Letter from the Washington State Attorney General

Well, I guess the battle is over as far as the state of Washington is concerned. Following is an email we received from them, and it looks like the course of action they have taken is to do nothing. We are disabling the form to email them, because it obviously is a moot point by now. Amazon has stated that it will carry books from non-BookSurge publishers as long as the author sends a minimum of five copies to Amazon for inventory. So I suppose that is a compromise, and it's probably about as good as we're going to do. But we still encourage you to use the form in the previous post below to email the Dept. of Justice in Washington. Will they do anything? Doubtful. But we might as well keep yelling and see if anybody listens.

Here is the email:

Dear Mr. Work:

The Washington Attorney General’s Antitrust Division has received many complaints regarding the new “print on demand” or “POD” policy recently implemented by Amazon.com. We want to thank all of those who have brought this matter to our attention and who have provided information and insight into the questions. We appreciate the concerns that have been expressed.

We have reviewed each of these complaints and we have contacted Amazon to explore the concerns that have been raised. Amazon responded to our inquiry by directing us to a publicly posted “Open Letter to Interested Parties” in which they describe their new policy.

The “Open Letter to Interested Parties” is posted on the Internet at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-printondemand. Some of the complaints that we have received state that Amazon is refusing to sell books printed by Lightning Source or other POD publishers, and will only sell POD books printed by BookSurge. In its “Open Letter to Interested Parties”, Amazon addresses this question:

Do I need to switch completely to having my POD titles printed at Amazon?

No, 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.

Alternatively, you can use a different POD service provider for all your units. In that case, we ask that you pre-produce a small number of copies of each title (typically five copies), and send those to us in advance (Amazon Advantage Program-successfully used by thousands of big and small publishers). We will inventory those copies. That small cache of inventory allows us to provide the same rapid fulfillment capability to our customers that we would have if we were printing the titles ourselves on POD printing machines located inside our fulfillment centers. Unlike POD, this alternative is not completely "inventoryless." However, as a practical matter, five copies is a small enough quantity that it is economically close to an inventoryless model.
The complaints that we have received have come from across the country. It appears that the markets involved are national in scope. Thus, it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.

For these reasons, and based on the information that has been provided to us, the Attorney General’s office does not plan further action on this matter. However, and as noted before, this is not a conclusive legal opinion and anyone feeling that they have been harmed and wish to pursue a remedy should consider consulting with private counsel.

If you have additional information or have evidence that what Amazon is representing is not true, please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

Brady Johnson
Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
Washington State
Office of Attorney General

New Mission: Put it in the Feds' Hands

We received a comment from the Washington state Attorney General's Media Relations Manager (it can be read by clicking the Comments link beneath the last blog post). She said that they had received many complaints and that Amazon had been asked to respond. Victory (sort-of)! However, she also said the following:

If it is determined that the markets involved are national in scope, it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.

Therefore, we think the next it makes sense to start over, now directing our emails toward the Department of Justice. The form below sends an email to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice that is almost exactly the same as the one used for Washington state.

Name:

Email:

Personalized Content for Message:


Type the following verification code into the box:

If you would like to contact the Dept. of Justice directly, here is the info:

E-mail

antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov

Mail

Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530

Phone

1-888-647-3258 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) or 202-307-2040