Amazon's POD people - and eBay's non PDF people

[ffutures]

Amazon have posted some clarification of their decision to only use their own Print on Demand publications service which has been bothering some of my friends

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-printondemand

explains why they want to do it, and reads in part:

Alternatively, you can use a different POD service provider for all your units. In that case, we ask that you pre-produce a small number of copies of each title (typically five copies), and send those to us in advance (Amazon Advantage Program-successfully used by thousands of big and small publishers). We will inventory those copies. That small cache of inventory allows us to provide the same rapid fulfillment capability to our customers that we would have if we were printing the titles ourselves on POD printing machines located inside our fulfillment centers. Unlike POD, this alternative is not completely "inventoryless." However, as a practical matter, five copies is a small enough quantity that it is economically close to an inventoryless model.


So not quite as bad as some people have been saying, hopefully. I should add that I haven't checked that Amazon.co.uk and their other regional companies will be following the same policy.

In other news eBay UK and Ireland are banning all sales of downloadable etexts and software etc. due to widespread abuse. Doesn't affect me, and hopefully not many others in the games industry.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200804011409272.html

Comments

[jonnynexus.livejournal.com]

"send those to us in advance"

...is the problem bit. They won't order them from your POD printer/distributor (i.e. Lightning Source), and then say bill your credit card there and then (i.e. force you to pay in advance, which I'd be happy to do). The sequence is:

a) Amazon email you asking for books.

b) You then contact the POD people and put in an order for those books with Amazon as the destination.

So *every* single time Amazon want to restock you have to get involved. I find it hard to believe that they coudn't automate this.

I need something that, once set up, is automated. So if they do take Game Night off (and I don't see why they should, because at the moment they are keeping it in stock) then I'll probably have to do a second copy on BookSurge for them.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

..is the problem bit. They won't order them from your POD printer/distributor (i.e. Lightning Source), and then say bill your credit card there and then (i.e. force you to pay in advance, which I'd be happy to do). The sequence is:

I've been selling books through Amazon using Lightning Source since 1999. The way I understand how it works is:

1) Amazon orders books from Ingram or Baker & Taylor (the two big book distributors in the US).

2) Ingram passes that along to Lightning Source, who prints 'em up and sends them to Amazon. You aren't billed for anything: LSI pays you with the diff between the print cost and your set price.

There may be a direct link Amazon<->LSI, but even if there isn't, it doesn't matter: they can order the book from Ingram just like they do for non-POD titles. This is how WalMart and Barnes & Noble list your books anyway: from Ingram, not directly from LSI.

Now is this a problem for POD publishers that aren't automatically listed with Ingram? Sure. But NOT with Lightning Source. That's currently hands off and will remain that way.

[jonnynexus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know that's how it works now. It's what I'm doing.

But Amazon are proposing to *stop* doing this for Lightning Source POD books. Marcus was referring to this in his post, and quoting from their statement which essentially says: "It doesn't matter, you can just join our Advantage programme."

The sequence I was outlining was how the Advantage programme works... or in my opinion, doesn't.