The Amazon Battle Continues: A Conversation With BookLocker’s Angela Hoy

Making Money is a good part to our success, and as amazon’s model changes marketing the selling of books will change too . It’s no secret that angela hoy from writers weekly has been quite outspoken on the current decision by amazon to get all their POD publishers print books via booksurge. You can look up some of her past comments on this subject matter by going to her writers weekly website. In the middle of this media frenzy is angela, she’s taken some time to answer our questions on this subject, so let’s hear what she had to say:

Question 1.: You’ve filed a lawsuit against amazon, what made you do this?

Answer : I believe that what’s being done here constitutes a violation of anti-trust rules , and places myself and other POD publishers and writers in danger. Someone had to stand up and be counted.

Question 2. : Is it possible to discuss the nature of this litigation ?

Answer : Here is a link to a PDF file of actual lawsuit: http://antitrust.booklocker.com/

Question 3 : Do you think you can win against this giant?

Answer : Yes, I absolutely believe i can.

Question 4 : Lots of people say that amazon is a monopoly, do you have the same feeling , and is there anything that can be done against this giant ?

Answer : The only method to stopping this type of action, by a business which controls the online book sales market is taking it to court. That’s what we are forced to do.

Question 5. : There has been some recent talk that amazon may be interested in being a publisher. Do you think that will ever be possible? what are the outcomes of this, if it becomes reality?

Answer : Amazon is already a publisher , not only did they become one after purchasing booksurge, but also admitted in its 10-K SEC filing that publishers were their competitors.

Question 6. : There are already a lot of individual authors with their own works affected by this decision, many of whom haven’t even fully considered the consequences of this Making Money move. What can the single author do to protect themselves against this giant?

Answer : What many authors don’t realize is that some may already be working for amazon , the confidentiality clause in the amazon / booksurge contract is aimed at stopping any disclosure of the relationship and that these authors’books will probably be printed by booksurge without their consent. Writers who have studied booksurge online, might have serious concerns about the quality of their books that has the author’s name printed on it. Personally, under no circumstances would i let booksurge print anything with our name on it, We have had a history of quality problems with them. From time to time, i monitor what they’re doing , so i purchased a book from them the other month and the quality was terrible. The back cover was not centered, some of the photos were so dark, authors were totally unrecognizable black shadows everywhere, then there was a horrible glue blob on the cover and so on .

Question 7. : What else can we do to fight this giant online?

Answer : POD authors and publishers need to talk about these issues now, and continue to keep speaking out against it. Amazon is hoping that things will die down “and that it will all be forgotten about soon Unfortunately, when that day comes, some POD publishers and self-publishing authors may very well be out of business as a result of Amazon.com actions today.

Question 8. : If they’re allowed to do this, what do you think will occur in the long term ? will their next announcement of a roll-out be about their publication model?

Answer : They’ve already implemented this model by taking the current action. The buy buttons to publish america books approx 30K titles have already been disabled by them.

Question 9. : What shocked you the most concerning this action ?

Answer : It didn’t take any consideration at all for us to decide to fight this tt’s just not right and someone had to do something about this situation. We expected some coverage in the writing and publishing industry and on blogs however what we didn’t expect was the overwhelming support were given worldwide by writers, publishers and book purchasers. People are furious with amazon, i’ve conducted more interviews in the last six weeks than I’ve done all my life altogether plus, we’ve received e-mails a lot more on this subject than on any other topic we’ve covered over the last 11 years in writers weekly. Every voice is important and you can make a difference! trust me amazon is being forced to listen to what people saying!

The Amazon Battle Continues: A Conversation With BookLocker’s Angela Hoy

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