Amazon's Strategy on POD Called into Question

In the larger picture of things, Amazon's role in print-on-demand will be relatively small now that it has adopted the strategy of demanding independent authors and publishers use its exclusive services. Print-on-demand is much bigger than Amazon, and perhaps the company would do a better job as a warehouse of objects other than books and literature. They are about jungle enough for Amazon to handle. Perhaps they could ask that everything that the world produces be manufactured in one of its plants.

I once worked in a bakery in Montreal. At the time, it was owned by the Weston's company and was reputed to be the largest factory under one roof. That's what I did for several summers before EXPO 67. I painted the interior of the Weston Bakery roof. I worked with a native of a local tribe. He was not afraid of going high except after those nights that he loved his wife. "Today, I can't go up," he would say adding, "I loved my wife."

Westons produced bread for most of Montreal and the Eastern provinces. The number of lines of bread with different brand names was to me, a lowly summer employee, quite staggering. In the end, we would have to strip off the paper as it returned to the factory having gone stale. The returned bread was sold to the local pig farms and the bread ended up as Canadian bacon. Perhaps, the Amazon strategy will unfold in a similar way ending up as pig feed.

If one looks at the trend in new authors and new books, one is staggered by the dimensions. Literature is taking off. We are at the early stages of another cultural revolution. They said the printing press started civilization. Well, it is my feeling that print-on-demand, the internet publishers, and the rise of pluralism in authorship have begun a staggering revolution in the way we partipate in our democracies.

No entity focused on money is going to be able to monopolize this process. If the profit is there, the numbers of new entrants into the industry will be staggering as well. The writing is on the wall for a wave of new publishing companies who have authors to do the vertical integration and marketing of books themselves. My publishing effort, Togwells, with its focus on development of values will participate in this revolution in a very very minor way because the scale of the change is much much too large. It is important that publishers focus on values and work with marketing efforts that focus on values.

Business Advice to Amazon from Several Business Advisers

The world is indeed changing very rapidly. I have just finished reading a good book by Joseph Jaworski entitled Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadship. Joseph reminded me of the words of the independent business adviser in the UK, Ronald Brech, for whom I used to work.

He said that if a business wanted to live for ever, it had to do business in an ethical way.

Jaworski says something similar in the words of Kaku the Chairman of Canon, Inc with reference to the conduct of business by Japanese companies. "The essense of a successful company... is to strive to contribute on three dimensions: to its customers, to its employees, and to society." The thing is that Amazon needs to focus on sharing in the global destiny rather than in its profit line.

As Jaworski writes, "to serving humankind as a whole through its philosophy and activities." p. 165.

Incidently, I bought that book through the post from Amazon, you can order a copy for each of your employees, and get them to read it from cover to cover. Perhaps, they will need to walk outside the office down to a local Borders books, drink a coffee and enjoy the the book in a social atmosphere. Perhaps, we could set up a reading fund for the amazing Amazon leadership and executives!

Now wouldn't that be a 'turn for the books.'

Mind my pun; I could not help it!

You will be 'amazed' at the new world that we are in and what the pressures that the quantum atmosphere of our existence imposes for success.

My Open Letter on Fair Trade to Amazon About Their POD Strategy

Incidently, thank you for reading my earlier communication about how unhappy the independent writers were with your new policy for print-on-demand, those exclusive terms you are demanding, that your firm gets to do the print work. I does not do to get really independent people upset. They believe the mantra that then pen is mightier than the sword, or bullying force as it were.

We Don't Like Bullies

Normally, these things that go on in the business world are none of my business. And, this is the case for many independent writers around the world. I understand from statistic gleaned at the London Book Fair that the revolution in literature and communications has just started, but the dimensions are staggering. I can understand why Amazon at this time might be feeling a bit concerned that the strategies that it had adopted during the last decade might not nourish its growth during the decades ahead. Indeed, there are many alternatives to Amazon emerging in the frontiers of Internet communications. This is why I, and it seems many writers of the independent variety were puzzled that Amazon should attempt a policy of restrictive practices with regard to its marketing of books.

For Many of Us Books and Coffee, perhaps Starbucks and Borders or Chapters, go Together

Generally, we readers, for I speak also as a book buyer, and I have been using Amazon as well as other means to acquire the books of my library, will choose a supplier marketer of books because of the coffee we drink as we sit down and think about what we want to examine in the way of our future reading. Yes Amazon, it is the coffee that is important to us, and not the book seller. Well, we go to Chapters and Borders because we get good coffee there. We also get a feeling of sharing in a larger event and a happy one. We don't like the idea of our writers, our favorite authors and our new struggling writers being forced into a particular mold. We like the idea of freedom of choice, just as we like to choose between a wide variety of books. We will watch other booksellers to see if they implement restrictive practices, for this is what we see your action as, right or wrong. It was not fair trade.

We Now see Fair Trade in Book Manufacture as an Issue ... Thanks

Our real problem these days is that for all the new writers and new books coming onto the market, there just is not enough coffee shops and books stores where we can sit down an read, drink coffee and buy books. You see, we are social creatures and we like the atmosphere of our book stores, our Starbucks. What's more we are addicted to our coffee, which makes us even more choice oriented. It seems to me, as a coffee drinker and book buyer that sitting in front of the computer buying books is not very much fun. Its certainly not as much fun as sitting in a Starbucks cafe drinking my coffee and eating my blueberry oat bar. The thing is I am sure I will now look at the inside cover of the books I buy to see if they are Fair Trade. This is now a new issue for me. I will now post the Fair Trade logo on my books if they are POD printed, and I will try to only buy books that I see have Fair Trade POD certification. I might slip up a few times, but I am not perfect and I think a shift in my buying habits is possibly in order now I realize that writers are people who need to be treated fairly as well. The thought had never really crossed my mind before.

I have other thoughts to convey about Amazon's future role in the big issues of development of world communications and notions of trust and worldwide fair trade practices in a global economy, but this one seems a good start.