Action at the state level, however, could move much faster, particularly if it involves off-the-record contact and a somber warning from those who can make trouble for Amazon. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle about a ten minute drive from the office of the Antitrust division of the Washington state attorney general. Here’s the contact information:

Office of the Attorney General

Antitrust Division

800 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2000

Seattle, WA 98104-3188

http://www.atg.wa.gov/Antitrust/default.aspx

Telephone: 206-587-5510

Fax: 206-464-6338

Note the remark on that web page that “The Antitrust Division only processes complaints that involve either Washington State residents or businesses located in Washington State.” Amazon is in Washington state, so it matters not where you are. You might also want to raise the issue with your state attorney general’s antitrust office, asking them to get in touch with their colleagues in Seattle. If you’re a publisher, encourage your authors to write. If you’re an author, encourage other writers to contact them.

As is clear, I don’t know much about the POD business. I do know that some POD presses have appeared as 3rd party sellers on Amazon. The one Whiskey Creek Press uses for example. I also have read that the books sold by 3rd parties on Amazon account for 28% of their media sales.

I also found this site: http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm although I don’t know if I can trust the numbers.

I would be lying if I said that I hoped no one sued because this could be very interesting.

Those who don’t but still want to sell directly through Amazon have the option of joining the Amazon Advantage program, for which they pay a 55% commission per sale, which as you can imagine isn’t feasible for most of them.

The problem most people have with all of this is that Amazon, a retailer, is trying to strongarm people by acting as a wholesaler and dictating terms.

I do think that Amazon failed to anticipate this huge furor. Think about it, at the moment, POD is still mostly–although not always–used by self-published writers and by very small operations. These do not sell a lot of books, mainly because their sites on Amazon do not generate huge traffic. You have to have a mechanism to drive traffic to your book before anyone buys it.

The fact that the company did not instantly issue a press release says to me they are scrambling and that they were taken unawares by this.

I’m actually waiting to see how they do handle this contretemps. That should tell us a lot more about their true intentions.

In the end, it’s always about the money. Always.

If the POD printers or publisher is a 3rd party seller they end up either belonging to Amazon Advantage which means Amazon gets 55% (I think) of the selling price or they list as a merchant which means the buyer has to pay $3.99 or something like that postage– seller is reimbursed about $2.50 and Amazon keeps the rest. Also Amazon gets a percentage of selling price– 15 to 20%? Clearly both better deals for Amazon.

Next option is the book is sold as a digital download through Amazon and Amazon gets to keep 35% of the price and pays no postage.

Everything including making people use Amazon’s POD services, is a better deal for Amazon than Amazon carrying the books in their catalogue. And if B&N is offering free postage to meet Amazon’s offer then if everyone goes to B&N to buy these particular books then it is going to put financial stress on B&N.