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Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers

March 30, 2008 by Kathryn Hendershot 8 Comments

How do you show your appreciation for your best customers? If you’re book selling giant Amazon.com, you show your “love” by doing your best impression of the Godfather and apply pressure to your suppliers who are also your customers to use your services or suffer the consequences.

Angela Hoy decided to speak out about the bullying on Writer’s Weekly with the article Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers – Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else…

Here’s the situation in a nutshell.

POD stands for Print On Demand. Thanks to advanced in “technology” a publisher no longer has to print 5,000 copies of a book and then wait for those copies to be sold. Instead, the books can be produced as they are needed… thus the term, “Print on Demand”.

Many publishers offer POD services and Amazon has their own POD service called Book Surge. Amazon has decided to increase Book Surge’s market share and is putting pressure on POD publishers by issuing the ultimatum: Use our service or we’ll turn off the buy links on Amazon.

Web 2.0 means this story is multiplying like… well, like a virus. That’s why they call it “viral” marketing except in this case, it’s more like anti-marketing because instead of building new business, this story is going to hurt the retail giant. When Angela blew the whistle, she set forth a series of events in which Amazon loses all around.

  • Amazon loses customers… authors who are boycotting the retailer.
  • Amazon loses links… links to their site by authors whose books MAY be remove.
  • Amazon loses the relationship with thousands of authors… who are not only their customers, but also suppliers of product.

It’s obvious that the long term consequences of this action have yet to dawn on the executives at Amazon. Angela reports that Amazon is avoiding putting these “threats” in writing… but the lack of a paper trail won’t save them from their own actions.

I’d like to do my part by listing the 60+ references to this story. Feel free to grab the list below and add it to your own blog. If you want to add your post to the “cause”… the post a comment to this post. If you’ve got your own blog, copy this list and post it on your blog as well. The more links to these posts… the more “traction” this cause will get.

  • A New Amazon Mandate? Say it ain’t so, Jeff by Morris Rosenthal
  • Amazon Forcing POD Publishers to Make a Hard Decision, Virtualbookworm
  • Amazon Tightens Grip on Printing by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
  • Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company’s Own Service by Rafat Ali, The Washington Post
  • Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge by Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly
  • Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publishers by Linda Rosencrance, Computerworld
  • Amazon pulls a Microsoft by Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld Blogs
  • Amazon Puts the Squeeze on Publishers by Betsy Schiffman, Wired Blog Network
  • Amazon Gets Demanding with Print-on-Demand Publishers, O’Reilly Radar
  • Amazon.com puts the screws to small publishers, Valleywag
  • Amazon’s POD monopoly, booktwo.org
  • Is Amazon Getting Greedy? , open…
  • Oh, REAL nice, Amazon.com, Beatlegirl’s Blog
  • Market Report — In Play,MSN Money
  • Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch
  • Amazon & BookSurge, words count
  • Urgent News for Authors, The Holistic Writer
  • Monopoly – It’s Not A Game by Jean-Marie Hershey, Print CEO Blog
  • Of oil lamps, Print on Demand, and e-book machines: Amazon’s Bezos as a would-be Rockefeller by David Rothman
  • Deal Breaker? Amazon – BookSurge – POD – No Choice?, Workboxers
  • Amazon.com’s POD land grab, BookFinder.com Journal
  • Amazon Changes POD Tactics, Removes Velvet Gloves by Kassia Krozser, Booksquare
  • Amazon The Monopoly, PersonaNonData
  • Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services, web2bite.com
  • Use BookSurge or Die? by Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware
  • Amazon/Golliath takes on the little guys by Helen Gallagher, Release Your Writing
  • Amazon Bullies POD to Use Booksurge — or Else., Shadowhelm’s Journal
  • Amazon Says It Will Only Sell Print-On-Demand Books That It Gets To Print, Techdirt
  • Amazon deletes competition, LibraryThing
  • What’s Amazon Up To Now? by Tawny Taylor
  • Amazon Shaking the POD World Big Time, Juno Books
  • A hearty “F$%k you!” to Amazon by Elf M. Sternberg
  • A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Inhabitatio Dei
  • Amazon to Force POD Publishers to Use BookSurge, Media Mensch
  • Self Publishers and Amazon, Writerly Stuff
  • Amazon Tightens Grip On Printing, booktrade.info
  • Amazon to Block Other POD Services from Using Amazon Marketplace, Dear Author
  • Amazon trying to screw small presses?, lupabitch
  • Dear Amazon, What are You Thinking? by Monica Valentinelli, Words on the Water
  • Will Amazon Hurt Small Pagan Publishers?, The Wild Hund
  • Amazon and us by Gill Polack
  • Will Amazon Become the Google of the POD Industry? by Deborah Woehr
  • Down with The Zon! by Celia Kyle
  • Beyond the POD grab: The IDPF should fight Amazon’s new eBabel, look for anti-trust violations, and reach out to Google by David Rothman, TeleRead
  • Amazon blocking books of competitive publishers?, electronista
  • We are not amused–veinglory, PODPeople
  • Bully on the block?, The Pearlsong Letter
  • The monopolists: You need to worry about Amazon too by Eion Purcell
  • Amazon owns the marketplace: return of the distributor, Thudfactor
  • Is Amazon trying to monopolize the empowering Publish-On-Demand market?, Chris Boese’s Weblog
  • 500 pound gorilla, Idle musings of a bookseller
  • Bye-Bye “Buy Buttons” for POD Authors?, The Backroom at Dehanna.com
  • Amazon Making a Big Mistake by Cheryl Pickett
  • Amazon to force POD publishers to use Booksurge, Murder by 4
  • Amazon.com’s dirty little deed, pds_lit
  • Amazon’s Stupid Anti-Competitive Move, Principled Profit
  • Amazon Bullying POD Writers and Publishers Unfairly, A-ha
  • A Call to Bloggers: Stop Supporting Amazon, Resurrection Life
  • Amazon.com Is On Drugs, Thought Patterns
  • Amazon launches their weapon of mass destruction, steps on the long tail of independent authors by Mark Riffey
  • Amazon puts the Squeeze on POD Publishers by Easy Author Web Sites
  • An Important Lesson from Amazon on How NOT to Treat Your Customers by Virtual Impax

