Amazon, the greedy giant with small publishers in its grip

To sell online, indie publishers must use Amazon. But its methods leave them out of pocket – or out of sight, paying hidden charges, says the founder of Linen Press

‘There’s no competing with Amazon’ … Lynn Michell of Linen Press. Photograph: Nye

Lynn Michell

Monday 2 February 2015 - The Guardian

Indie publishers need transparency and support from online companies that sell their books. Amazon fails such publishers on both counts. Ostensibly, it offers two ways of selling, but only one – the costly Amazon Advantage – does the job. So, in effect, Amazon offers no choice at all, since the successful sales method is financially prohibitive. The cheaper, more confusing marketing option disadvantages small publishers by making them less visible on Amazon and landing them with hidden problems and costs.

Amazon Advantage, which I’ve written about before, is the alpha method of selling our books. It puts us squarely in the limelight so that when someone types in the title, we are the first and most visible seller. Click on the cover image and the book on offer is the one sold by us. But the cost for this clarity and publicity is high, and can be met only by the big publishers, who print thousands of copies of a title and keep the cost-per-copy to less than a pound. But if you are a small press, the sums don’t add up. Linen Press welcomes writers with no track record and writers from minority groups. We read the 20, mostly unsolicited submissions that arrive each week. Having signed up an emergent writer (emergent is a polite way of saying unknown), we usually do a first run of 400 copies, which works out at a basic production price of £3 per copy.

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