Amazon Monopoly

Here's a pernicious piece of protectionism if I've ever met one.

Just as we are getting excited about the possibility of print-on-demand publication which will make sure our books are available as, and wherever, needed (and hopefully in the not too distant future this might mean Malaysian books having easy access to overseas markets), Amazon has announced that it will only sell POD titles published by its own Booksurge.

As Petrona says, it seems that the company is moving away from its previous business model. :

Whatever one might think of the business decision, it seems to signal the end of Amazon as a collaborative network of partners (buyers as well as sellers), and the start of Amazon as a traditional business, competing with publishers and competing for readers.

More about how the whole deal is supposed to work and the implications on it on O'Reilly Radar, which in turn links to commentary on other sites, including :

Booksquare which sees Amazon as amassing :

... essentially a secret army ...

and Virtualbookworm Blog which urges everyone with a blog or loud voice to spread the word about this unfair situation or contact Amazon’s Investor Relations via email at ir@amazon.com. There's also an online petition.

There is in the end as well the power of the wallet - if you care about this issue (and you should because POD may well be the future of publishing) buy elsewhere for now.

Dzof the Viper?

Dzof Azmi's column in the Star at the weekend was a wonderful wind-up for people who love the physicality of published books. Words ... not books are what counts, he says, as he predicts the imminent demise of the paper manifestations and the growth of digital ones. Do go read.

(We've had this debate before, of course, and I can pretty much predict what your take on the issue is, just as you can most probably predict mine!)

Was much amused to read on Azmi's blog that Thor Kah Hoong had called up his mum and called Azmi ' a viper':

... for suggesting that the writing was on the electronic wall for physical books.

His response? :

I like that, I've never been compared to a muscle-engined sports car before.

Anyway, should Dzof's vision of the future come to pass, I would probably become Thor's best customer, and get stuck in a happy time-warp rediscovering past literary glories!

Wena Self-Published

I mentioned Wena Poon in the previous post as one of the writers who has a story in SNW6. I first came across her work when I edited Collateral Damage and she submitted one of my favourite stories - Kenny's Big Break - in which a teenage boy swipes his sister's wedding ang-pow to pay for his studies overseas. Re-encoutering her work in SNW6 made me wonder: why doesn't this very-talented writer have a book out? I would definitely want to read it, as I've read both of these stories with a big grin of delight on my face, and Wena's stories have been widely published.

It turns out that she's gone the self-publishing route with her first sci-fi novel Biophilia. (Which I just - heaven help my poor overheated credit card - one-click ordered from Amazon). On Raman's website, Wena talks about her experiences with POD publishing with Amazon's BookSurge and encourages other local writers to do the same.

Personally I think it high time that some publisher in this part of the world would give Wena (who is Singaporean, but living in the US) a proper publishing contract.

I know I would.

The Shape of Publishing to Come

It wasn't that huge a turnout for MPH Writer's Circle this Saturday ... maybe most wannabe-publisheds run away from any topic that sounds techie.

But Paul McLean's (of Fuji-Xerox Asia Pacific) presentation about print-on-demand publishing was extremly informative ... and for me, inspiring. I'm convinced that for many of us POD is the shape of things to come, and it's only a matter of time before not just individual writers but local bookshops and publishers (are forced to?) embrace it.

Why? Okay, let's take two scenarios. (Mine, not Paul's.)

A Malaysian publisher has a very good reputation but only a small local market. He prints by offset publishing for the local market. He wants to sell more overseas. He has a good webpresence and posts books to international clients who order them. But he would like his books on the American and British market and on Amazon.com. Even if he finds someone to store and market the books for him in those countries, he still has to put his books in boxes and expensively ship them there. It's troublesome and expensive to get the books where he wants them.

