Writers Threaten Call For Congressional Investigation

[IndianaGreen]

National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981 Opposes Amazon's BookSurge
Imposition on Print-On-Demand Market As "Monopolistic."

Writers Threaten Call For Congressional Investigation

Statement by Gerard Colby, President, National Writers Union/UAW
Local 1981
April 17, 2008

Recently, Amazon announced that it is requiring on-demand
publishers and authors to use its print-on-demand (POD) division,
BookSurge, if they want to sell their titles as print-on-demand
on Amazon.com.

Instead of competing on a level playing field with other POD
companies such as iUniverse or Lightning Source, Amazon is
flexing its muscles as the dominant retailer of books sold
online. This could hurt authors who self-publish through POD by
limiting their choice of printers to Amazon's own company.

Publishers use electronic files of books sent over the Internet
and printed on demand at retail sites to save on printing,
inventory, and shipping costs and to reduce the risk of over-
supply (unsold books) and pulping costs. With POD, publishers can
sell books at lower prices to gain more sales.

With domination of the POD supply chain, there would be little
restraint on Amazon's capacity to impose monopoly pricing on fees
it could charge for the use of BookSurge's POD services or on the
discounts it could demand of self-publishing authors and
publishers for access to Amazon's share of the on-line POD market
- a share that, with this new BookSurge imposition by Amazon, can
only grow.

Some POD publishers and websites are already saying they will
have no choice but to buckle under to Amazon's new policy because
they need access to Amazon's giant market. Nevertheless, other
writers concerned about Amazon's new POD restrictions are taking
their business elsewhere.

Where is the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division when we
need it?

The National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981 strongly opposes
Amazon's new restriction on the print-on demand market and calls
upon Amazon to immediately withdraw this monopolistic intrusion,
or face our call for investigations by the Justice Department and
Congress.

-END-

113 University Place, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10003

[Kat45]

1. I used to belong to the NWU back in the day.

A good force fighting for writers rights vs Corporate America (ie, pubishers). Unfortunately, the odds tend to be stacked against them.