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:
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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