It never ceases to amaze me why some companies put some things in writing...especially when the world is already reading and dissecting what they’re doing.

I had several issues with their official statement today, but one glaring problem is this.

They said, “If the POD printing machines reside inside our own fulfillment centers, we can more quickly ship the POD book to customers—including in those cases where the POD book needs to be married together with another item...If the POD item were to be printed at a third party, we’d have to wait for it to be transhipped to our fulfillment center before it could be married together with the inventoried item.”

First, notice they said “IF” the machines reside in their fulfillment CENTERS (plural). Hmm… Let’s look at that more closely.

According to Wikipedia, Amazon has 10 distribution centers in North America alone; and 14 more abroad.

Do they have POD printing machines at those 24 distribution centers yet? Or even just the 10 in North America? Or even more than just one?

Are they currently printing print-on-demand books in each of those centers and able to “marry” those books with the other products they’re shipping?

I don’t think so. So, they’re “save money/time by packaging POD books with other products” rationale appears to have glaring holes in it.

If Amazon can’t currently print POD books at all its distribution warehouses, why are they implying they can in their statement today, and why are they telling POD publishers to sign that contract RIGHT NOW?

Also, IF they are not currently printing the books at all their CENTERS, there is no way they can beat Lightning Source’s current ability to print and ship those books in 24 hours.

-Angela Hoy
WritersWeekly.com
Booklocker.com

As an author, I am directly affected by this. Strangely, the worst part does not seem to be making the news at all. Amazon is also demanding a 50% discount off of the retail price of books. This will significantly increase what readers have to pay for a book.

In fact, the author will get less money; the publisher will get less money; the consumer will PAY more money—and Amazon.com gets MORE money. In the end, Amazon.com is the only party to this arrogance that is NOT harmed.

And another problem is, once Amazon dominates the POD printing business, other, smaller printing businesses will start to go out of business. So how long before the cost of getting a book printed goes through the roof? That will add yet more to the price a reader must pay to buy a book.

What would it take to get a boycott of Amazon going? And I’m not just talking about their books. I mean their entire web site.