Google Notebook, Amazon’s Move and Taxes
By Therese Walsh | April 2, 2008 |
I fell behind with the WU Google Notebook last week, but it’s updated now. Check the Notebook HERE for news. Here’s what amounts to probably the biggest industry bang: Amazon is making moves to elminate the middle man, publishing things onsite themselves instead of using on-print demand services. This has big implications for writers who utilize these services (less money for them in the end), but it also sounds warning bells for many. Richard Curtis sums up the possibly worst-case scenario:
Though Amazon’s ploy comes as a shock to publishers and authors, it did not come as a surprise to me. In the summer of 2005 Amazon.com announced the acquisition of MobiPocket, an e-book company, and BookSurge, a print on demand operation. A lot of ink was spilled on the MobiPocket deal but no one except me speculated on what it meant for a book retailer to have the capability of printing books on demand. In a guest editorial in Publishers Weekly, I wrote, “It’s hard to say for sure what is behind amazon.com’s acquisition of BookSurge, the on-demand book-printer. But any move the Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla makes is worthy of serious consideration. Indeed, the implications of the deal, especially combined with amazon’s purchase of e-book company MobiPocket, are profound.”
The implications were so disturbing that PW’s editors urged me to tone down my speculations, which seemed to fall at the red end of the spectrum of possibility. Actually, I suspect that the editors were so freaked out that they went into denial. And who can blame them? In my editorial I spun the logic of Amazon/BookSurge to the max.
Here is the conclusion I reached: If Amazon is capable of printing books on demand, they will no longer have to carry any physical books in their warehouses at all! They simply have to load the files of Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin, and every other publisher onto their server and print all of their books – frontlist as well as backlist – on demand. It would not only be a huge savings for Amazon in terms of warehouse space – it would be a huge savings for the publishers, too: they all would eliminate printing, warehouse, and freight costs at a stroke. Yes, they would still have to print and distribute books to other retailers besides amazon, but such sales would be modest compared to those of Amazon with its incomparable marketing and technical capabilities. Allowing Amazon to become the POD press for the publishing industry is a very seductive lure to publishers operating on razor-thin profit margins. But it would also enable Amazon to undercut bookstore prices, put Barnes & Noble and other bookstore chains and independent booksellers out of business and complete its march to monopoly. While you’re trembling, consider the possibility of a mega-retailer ultimately deciding what you read as well as how and where it’s printed.
If you are as incredulous as my Publishers Weekly editors were, ponder this statement in the letter just issued by the amazon.com books team: “It isn’t logical or efficient to print a POD book in a third place, and then physically ship the book to our fulfillment centers. It makes more sense to produce the books on site, saving transportation costs and transportation fuel, and significantly speeding the shipment to our customers.” You need only to remove the term “POD” from that statement to arrive at the terrifying conclusion that I reached in 2005.
What can we, as writers, do about it? I don’t know. But I’ll keep my eye on this issue for all of us.
Finally, I want to point you to last year’s post on TAXES. I’ve updated the links, so if you need any writerly tax help, click HERE to get it. Don’t forget–any books purchased in your genre should count as research.
Write on, all!
Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.
Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.
Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.
I came across your blog on Technorati. Nice site layout. I will stop by and read more soon.
Mike Harmon
It seems to me that calling this speculation a “worse case scenario” is rather backward looking. I would say that it’s a hallmark, rather, of the incipient changes in the way publishing will work in the future. The Internet and POD have already caused significant ripples in the way books are marketed and sold, and we can expect a lot more as technology (and readers’ acceptance of technology) evolves. I don’t know what’s coming, but it’s extremist to say it’s “worse” just because it’s different. Curtis seems to be speaking for an establishment that is afraid (not unjustly) that its power is on the verge of being undercut.
And, personally, I think eliminating all those pre-printed volumes is a good-for-the earth change that should be encouraged — no more unsold and stripped mass market paperbacks lying around in garbage bins, for example.
I agree with you, Stace, about the environmental aspects of this. However, from the little I know about this issue–and it still little–the author will suffer by receiving less money for his/her novel. That’s what I’ve heard, and that’s why it may be a potentially bad scenario for the author.
If you’re worried, all the more reason to true self-publish. And by that I mean, look up a printer yourself and get a cover designed, and maintain a closet, garage, basement, etc. full of your printed copies.
I’ve always been convinced that’s the better route than POD. You control your own quality, inventory, etc. Independence comes from control of the marketing and distribution of your work — if you’re not a rock star who has publisher people running around doing everything for you, then you’re taking on the brunt of the work anyway, right?
Take control of your destiny. Or don’t, and leave that 85% cut to the publisher. POD has always seemed like the half-solution.
So Amazon is playing the 600 pound gorilla strategy. Microsft played it too. Enter Google.
Amazon’s nemesis is out there somewhere. And they’ll come out of “left field” so fast Amazon won’t know what hit them.