Amazon squeezes POD

31 Mar 2008 | 10:03 BST

By Nick Farrell

Print on demand companies dumped

PRINT ON DEMAND book sellers are getting a rough ride from Amazon, which is also peddling its own POD publishing house.

According to Writers Weekly, POD books, which used to be available from Amazon, are suddenly only available through Amazon resellers.

WW notes that Whiskey Creek Press, Lightning Source and PublishAmerica books were removed from Amazon.com after the company insisted that they use its BookSurge arm to do all the work.
Amazon.com bought BookSurge, a small POD publisher/printer back in 2005 but it seems that Amazon/BookSurge representatives have been approaching POD customers, first by email introduction and then by phone.

Basically they are told either BookSurge will start printing the books or the "buy" button on their Amazon.com book pages will be "turned off."

Amazon/BookSurge spokesman John Clifford initially denied that this was happening and then admitted that books not converted to BookSurge would have the "buy" button turned off on Amazon.com.
He added that Amazon wanted to have no books from other POD publishers available on Amazon.com. µ

L'Inq
Writers' Weekly

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