I just wanted to clarify that I believe the small presses and POD publishers are getting caught in the crossfire as Amazon tries to position itself in the lucrative POD market following its acquisition of BookSurge about a year ago.
I don’t for a minute think Amazon’s intention was to alienate small/independent/electronic/other publishers who use POD technology to create printed, bound books (although they’ve certainly succeeded in doing so). I just don’t think they’re that…unsavvy? Is that the word I’m looking for?
I think Amazon is going for the much larger, lucrative backlist market.
The major traditional publishing houses and academic presses have embraced POD as a means of keeping their backlist titles available. Instead of having to fund an offset print run of titles they likely cannot sell and will have to warehouse, these publishers can now make available thousands of titles that can be ordered, printed, and shipped one at a time. This is a potentially huge market, it’s a growing market, and at the moment LSI (at least, this is my understanding) dominates it.
I believe this is the market Amazon is trying to gain a larger share of. I’m pretty sure Oxford already uses BookSurge, and I’ve heard McGraw-Hill and HarperCollins do as well. I think Amazon instituted this policy to try to get other large academic and mainstream publishing houses to shift from LSI and other POD printers to BookSurge.
I could be wrong, but this is the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
Talk to me!