Amazon Does Damage Control On Its Print-On-Demand Demands

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Rafat Ali

paidContent.org
Monday, March 31, 2008; 10:07 PM

Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN) is now doing some damage control over its plans to control its print-on-demand value chain, and has issued an open letter to the industry, posted here. It has recently issued a policy telling such publishers that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon's website.

In the letter, it explains the rationale: "Modern POD printing machines can print and bind a book in less than two hours. If the POD printing machines reside inside our own fulfillment centers, we can more quickly ship the POD book to customers?including in those cases where the POD book needs to be married together with another item...If the POD item were to be printed at a third party, we'd have to wait for it to be transhipped to our fulfillment center before it could be married together with the inventoried item."

It is also clarifying the exclusivity clause, which isn't: "There is no request for exclusivity. Any publisher can use Amazon's POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels."

Amazon Tightens Noose on Print-On-Demand Publishers; Insists They Use Company's Own Service