I posted some links last week regarding Amazon.com’s attempt to force publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge print-on-demand service. Or the book won’t be available for sale on Amazon. I think Amazon took some non-BookSurge POD book’s “buy” buttons off, too. Is that still the case? My friend Scott’s book is only available through the used book interface now.

Evidently, most (all?) print-on-demand services (other than BookSurge) use Lightning Source to actually print the book. Lightning Source is a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group, which is a local (to me) Nashville company. (The printing biz is big in Nashville.)

I find it strange that I haven’t seen any local media stories about this, since Ingram is such a large local company (and the family is so prominent in the community). Unless I missed any mainstream media articles about this, the only local attention this has gotten is from some well-respected local bloggers — Rex Hammock & Newscoma. I guess POD is small potatoes in the business world.

POD & the WWW are 2 of the main reasons that I think that, for American poetry, this is one of the most exciting periods of time, ever. OK, I understand that hardly anyone buys poetry books these days, but for those of us who do, whoo boy, is there a groaning table.

An overview of why this sucks so much for small publishers.

A more detailed analysis of how this would affect a small poetry publisher.

And in the “first they came for POD” department: Newspapers, magazines, press syndicates, not just e-book and POD publishers, should beware of Amazon’s lock-ins.

So what can you do about it? Here are some ideas:

There are contact addresses here, so you can tell Amazon to quit bogarting POD distribution.

Boycott them & quit generating revenue for Amazon.com via your websites.

The Authors Guild is seeking input that will help them move forward with legal plans because of Amazon’s possible violation of antitrust laws.

This article suggests that the California Attorney General would be most interested in Amazon’s business practices.

(I still plan on using Lulu.com to publish my poetry manuscript this year.)

Poetry News:

1. — Usually when I think, “Here’s something a poem needs to be written about,” I get as far away from pen and paper as I possibly can —
2. — Here is a poem giving pi to 21 digits when you replace each word with the number of letters in that word —
3. — Small Press and Publishing Panel —
4. — I am Cathal’s publisher for 20 years and I don’t think his poems should be used in this film. I have asked for them to be removed…. —
5. — Forage a fierce achievement —
6. — Vanishing Point by Robert Thomas —
7. — Why you should be enraged by literary liars —
8. — the 100 best last lines from novels —

Someone arrived at this blog yesterday via a Google search for “poem, the shepherd to hip love” and that made me laugh. Hmm “S” and “P” are kinda far away on the keyboard.

Maybe that poem appears in an anthology alongside “Stopping By The Foods On A Snowy Evening.” Feel free to post, in the comments, what other titles appear in that anthology. That cracks me up. And I could use some levity.

I have a website, www.thewordvine.com, that I hope to launch in September. The Word Vine is going to be a (free) site where DIY publishers, micropresses and the like can sign up and sell their stuff, commiserate, etc. Right now it is just a placeholder website.

I’m still working on it, but each store can sell through its own paypal account or a Lulu.com account if it exists. The site will have the usual ecommerce functionality - visitors can browse inventory site-wide and there is one secure shopping cart/checkout for the whole site. Each store will have it’s own storefront and admin area.

It’s going to be free, because I’m such a freaking idealist, but I’ll have it set up so you can donate to me so maybe I can recoup the couple hundred dollars it has cost so far. I don’t care about the time, but I do have surgery bills that could have used the couple hundred dollars, LOL.

Thanks to those of you that responded to my DIY publishing poll from before.

I need some beta testers if you would like to participate. You’ll need inventory and a paypal account and/or a lulu.com account. I’ll probably start that testing process in August.