Do You Own Your Job?
Amazon.com: brilliant bookseller, lousy publisher
Vol. 5, Issue No. 23 | November 24, 2009 By Denny Hatch
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IN THE NEWS
BOOKSURGE
Dear Denny:
We have some exciting news to share — BookSurge is becoming CreateSpace. BookSurge and CreateSpace have historically operated as two distinct brands of one company — On Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. — and are now uniting on the CreateSpace platform to offer you an expanded catalog of publishing tools and services. You will still be working with the same team and receive the same high level of service to which you've been accustomed with BookSurge.
—The BookSurge/CreateSpace Team, Letter to DH, Undated, Unsigned
Under normal circumstances, a letter announcing that Amazon.com is trashing its BookSurge self-publishing imprint and renaming it CreateSpace would be a big ho-hum.
But I just signed a deal with BookSurge to publish “A Treasury of Takeaways,” goodies from the past five years of this e-zine.
On the surface, everything about BookSurge seemed wonderful, right down to the splendid logo—an open book that looked like a soaring bird in flight.
Alas, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—the Web marketing genius who created the world’s greatest distribution and marketing system for books—is a lousy talent picker. He turned his publishing arm over to amateurs.
Every person in business should study this transition gone sour, make a note of the broken rules and avoid making the same mistakes.
Self-Publishing, a Quick History
An author who cannot sell a book to a mainstream publisher has two choices: (1) stick it in a trunk (or computer file) or (2) self-publish.
Until the turn of this century, self-publishing—or “vanity” publishing—would routinely cost an author $3,000 to $7,500. This would buy 1,500 hardcover books stacked in a warehouse. Six months later, the author would receive notice that the 1,345 books remaining in the warehouse were about to be trashed unless the author cared to buy them for $2 each. Most self-published authors couldn't bear to see their precious output turned into landfill and would pay the additional $2,690 (plus shipping) to have them delivered to their garages and start parking their cars in their driveways.
In reality, the authors had already paid for the books and owned them, but the vanity publishing thieves happily billed them twice, and the majority of authors didn’t realize they were being screwed.
Today, instead of printed books stored in a warehouse (or garage), self-published titles reside in computers and can be produced via a print-on-demand machine that will print and bind them profitably in quantities as small as one-offs. The technology and efficiency are dazzling.
The Utter Incompetence of iUniverse
Four years ago I decided to reissue my first novel, “Cedarhurst Alley,” which got good reviews and a bunch of movie options back in 1970 (alas, no film was made). I went with iUniverse primarily because it touted a close and special working relationship with Barnes & Noble. I designed and ordered 1,000 postcards to send out announcing the book and listed the barnesandnoble.com address for ordering. Before sending the postcards, I ordered a copy of my book from B&N to be sure it was in the pipeline and being shipped. The book arrived in a couple of days. The postcards went out at a cost of roughly 50 cents apiece with printing and postage. When recipients tried to order the book, they received this e-mail:
Dear [NAME]
Despite our efforts, we were unable to fulfill some or all of the items in your order, as noted below. We have canceled this portion of your order.
We are sorry we were unable to complete your order and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
We hope you will return to http://www.bn.com at a later date to see if this merchandise is back in stock.
Sincerely,
— Barnes&Noble.com
It’s a toss-up which has the more incompetent employees: the mainstream or vanity publisher.
Why BookSurge
Choosing BookSurge—the self-publishing arm of Amazon.com—was a no-brainer. The book was to be published by the world’s greatest bookseller. The cost to get it into the system and onto the Amazon Web site was a bargain $349.
Icing on the cake was the royalty— a whopping 35 percent of the retail price. This is unheard of in the world of book publishing. The norm is a paltry 10% to 15% of the cover price, depending on the number sold.
In addition, BookSurge authors can access the record of sales and royalties due in real time. This feature isn't available through mainstream publishers because 40 percent of all books shipped are returned, so nobody has a clue what the net sales are for two years or more.
