UPDATE: Lawsuit filed against Amazon.com for shady POD policy
I received an email from WritersWeekly.com today that announced what could be the first of many lawsuits against Amazon.com. In recent months, Amazon has been forcing POD (print-on-demand) publishers to use their own printing service, BookSurge, or risk not getting their books listed on the popular ecommerce site. But instead of me re-hashing everything, you can read my previous post here, and an updated post here.
According to the email, the lawsuit has been filed by BookLocker.com, the publishing arm of Writers Weekly, which specializes in publishing ebooks and traditional books via POD. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:
BookLocker.com has filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon.com in response to Amazon’s recent attempts to force all publishers using Print on Demand (POD) technology to pay Amazon to print their books.
You can read the complaint here.
Amazon began their clandestine effort earlier this year by phone (nobody there seemed to want to put anything in writing), approaching POD publishers, and telling them they must pay Amazon to print their books or their active "buy" buttons would be turned off at the Amazon.com website. What this means is Amazon customers won’t be able to purchase those books directly from Amazon.com (and would not qualify for free shipping), but only through third-party resellers on the site.
The release continues by listing everything Amazon is able to control through this new policy. You can read the press release here.
My Take
Any time you take choice away from the consumers, bad things usually happen. While Amazon claims that this move is meant to help the customer receive their books in a timely manner, I can’t help but think that that is a thinly veiled excuse to try and control the small, but growing, self-publishing market.
Many people who self-publish their book nowadays go the print-on-demand route because it eliminates any concern for costly inventories, shipping, and large amounts of money being required up front to pay for it all. Rather, POD allows an author to get their book published for a very reasonable price (for both the author and publisher) by printing books only as they are ordered. The result of POD technology has allowed countless small-press publishers pop up that give consumers an alternate to what the large publishing houses keep spitting out.
There’s little doubt in my mind that Amazon already has a monopoly on internet book sales. Using that monopoly, they can pretty easily take over other parts of the publishing process by making requirements like the one that says POD publishers must use BookSurge. This takes away the choice from both the publishers and authors, and the consumers who buy these books. Basically, this means that Amazon can do whatever they want with prices and fees and we will all just have to suck it up.
What’s Next?
As I said in the beginning of this post, this is the first lawsuit I know of against Amazon for this particular issue (if there are others, please let me know). My hope is that Amazon will voluntarily change their policies to be more "competition friendly" so that they don’t have to thump their chest during this lawsuit to prove they are the big man on campus.
With that said, Amazon is the big fish in the pond here and they will have a hard time garnering public sympathy if this lawsuit goes forward. Sadly, I have a strong feeling that they won’t back down and we’re going to see Amazon drag themselves through the mud, just so they can make a few more dollars from POD sales.
Related posts
- Amazon.com forcing POD publishers to use BookSurge for printing
- Is Amazon.com monopolizing the book industry?
- Amazon’s ‘1984′ deletion lawsuit settled in court
- Update: Was Amazon a victim of ‘mob mentality’ after computer glitch?
- Author’s Guild backs Macmillan in feud with Amazon
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