"Amazon.com, the online bookselling giant, announced on March 31, 2008, that it would be requiring all print-on-demand books it sells to be printed by BookSurge, the print-on-demand service it owns. Publishers that don’t want to use BookSurge may still sell their books through Amazon’s Advantage program, but Amazon will no longer carry POD books it doesn’t print itself."
Publish America refused to take advantage of the Advantage program and continued to list books on Amazon even though no one could buy them. The Advantage program charged a fee that PA did not want to pay.
"In January 2010, Amazon settled with Booklocker, agreeing that it would not remove Booklocker books from its website or remove the “Add to Shopping Cart” button. Amazon will also pay $300,000 in attorney’s fees."
From March 2008 until January 2010 no one could buy a PA book through Amazon.com unless it was from a seller other than Amazon.
What has happened since that time? Lightening Source International, owned by Ingram, was PA's commerical printer and vendor (The vendor part means that all retail sells ordered through Amazon and other book sellers went directly to LSI.) LSI kept the sales records and paid PA every two months for the books they sold less their charges.
In accordance with the agreement between LSI and PA all books sold were returnable. Not just the ones PA designated as returnable but ALL of them. In the spring of 2009 LSI began getting large numbers of returned PA books and per the Agreement LSI destroyed the books and charged PA a fee for the returns. In the summer 2009 PA decided that they were being cheated on the return fees and they executed a different option in the LSI Agreement. This option required LSI to send copies of returned PA directly to PA for an additional fee of $2.00 per copy. The fees paid PA for LSI sold PA books turned negative that summer of 2009 because LSI return charges starting exceeding the amount due PA for sales and PA began to owe LSI. PA refused to pay LSI and LSI terminated the Agreement in October 2009 when the amount due them exceeded $50,000. PA promply sued LSI and the case settled a few months later.
The result of the termination of the Agreement meant that PA no longer had a commercial printer nor a distributor. PA still listed books on Amazon but no one could buy them because there was no place except PA and Amazon won't buy from PA for a number of reasons, one being that PA will not accept returns and PP points out, carefully, that, "All sales are final."
PA attempted to contract with another printer but nothing worked out and they are today without a printer or a distributor. Well, they have an in-house printer and distribute to their own authors.
Can someone buy a PA book from Amazon.com or not? I don't think so. I sent the following inquiry to Amazon.com to get their answer.
"There are many of publisher PublishAmerica's books listed for sale but I've been told that they can't be bought through Amazon because they are POD and they do not have a distributor.Can I or can I not purchase some of these books? Perhaps Amazon orders directly from the publisher?"
Amazon answered.
"Hello, I understand that you'd like to purchase PublishAmerica's books, but this item cannot be listed on our website. However, we'll consider your feedback as we plan further improvements.I've passed your message on to the appropriate department in our company for consideration. We value this kind of feedback, as it helps us continue to improve our store and provide better service to our customers.We hope to see you again soon.Best regards,Chitra J.Amazon.comYour feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company."
Listing PA books on Amazon.com is completely different than selling books on Amazon.com. If the listing procedures are followed PA can list all the books they want to for sell on Amazon.com; but that has nothing to do with what happens when Amazon.com tries to fill an order for a PA book. Amazon.com has no way of producing the book. There is no place to get it! So, they can't fill orders. Can they?
Anyone can check for themselves by contacting Chitra J. at Amazon.com
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