an industry insider on this story.

Your Views:

“I have asked my assistant to delete all my Amazon affiliate links on my nine websites, and have asked Amazon to pay any outstanding commissions because I am terminating my affiliate relationship after 12 years. And I'm trying to figure out how to notify the 70+ people in my list of Facebook friends who are marketers that if they want me to participate in best-seller campaigns, they have to offer a non-Amazon alternative (I did one the other day that offered a choice of Amazon, BN, or Powell's; I went through Powell's and it felt great). I set this group up for this specific purpose, only to find out that FB won't let you email to a list larger than 20. And I've been very public in my condemnation of Amazon, with multiple posts to my blog, to social networks/e-mail discussion lists, and to my weekly guest blog on Fast Company's Social Responsibility page.”

- Shel Horowitz, Frugal Marketing

“We've removed all links to Amazon (except for one rotating ad) and are driving all 'buy now' links to the independent bookstores. Let them get a breather from the pressure the big retailers like Amazon have placed on them in recent years.”

- Jason Smith, Aspen Mountain Publishing

“We are very small publishers of dog breed books and have done our own POD (Print on Demand) books since 1980.

We have also been vendors for Amazon since they first started in the 1990's, Jeff Bezos personally called me and asked to carry our books and all went smoothly until several years ago.

We have always been pre-payment only and used Amazon's credit card for years prior to shipping their orders, but that all changed in late 2006, early 2007 as at that point they no longer allowed that and we had to start invoicing them. No only have they been slow pay, but their employees in accounts payable oftentimes do not answer emails for past due invoices or pass us around from one person to the next. This is most upsetting as we depend on payment for our ink and supplies in a reasonable amount of time in order to get our own customer books printed and mailed.

Last year they tried to change our firm policy of not accepting overstock books, said they were returning several large boxes (which never arrived here) and withheld our considerable amount money for those books for months until we could get that worked out with them. At that time we decided not to do business with them any more unless they agreed, once again, to our policy of no overstock book returns. They finally agreed and we went back to being vendors for them again after we lifted the credit hold we had placed on their orders.

Amazon has kept our business in constant turmoil this past year, it is obvious that their money-hungry, greedy policies are ruining their relationship with us as well as with many other publishers. I have not yet received a notice from them that we will have to use Booksurge to continue selling books to them, but if that does happen we will definitely sever our relationship with them.

If there is anything we can do to help with this please let me know. I do know that there is no way we are giving up our books to an Amazon owned company (Booksurge) to POD when we are perfectly capable of doing that ourselves.”

– Jan Linzy, Camino Books

Here’s a quick update on the latest information:

Updates:

• The Washington State Attorney General’s Office has verified that its antitrust division has received about 140 letters about Amazon’s new policy. The office has contacted Amazon about the concerns and has asked for their reply.
• Amazon makes information hard to come by. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Amazon’s new contract, which publishers will have to sign if they agree to the new terms, has a confidentiality clause preventing information form being disclosed “without our express, prior written permission.”

Authors and publishers need to know how this can and will effect them. Amazon doesn’t want to work with you, they want to compete with you. We found this statement in a recent article from Publisher’s Weekly:

“With Amazon's growing power in book sales, it's understandable that publishers may be a bit anxious on learning that in Amazon's 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company lists among its many competitors not just bookstores but also publishers.”

From the Expert:

We asked the opinion of Laine Cunningham, publishing consultant and owner of Writer’s Resource, on this matter.

How will this new policy change the POD industry and the publishing industry as a whole?

Amazon is a business like any other. It is prone to pressure from its suppliers as much as from its customers. If it maintains this program for long, all it will do is open itself up to competition from sites that will sell POD published books regardless of where they have been printed. It’s a greedy, monopolistic move and likely will die the death it deserves.

How will this affect self and small publishers?

Unfortunately, this move will likely impact self- and small publishers in the short term. Even when Amazon reverses the decision, there will be long-term impacts from lost sales. Amazon itself will suffer due to poor public perception and soured deals among self- and small publishers.

What kind of response can we continue to expect from those affected by Amazon’s new policy?