There are no details on the deal both AuthorHouse and IUniverse have done with Amazon/Booksurge, but they are the first of the big hitters to jump from the good ship Ingram/Lightning Source. It remains to be seen exactly how these publishers will deal with the issue of Ingrams and distribution. The issue here is that Booksurge do not deal with Ingrams as a competitor of the Amazon group, and yet, Ingrams is the largest supplier of books in the United States.

Lulu have made no official statement, but staffer ‘Adam’ on their forum had assured ‘users’, (I thought they were customers – silly me) that there will be no ‘adverse’ affect on their authors book availability through Amazon’s site. The word ‘adverse’ already bothers me – it suggests something like, err, a not disagreeable amont of disruption and reduction in overall ‘user’ satisfaction. Jez,what does that sound like, one of those flat pact manuals you get written by a guy from Taiwan who couldn’t explain how to boil a friggin’ egg! So we definitely have three in. What about the rest?

Infinity do there stuff in-house and send the physical books on for Amazon to warehouse (clever boys and girls, them Infinities). So it will be interesting to see how Xlibris, Mill City Press, Virtual Bookworm et all react. Brent Sampson, CEO of Outskirts Press had made pretty adamant soundings on the web that his company won’t crumble to Amazon.

As an aside June Austin http://juneaustin.blogspot.com on her blog says she has been in contact with Jerry Simmons of http://www.nothingbinding.com and he is proposing that POD and Self publishers pull together and use his site as a online retail host for them.

Here is Angela Hoy’s second article on the issue this week on Writersweekly.

http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004610_04022008.html