The big flap in small-press publishing these past few weeks has been over Amazon's new policy regarding print on demand (POD) publishing. A little history: back in 2005, Amazon bought BookSurge, a company split between vanity publishing and POD services. The POD part has acted as printer for a number of small publishers (textbooks, nonfiction, niche publishing, etc.). This is hardly exclusive to BookSurge; Lightning Source (LSI) provides the same service for less money. For this reason, (LSI) is the printer of choice for many micropresses, including the infamous PublishAmerica. Last month, Amazon began telling small presses that they would no longer be selling POD titles that used LSI, only those published with BookSurge. Books not published with BookSurge would have their "Add to Cart" buttons disabled.

Cue wank.

Angela Hoy of author-subsidized press Booklocker said, "They told us that if our books are not converted to BookSurge, they would turn off our 'buy buttons' on Amazon." In response, she said, "Our authors are now changing all their links on their websites, their e-zines, their blogs. If they say their books are available at Barnes and Noble or Chapters, that's where the customer is going to go."

In the following days, Amazon issued a clarification: "[W]e can provide a better, more timely customer experience if the POD titles are printed inside our own fulfillment centers. In addition, printing these titles in our own fulfillment centers saves transportation costs and transportation fuel."

Regarding the exclusive use of BookSurge versus other systems: "Any publisher can use Amazon's POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels. 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.

The "Amazon Advantage Program" is considered by Amazon to be an acceptable compromise: POD authors and publishers can continue to publish on Amazon as long as they sign up for the program. AAP costs $29.95 per year, regardless of the number of book titles listed, and a 55% commission to Amazon from the list price of every book sold (if Amazon offers a discount, the discount comes out of their 55%, not the publisher's). There is another level called Advantage Professional which is available for publishers of primarily educational, technical, medical or professional materials and/or registered non-profits. There is a discount for this program, though the actual numbers are not listed on Amazon's website.(more)

As it turns out, Amazon's stated 55% appears to be typical for the discount given to a large brick-and-mortar chain store for stocking a publisher's books. That is to say, when a publisher sells a book to a Barnes and Noble or Borders, the bookstore will pay 45% of the list price to the publisher in order to have that particular book on the shelf.

The big bad news comes with the "set up for multiple providers" option. LSI does not use the same system as BookSurge, and the cost for small publishers to utilize both may be prohibitive. Writer Christine Norris put it: "If a publisher chooses to use both BookSurge and LSI, they will have to pay the setup fees for both - potentially financially impossible for many small fries."

Meanwhile, the AAP sounds reasonable until one also factors in the shipping and handling for the extra copies to have on hand for Amazon, fees which will come at the publisher's expense just like the yearly subscription price. For some authors, the exposure may make the money worthwhile, but for others, it will eat the lion's share of an already small royalty check (or will be passed on in the form of yet more fees from the publisher in the case of the vanity presses – reminder: if you're giving them money, you're doing it wrong).

The opinion of writers online seems to be that Amazon is looking too short-term at the print on demand market. While positioning their own service as the big fish POD might scrape up more of the marketplace, authors who want to deal with Ingram http://www.ingrambook.com/ (which deals exclusively with LSI) and so have the chance to see their books in brick-and-mortar stores will simply stop doing business with Amazon. Bad blood, even among people who use BookSurge, is not going to make happy authors. Alternately, monopoly has worked out pretty well for Microsoft, so Amazon might be willing to take the plunge and lose anyone who doesn't come along.

(Additional Reading at Absolute Write)