Booklovers and authors: Amazon.com has betrayed us.

Amazon.com is trying to force indie publishers that use print-on-demand technology into using its POD printer/distributor, BookSurge. How? By threatening to stop selling any POD titles on its website unless the books are produced by BookSurge.

The story first went public on WritersWeekly.com after BookSurge contacted the husband of publisher Angela Hoy and threatened to stop Amazon.com sales of their POD printing services company unless it switched to BookSurge.

The Hoys refuse to be cowed, but other POD publishers apparently have signed with BookSurge. The highly suspicious and stringent confidentiality clause of the BookSurge contract makes it difficult for these publishers to give their authors accurate information about their switch (or not) to BookSurge.

This entire mess is an outrageous attempt to monopolize the market not just for book sales, but also book printing and distribution. If Amazon.com succeeds, it will mean far fewer reading choices for the public because indie presses cannot afford the avaricious (and possibly illegal) BookSurge contract terms.

Sign the petition to urge Amazon.com to end this outragous ploy.

Even more effective, stop shopping at Amazon.com! If sales take a dive, perhaps Amazon.com will figure out that this wasn’t such a great idea after all.

Stay tuned for possible class-action lawsuits and even an investigation by the Washington State attorney general’s office.

Tags: books, predatory business practices

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.