A young Singaporean writer (okay, I'm talking about our friend O Thiam Chim) writes a book and decides to self-publish. He decides to do Print-On-Demand publishing with an American company who can get his book listed on Amazon.com and made available to an international audience. Problem: when he wants to sell his book to a local market, he has to import his own books from the US and pay shipping and duty on them. This makes the book so much more expensive than if he has printed locally (by POD or offset).

Print-on-demand could be the answer for both of them. It needs to work like this. The writer or publisher create digital product which can be printed on demand here or from centres overseas. Clients (anywhere in the world) order via internet or via a special booth in the bookshop and are supplied cheaply and quickly (within hours perhaps) with a quality product. There are no shipping costs.

If the book sells really well then it makes sense to move to offset printing which is cheaper for quantity. If the book doesn't sell, not a great deal of money has been lost. There are no warehousing costs. (These add significantly to the cost of a book.) There are no unsold books to pulp. A book never needs to go out of print.

The technology for this already exists. But as Paul said yesterday, selling the idea to client organisations is the hardest part. (MPH is already in negotiations by the way which will put them ahead of the crowd.)

And there is no POD company which operates internationally yet. So bridges need still to be built.

The physical quality of POD books needs to be assured - the publisher doesn't want his overseas clients to buy books which are inferior to the offset copies he produced for the Malaysian market.

Will we buy POD books? I bought my first a few months back a few months ago without noticing.

I'd read about a psychology book on a website. Looked for it and found it on Abebooks. Ordered it and got a nice new copy within a few days at a reasonable price. It wasn't until I'd finished reading it that I realised that the publisher was iUniverse and the copy had been printed specially for me! The book fulfilled all expectations and was in no way inferior for its having been printed digitally. More importantly, I hadn't even paused to think whether this copy had been printed digitally or by offset while I was ordering it or reading it.

It will be interesting to see how the whole POD thing develops here. And I think none of us - writers, readers, publishers, or booksellers can afford to ignore it.

Meanwhile, if you are interested publishing your book by POD locally, you can check out G&L Solutions.

Print on Demand

Chaired the MPH Writer's Circle Meeting this time as Oon Yeoh couldn't make it. Topic de jour was print on demand and the main speaker was Gary Gan, a young entrepreneur who saw a great potential in bringing the technology to Malaysia. Zainora Asmawi, a publisher who uses POD to print academic textbooks, and author Ooi Poh Yew also contributed their experiences.

Print on demand is a very useful alternative for the self-published since it allows you to print exactly the quantity of books that you need when you need them.

Revisions to the book can be made quickly and easily - important if you are writing in a field where information changes quickly.

You can even chose where to print your copies - meaning that if you want to market books in New York, say, you can print your copies there so without incurring shipping costs. There are also no warehousing costs for unsold copies involved.

Fiction writers who have used print on demand technology successfully include Amy Fisher and Malaysian writer John Ling.

If you're interested in learning more about print on demand here's a website with some very useful information and links.

And locally, you can contact Gary for more information. His e-mail is gnsolutions@gmail.com and his phone number is +603 80754225.

Self-Publishing

"There is a new breed of writer who, passed over by big publishers, decide to go it alone and self-publish. Not as an exercise in vanity, but because they genuinely feel that the publishers have got it wrong. Driven by determination and a belief in their own judgement, they are now helped by the wealth of new technologies that make self-publishing easier - and cheaper - then ever before."

This article from The Independent highlights some recent - and very encouraging - success stories in self-publishing in Britain.

An article in the same paper a few days ago highlighted the story of Patricia Ferguson, an award-winning novelist whose latest novel was turned down by the major imprints. In the end she took the book to a tiny "print on demand" publishing house. Now As It Happens has been longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Sometimes guys, you have to take things into your own hands if you want to get your words out there. It's increasingly true in Britain, and even more so in Malaysia.

And if you want to know more about how to go about self-publishing, MPH's Writer's Circle meeting for April is on this very topic:

Sat, 16 April 2005
Time: 11am - 12.30pm
Venue: The Booker Room, Level 2, MPH Megastore 1 Utama