Comments on: Will Amazon Hurt Small Pagan Publishers?

By: The Wild Hunt » Update: Amazon’s “Gay Glitch” and the Pagans

The Wild Hunt » Update: Amazon’s “Gay Glitch” and the Pagans — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:21:50 +0000

[...] anti-gay (or anti-Pagan) scenarios in mind when this massive de-ranking occured. There are plenty of reasons to not like Amazon.com (or any giant faceless corporation for that matter), but actively hating on minority groups is [...]

By: Lupa

Lupa — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:21:00 +0000

Jane–The indy distributors do their best. It simply comes down to the existing constraints of the publishing industry as a whole.

Thanks again for the Magus Books tip–they do indeed have their own distribution service, and I got in contact with them about it

By: Jane

Jane — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:16:00 +0000

Thanks for the Eye-opener, Lupa. I guess I figured Azure Green and New Leaf would be different than the Ingrams and Baker & Taylors because of their specialty nature.

They need to figure out that the biggest slice of a pie isn’t necessarily the best. Hopefully Magus Books can get their wholesale humming and fill that gap in distribution.

By: Erynn Rowan

Erynn Rowan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:35:00 +0000

An idea from a comment by RoseWelsh in my LiveJournal about the Amazon situation:

Erynn:

After looking through your posts on this outrageous tactic and realizing that one letter or 10 *saying* that you will buy elsewhere isn’t going to hit home. I’m thinking that for the next month or so every time I buy a book elsewhere, I’ll let Amazon know: send them a brief letter why I bought elsewhere with a copy of the receipt If enough people do this maybe the bean counters will have something interesting to say at the next staff meeting *wink*.

Rose

Please pass the idea along!

By: Lupa

Lupa — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Jane: Because a lot of the distributors ask for a lot bigger discount than many small POD presses can afford. Immanion Press, the publisher I work with, worked out a contract with New Leaf last year, but we really had to crunch the numbers to make it work, and even then it’s not really much of a money maker for us–it’s more to make the books more widely available. Same thing with Counter Culture Books in the UK–they’re a good resource for us, but many small presses may not be able to offer that big a discount. As to Azuregreen, we sent them several books for review, and they never got back to us.

Please don’t make the assumption that we’re all ignoring indie distributors–it’s a matter of money. Indie distributors are still primarily geared towards traditional publishers, who have a lower cost per book and therefore can give a bigger discount. POD presses, because the cost per book is higher because we’re not printing 10,000 copies at once, often can’t compete unless the distributor is willing to work with us because we can’t give that big a discount. Amazon has been one of the few major powers in publishing that have been accomodating to us (until recently) and even then they don’t make much profit on POD books anyway.

I do want to thank you for tipping me off on Magus Books going wholesale, though–I visited their store years ago and it’s still one of the best I’ve seen. I’m going to contact them about their wholesaling now that you’ve mentioned it

By: Jane

Jane — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:54:00 +0000

Many of us local pagan stores would love to carry more quality titles from independent publishers, and we do so when given the opportunity. But we rarely are. I suspect many stores partner with Llewellyn because they are so easy to do business with. Why don’t the independent presses team up with independent distributors like magusbooks.com (they are going into wholesale), azuregreen.com (a pagan wholesaler and retailer) or newleaf-dist.com (a new age wholesaler)? If the coolest new pagan title, with great reviews in indie press and on the web is only available from indie sources, don’t you think people would go there to get it? I mean, think of the karma, people. When indie publishers ignore indie distributors and retailers, and put all their faith in amazon . . . what exactly do you expect?

By: Lupa

Lupa — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:13:00 +0000

fyreflye–You are right in that it isn’t completely hopeless. However, the Marketplace is pretty competitive–all of our books have third party sellers selling new copies for anywhere from one to four (or more) dollars off the cover price. And most people are going to want the cheapest one; I’ve sold signed copies of my books for the cover price, and I sell less than half a dozen a year through Marketplace. There’s really no way to make up the profit that we would get through regular Amazon sales.

And Little Fishes–Yup. Amazon is not nice to the little guys anywhere. I do wish more indy pagan shops would carry a bigger variety; a lot of them just become LLewellyn affiliates–which is a good program, but thehn they don’t get books from other publishers. The best shops I’ve seen are the ones with wide variety.

By: And Little Fishes

And Little Fishes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:58:00 +0000

Another reason that changing from Lightning to Amazon is bad is that independent stores prefer to order through Ingram or another traditional wholesaler, rather than do anything through Amazon, which is happily stomping on their market share. I own an independent bookstore, and would rather cut off my arm than fulfill customer requests by ordering from Amazon. Readers not directly involved in sales, writing, publishing, or distribution: please consider your local independent, whether it is a Pagan store or not!

By: fyreflye

fyreflye — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:21:00 +0000

Lupa–If prospective buyers can’t get free shipping from Amazon they won’t find it anywhere else so they’ll go ahead and buy from a Marketplace seller or look for an even cheaper one at FetchBook. The real problem is bringing worthy books to the attention of potential buyers in the first place. The reviews in the pagan magazines are too few and too uncritical. Amazon makes a lot of money off its 15%+ commission from Marketplace sales and will continue to list books they don’t carry as long as Marketplace sellers are offering the product. Publishers and authors need to become Marketplace sellers themselves; many already are.

By: Lupa

Lupa — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:11:00 +0000

David–That’s a nice idea in theory. However, most of the indy mainstream book stores use the same distributors as the big guys (usually Baker and Taylor or Ingram). Small pagan shops often either just become LLewellyn affiliates, or stick with specific distributors that may not have that great a selection. And there’s the issue of returnability; lots of book stores may not want to carry nonreturnable books (which, as I explained in my post, are almost universally necessary to POD publishing survival).

The thing is, POD simply doesn’t work the same way as traditional publishing. Unfortunately, the publishing industry is slow to change, and so it is still heavily biased towards traditional publishers. So we POD operations continue to forge our way through the mess