Amazon…what are you doing?

shilohwalker 31 March, 2008

Dear Amazon

You used to be such a great store. A person could buy lots of different things, almost like a trip to a virtual mall, and the prices weren’t too outrageous.

But then you had this brilliant idea to sell used books on the same page as new ones. I’m a writer. I make my money from the sale of my books. I don’t expect everybody to buy my books new and I’m fine with UBS. Some of my favorite stores are the ones that sell both new and used titles. But the local new and used bookstore doesn’t have my brand new book front and center….and five used copies @ half the price right next to it.

Hey, I’m all for saving money, but come on, Amazon…there is something seriously disrespectful about that practice.

Then I started getting spam emails from you, telling me about this cool new movie coming on. Sorry, I can check out the channel guide if I’m needing a movie. I don’t need you.

There was the Kindle and I’m still disgusted with several things about it and not just ridiculous price you charge. (Psssst…. to those checking out an ebook reader? I’ve got the Sony Reader and it is totally awesome.)

Customer service? If somebody wants customer service from Amazon, you have to wade through a bunch of stuff on the website, and recommendations to try the ‘self-service’ options before you finally give the customer an email form to contact you directly.

Now this mess with POD. Ya know…looking after your bottom line? All well and good. But you’re also supposed to be interested in customer service. Part of customer service is selection and convenience. Cutting off certain books? How does that come into offering the customer a wide selection? Convenience? Well, if they are looking for a certain book, but oh…say it’s printed by Lulu…then the customer has to go elsewhere. Nope, that’s not convenience.

You will lose customers over this. A lot? I dunno. But you will lose customers. Might not seem like a big deal to you, losing a customer here, there…. but I’m disappointed. It’s a smack in the face to authors who have no control over who prints their books. You’re also losing out a chunk of change from those who get their books printed by some of the bigger POD companies.

And what happens when the big publishers decide to start going with POD technology for the older books? Are you going to not carry all those titles as well?

You started out as such a cool site, but you’ve turned into nothing more than a money-hungry, greedy corporate conglomerate. Don’t we already have enough of those?

Sincerely,

Shiloh Walker

For those that are wondering…. Amazon has decided to stop selling Print-On-Demand books unless the titles are printed by their POD company. It’s going to hurt a lot of small publishers and their authors. It’s also going to affect longtime customers who might wish to by a title that at one time, they could have gotten from Amazon. Now they’ll have to look elsewhere. I dunno about you, but I’m looking elsewhere for my books from here on out anyway.

Dear Author has a much more concise post about the mess. And if you’re disgusted by Amazon’s decision to run the known universe, you can contact them and let them know you’re unhappy about this POD mess.

http://www.amazon.com/contact-us~

Edited to add in the following list from Beyond Niche Marketing.

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