Poetry Hut Blog
booksurge

Poetry News:

1. — The Mainichi Newspapers is inviting participation in the 12th Annual Mainichi Haiku Contest —
2. — Punk rocker Exene explores a creative space in Missouri —
3. — DNA Analysis Exposes Fake Schiller Skull —
4. — “Sort of Gone,” a collection of poems by Sarah Freligh, follows the adventures and misadventures - mostly misadventures - of a ballplayer who makes a life in the game in part to show his worthless sot of a father that he can do it. —
5. — “I mask it. I make my poems seem simpler then they really are,” Snyder said. —
6. — Everyday world sizzles with alarm in his poetic vision —
7. — Stafford’s wartime poetry shows the power of his convictions —
8. — A web of associations connects a group of New England writers, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. —
9. — This is pretty cool - congrats —

A prediction that Google will end up buying Ingram Digital (and Booksurge). I’m sure those folks over in La Vergne, TN would be surprised to hear that.

All I can say is, I’m glad that I forgot to watch the Kentucky Derby this weekend.  Sometimes  I think there’s something wrong with me - I cannot cannot cannot stand to see an animal get hurt. I have a greater reaction to that than I do from seeing a human get hurt. Though in my defense, I don’t like to watch those stupid home video TV shows where people get hit in the balls and stuff, either.

The Kentucky Derby was always a big deal when I was growing up. My dad’s drive-in restaurant wasn’t too far from the Detroit Race Course (actually in Livonia) and a lot of the regular customers (my extended family) were bookies and gamblers. So on derby day my mom would make sure we’d pick the horse’s names out of a hat (a “to go” white paper bag, actually) and my dad would put the b&w TV with a coat hanger antenna up on the counter & we’d watch the race.

Since my last post regarding this topic:

1. The Washington (state) Atty General has said “talk to the  hand  Feds.”

2. The National Writers Union (I am a member - they are UAW Local 1981 btw] has called for Justice Dept. and Congressional investigations.

3. AuthorHouse and Lulu.com have caved, though I can’t find any official announcement about Lulu.com.

Given the state of the Justice Department these days, the US Government’s servile toadying to Corporations, and the fact that Congress was pretty much elected so they would end the Iraq War and yet … therefore I, for one, welcome our new BookSurgian overlords.

I’m still not buying anything from Amazon.

Not a lot of blogging is taking place about this issue lately, but here’s an article from Publishers Weekly:
Amazon: Friend or Foe?.

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.)