I signed up with BookSurge online and received a call from John Rieck in South Carolina, who welcomed me and said he'd be the point person to contact in dealing with my “account management team.”
My book was assigned an ID number: GPUB18567-00001.
I uploaded the text and received back the first proof. The first set of changes were free. I sent them in and received the second proof, whereupon I found a bunch of errors that I missed. I sent these revisions in, knowing that they'd cost me extra money, and received the following e-mail:
Friday, October 2, 2009 9:37 AM
From: "donotreply@booksurge.com" <donotreply@booksurge.com>
To: dennyhatch@yahoo.com
GPUB18567-00001 - A Treasury of Takeaways - Changes Fee Due\"
This is the strangest piece of correspondence I've received from a major corporation in 74 years on this planet:
Note the sender: Mr. or Ms. DoNotReply@BookSurge.com
Note the message: Changes Fee Due\”
No dollar amount. No request for payment. No way to reply or pay via e-mail or snail mail. No phone number to call.
I sent a caustic e-mail to John Rieck, who called and said this was an automatic reply—as if that were perfectly normal.
As an old-time direct marketer, I can say with certainty that this is emphatically NOT normal. It's weird—the work of amateurs—the same mentality that caused the dot-com crash a decade ago because they didn't know the basic rules of marketing or customer relations.
I began to have serious doubts about these turkeys.
Rieck told me I owed BookSurge an additional $75, and I gave him my American Express account number.
The Letter From Hell That Broke Every Rule in the Book
In the box at right is a scan of the letter I received from BookSurge on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009. “A letter should look and feel like a letter,” said the late guru Dick Benson. This didn't.
What arrived in the window envelope from BookSurge was a dense missive containing 525 words in 10-point sans serif type with justified right margins. It did an end around past my point person, John Rieck, that made it immediately clear to me that he didn't own his job. In the eyes of management—and now in my eyes—he was a nobody.
Further, the letter was undated and not signed by a person, but rather by “The BookSurge/CreateSpace Team.” The lede:
We have some exciting news to share — BookSurge is becoming CreateSpace. BookSurge and CreateSpace have historically operated as two distinct brands of one company — On-Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. — and are now uniting on the CreateSpace platform to offer you an expanded catalog of publishing tools and services. You will still be working with the same team and receive the same high level of service to which you've been accustomed with BookSurge.
Huh?
I've never heard of CreateSpace or the CreateSpace platform. What’s more, the second paragraph said exactly the same thing as the first:
During the coming months, we will be transitioning all BookSurge accounts to CreateSpace and retiring the BookSurge brand. In addition, BookSurge's self-publishing services are now available on the CreateSpace platform, enabling BookSurge and CreateSpace members to benefit from the same knowledgeable staff that has supported BookSurge authors for years.
“The prospect doesn’t give a damn about you, your company or your product,” said guru Bob Hacker. “All that matters is ‘What’s in it for me?’”
Among the other so-called benefits:
- Gather feedback on your work with the free Preview tool
- Network with thousands of other authors and industry professionals in our free online CreateSpace community
- Publish video and audio in multiple formats: DVDs, CDs, video downloads and MP3s
- We will be transitioning all BookSurge accounts to CreateSpace over the next few months. To make this transition as smooth and seamless as possible, we will be transferring your book files and account history over to CreateSpace for you. On the day your account is transitioned, we will send an e-mail to the e-mail address associated with your BookSurge account with instructions for completing the setup of your CreateSpace account.
- While we want you to start familiarizing yourself with CreateSpace, please do not set up a new CreateSpace account on your own, as we will create a CreateSpace account for you as part of this transition. Please wait until you receive notification from us via e-mail that your account has been transitioned to CreateSpace, at which time we'll give you instructions on how to access your account and your existing book titles and services.
I sent John Rieck a hot e-mail, which said, in part:
What you have sent me is a pathetic, confusing, gibberish-filled communication in mousetype obviously concocted by a bunch of ditsy twitterbugs that want to turn the great BookSurge brand into some kind of literary-video-music social networking creative site that is supposed to sound vaguely like FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr or whatever.