Filed Under: Beyond Marketing Tagged With: amazon, book marketing, Customer Service, pod, quality

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Cheryl Pickett says

    March 30, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Kathy,
    I just wanted to say that you’re doing a great service to at least at least a couple different audiences by posting the info about this story.

    First, you’re helping those of us who are in the writing/publishing world get the story out even farther. Second, it’s a good lesson in what not to do for your marketing audience. I’ve worked for at least two people who let some power go to their head and things crashed down around them as could happen to Amazon (unfortunately, probably not to a huge extent but we’ll see).

    Keep up the good work.

    Cheryl Pickett

    Reply
  2. Victor Curran says

    March 30, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    There’s a strange deja vu in Amazon.com’s announcement that they won’t sell print-on-demand titles unless they are printed at BookSurge. Book publishers got out of the printing business decades ago, because book publishing is a seasonal business. Publishers couldn’t afford to tie up their capital in factories that for half the year were idle.
    The value proposition of Amazon isn’t the merchandise. They sell convenience, the ease of shopping for books, music, movies, cameras, and golf clubs all in one place, and getting them delivered to your door quickly. They’re successful because they put their resources into the buyer experience. They let other people invest in factories, warehouses, and inventory.
    Amazon might have saved itself a lot of trouble by reading Charlie Rheault’s fine little book, “In Retrospect: The Riverside Press 1852-1971” (you can even buy it on Amazon). They might have learned to let go of assets that are so expensive you have to bully your customers and business partners into paying for them.

    Victor Curran’s last blog post..Forward to the past with Amazon

    Reply
  3. Amma Zohn says

    June 21, 2008 at 7:20 am

    “You cannot control evil but you can chose to not participate.”
    “You gain customers one at a time but you lose them by the dozens.”
    “Time wounds all heels”

    The only way I can recover the financial losses that Amazon caused is to short their overpriced stock at the right time

    Reply
  4. Anthony Wilson says

    May 23, 2010 at 10:46 am

    i think Book Marketing takes more effort compared to e-mail marketing and social media marketing.`.’

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Essential Marketing Secrets that Amazon Forgot says:
    March 30, 2008 at 7:57 am

    […] Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers by Beyond Niche Marketing […]

    Reply
  2. Dear Amazon, What are You Thinking? says:
    March 30, 2008 at 10:55 am

    […] Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd, Beyond Niche Marketing […]

    Reply
  3. Deborah Woehr » Backlash Over Amazon Monopoly Tactics says:
    March 30, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    […] stopped people from reacting, both inside and outside of the blogosphere. The list below is from Beyond Niche Marketing, who has compiled a list of 60 people who have commented on this […]

    Reply
  4. Effectively Using Outrageous Acts of FUD to Promote Your Blog says:
    March 31, 2008 at 10:00 am

    […] that contained the first 62 responses to this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog in the post Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers.  In 24 hours, that list has increased 100%. Here’s a link to the new list on Easy Author […]

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