Amazon In-House Print-on-Demand Policy Irks Small Publishers

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 1, 2008 - 9:45am.

Seattle - Online bookseller Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) has changed its policy with regard to its print-on-demand service for publishers, now requiring that print-on-demand books listed for sale on its site actually be printed through its own BookSurge service, instead of by any third-parties.

"Simply put, we can provide a better, more timely customer experience if the print-on-demand titles are printed inside our own fulfillment centers," Amazon said in an open letter on the matter.

"In addition, printing these titles in our own fulfillment centers saves transportation costs and transportation fuel."

Many print-on-demand publishers, including Booklocker and PublishAmerica, received letters from Amazon stating that their "Buy" buttons on Amazon's site would be removed if they refused to switch to BookSurge.

Booklocker said it had initially used BookSurge, but switched after a poor experience.

"We lost authors because of them. We had upside-down pages. We had missing pages. We had broken bindings. This was a while ago, but things got so bad, we fired them and hired Lightning Source," Booklocker's Angela Hoy told The Register.

Amazon did say that publishers could keep their "Buy" buttons provided they meet certain stipulations, but these options were ruled out by Booklocker.

"We would have to raise our prices across the board -- and that would end up affecting the readers," Hoy told The Register.