It is pure idiocy to trash a great brand without a very good reason.
The following day I sent Rieck an e-mail telling him that Amazon.com was in violation of our contract and that I wanted it canceled and expected a check for the full refund of all money paid.
Rieck called me Monday and said he received my e-mails over the weekend.
“Did you know the letter was being sent to me?” I asked.
“I knew it several weeks ago,” he said. “Actually, it was follow-up to an e-mail.”
“I never received that e-mail.”
“Well, maybe it didn’t get past your spam filter.”
I didn’t mention that no spam filter exists on my Yahoo account—that I want to see everything. I told him to just cancel the contract and send me a refund check.
He said OK.
In the immortal words of an old book salesman with whom I once worked: “God protect us from amateurs.”
55-Word Book Review
****Churchill by Paul Johnson. A wonderful short biography with a brilliant analysis of the 10 reasons why Winston Churchill was the man who saved Britain, Europe and very likely western civilization. It also captures Churchill’s rollicking wit, extraordinary command of language, ability to prioritize and an incredible constitution that enabled him to work 16-hour days for weeks on end. Viking Adult, 192pp, ISBN-13: 978-0670021055, $24.95, hardcover. —DH 11-17-09.
Takeaways to Consider
- “The prospect doesn’t give a damn about you, your company or your product. All that matters is ‘What’s in it for me?’”
—Bob Hacker - Since John Rieck was my BookSurge point person and knew about this huge business model change—that my book was about to be issued under an imprint that'd soon be deader than Kelsey’s nuts—it was his responsibility to contact me with the information.
- Because Rieck concealed this information from me—and allowed nameless voles somewhere in the bowels of BookSurge to announce that it was a fait accompli—I had no reason to trust him or Amazon.com ever again.
- I resented to my toes the familiar salutation, “Dear Denny,” by nameless voles I'd never met, and who failed to identify themselves.
- I once knew a guy who always answered his own phone. When the caller addressed him by his first name, his reply was, “Who’s calling?” If he identified the person as a stranger, my friend would say, “I didn’t realize we knew each other in school,” and hang up.
- Never send important, business-changing correspondence by e-mail—especially if it impinges on a contract or agreement. It's too easy to miss or inadvertently delete. Send it certified or registered mail.
- If others in the company go over your head and write letters to your customers, clients or donors, it's an insult to you and clear message to the recipients that you don't own your job.
- “A letter should look and feel like a letter.”
—Dick Benson - A letter should be easy on the eye, with generous margins. This thing had half-inch margins top-bottom-left-right and was a dense horror in 10-point sans serif type.
- “Serif type [in text] is easier to read than sans serif.”
—David Ogilvy - “In a letter, use a ragged-right margin.”
—Don Hauptman - Never send a letter without a signature. The signature doesn't have to be individually signed—it can be printed. But for the letter to be believable, it must contain the real signature of a real person.
- “Don’t overlook the color, size and vitality of your signature; it’s your handshake.”
—Malcolm Decker - For pity’s sake, pay a professional copywriter to create important correspondence. As mentioned before, the first two paragraphs of this sad-sack effort say the same thing. The word “transition” or “transitioning” appears nine times.
- In addition, this turgid, repetitive letter told me four times that the same knowledgeable staff that supported me as a BookSurge author would be doing likewise when I was transitioned to CreateSpace. By the time I reached the end of the letter, it was apparent that BookSurge is made up of second-raters you wouldn’t want to touch with a pair of tongs.
- Does your organization have “secret shoppers”? Those are folks who order merchandise, return it, correspond with customer service and report back what's going on. This system would have uncovered the nitwittery of the auto-reply effort from Mr. or Ms. DoNotReply.
- Never send a communication to which the recipient cannot reply. You’ll never know whether it was delivered or not.
- “God protect us from amateurs.”
—Henry Castor
Companies Mentioned:
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