The Espresso Machine

I snitched this off of TeleRead's feed, but if you haven't seen it, you need to check this out.

The Espresso Machine, POD in action.

Amazon analysis? Who wins in this???

From Angela Hoy's WriterWeekly.com site:

""They rationalize they can ship books faster. Our printer, Lightning Source, ships books to Amazon's customers directly, even using an Amazon.com return address sticker. They rationalize they can ship items together to save money, and that doing this saves transportation costs and fuel. What they don't tell you is that forcing a publisher to pay Amazon to print their book, plus setup fees for new books, plus 48% of each sale could and probably will mean higher list prices on books and, thus, less money in the customers' pockets, less money in the publishers' and authors' pockets...but more money in Amazon's pocket.""


""Notice they left out the setup fees ($50 for new titles), the printing costs, and the 48% they want from each sale. In fact, there's no mention of fees at all in the statement. They also don't mention that the average publishing package for authors at Booksurge is over $1,000.

Also, regarding the Advantage Program, they left out the fact that publishers/authors have to pay $29.95 per year, PLUS shipping costs to get the books to Amazon, PLUS 55% of each sale to Amazon. They don't seem too concerned with shipping and fuel expenses for this part of the statement, probably because the publisher has to pay for those.""

For the full article, please read it here.

What I'd like to know is what company is seeing the benefit of this charging system that will eat into any profit? It looks to me like they're charging the snot out of the Non-BS product. Why would they do that?

Easy. So they don't have to sell their competition on their own site. And that's fine with me, but come out and say it! Come out and say what you mean by this. Don't say it's for the environment, don't say it's to save fuel costs or time or anything but your bottom line.

ETA: This is very informative. Read the comments.

Another discussion over the Amazon/BookSurge push

Check out Dear Author's post here:

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/03/30/amazon-flexes-its-market-muscle/#comments

If you're not finding out what you want there, why not try these (although many basically say the same thing, it's a lot of opinions on how Amazon is doing the customer (and authors) wrong:

• A New Amazon Mandate? Say it ain’t so, Jeff by Morris Rosenthal
• Amazon Forcing POD Publishers to Make a Hard Decision, Virtualbookworm
• Amazon Tightens Grip on Printing by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
• Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company’s Own Service by Rafat Ali, The Washington Post
• Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge by Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly
• Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publishers by Linda Rosencrance, Computerworld
• Amazon pulls a Microsoft by Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld Blogs
• Amazon Puts the Squeeze on Publishers by Betsy Schiffman, Wired Blog Network
• Amazon Gets Demanding with Print-on-Demand Publishers, O’Reilly Radar
• Amazon.com puts the screws to small publishers, Valleywag
• Amazon’s POD monopoly, booktwo.org
• Is Amazon Getting Greedy? , open…
• Oh, REAL nice, Amazon.com, Beatlegirl’s Blog
• Market Report — In Play,MSN Money
• Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch
• Amazon & BookSurge, words count
• Urgent News for Authors, The Holistic Writer
• Monopoly - It’s Not A Game by Jean-Marie Hershey, Print CEO Blog
• Of oil lamps, Print on Demand, and e-book machines: Amazon’s Bezos as a would-be Rockefeller by David Rothman
• Deal Breaker? Amazon - BookSurge - POD - No Choice?, Workboxers
• Amazon.com’s POD land grab, BookFinder.com Journal
• Amazon Changes POD Tactics, Removes Velvet Gloves by Kassia Krozser, Booksquare
• Amazon The Monopoly, PersonaNonData
• Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services, web2bite.com
• Use BookSurge or Die? by Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware
• Amazon/Goliath takes on the little guys by Helen Gallagher, Release Your Writing
• Amazon Bullies POD to Use Booksurge — or Else., Shadowhelm’s Journal
• Amazon Says It Will Only Sell Print-On-Demand Books That It Gets To Print, Techdirt
• Amazon deletes competition, LibraryThing
• What’s Amazon Up To Now? by Tawny Taylor
• Amazon Shaking the POD World Big Time, Juno Books
• A hearty “F$%k you!” to Amazon by Elf M. Sternberg
• A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Inhabitatio Dei
• Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge, Media Mensch
• Self Publishers and Amazon, Writerly Stuff
• Amazon Tightens Grip On Printing, booktrade.info
• Amazon to Block Other POD Services from Using Amazon Marketplace, Dear Author
• Amazon trying to screw small presses?, lupabitch
• Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd, Beyond Niche Marketing
• Will Amazon Hurt Small Pagan Publishers?, The Wild Hund
• Amazon and us by Gill Polack
• Will Amazon Become the Google of the POD Industry? by Deborah Woehr
• Down with The Zon! by Celia Kyle
• Beyond the POD grab: The IDPF should fight Amazon’s new eBabel, look for anti-trust violations, and reach out to Google by David Rothman, TeleRead
• Amazon blocking books of competitive publishers?, electronista
• We are not amused–veinglory, PODPeople
• Bully on the block?, The Pearlsong Letter
• The monopolists: You need to worry about Amazon too by Eion Purcell
• Amazon owns the marketplace: return of the distributor, Thudfactor
• Is Amazon trying to monopolize the empowering Publish-On-Demand market?, Chris Boese’s Weblog
• 500 pound gorilla, Idle musings of a bookseller
• Bye-Bye “Buy Buttons” for POD Authors?, The Backroom at Dehanna.com
• Amazon Making a Big Mistake by Cheryl Pickett
• Amazon to force POD publishers to use Booksurge, Murder by 4
• Amazon.com’s dirty little deed, pds_lit
• Amazon’s Stupid Anti-Competitive Move, Principled Profit
• Amazon Bullying POD Writers and Publishers Unfairly, A-ha
• A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Resurrection Life
• Amazon.com Is On Drugs, Thought Patterns
• Amazon launches their weapon of mass destruction, steps on the long tail of independent authors by Mark Riffey
• Amazon puts the Squeeze on POD Publishers by Easy Author Web Sites
• An Important Lesson from Amazon on How NOT to Treat Your Customers by Virtual Impax