AURIA CORTES

Open letter to interested parties:

We wanted to make sure those who are interested have an opportunity to understand what we’re changing with print on demand and why we’re doing so.

Is Amazon requiring that print-on-demand books be printed inside Amazon’s own fulfillment centers, and if so why?

Yes. Modern POD printing machines can print and bind a book in less than two hours. If the POD printing machines reside inside our own fulfillment centers, we can more quickly ship the POD book to customers — including in those cases where the POD book needs to be married together with another item. If a customer orders a POD item together with an item that we’re holding in inventory — a common case — we can quickly print and bind the POD item, pick the inventoried item, and ship the two together in one box, and we can do so quickly. If the POD item were to be printed at a third party, we’d have to wait for it to be transhipped to our fulfillment center before it could be married together with the inventoried item.

Speed of shipping is a key customer experience focus for us and it has been for many years. Amazon Prime is an example of a successful and growing program that is driving up our speed of shipment with customers. POD items printed inside our own fulfillment centers can make our Amazon Prime cutoff times. POD items printed outside cannot.

Simply put, we can provide a better, more timely customer experience if the POD titles are printed inside our own fulfillment centers. In addition, printing these titles in our own fulfillment centers saves transportation costs and transportation fuel.

Another question we’ve seen: 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.Might Amazon reconsider this new policy? Click here to read the rest of their open letter.

Click HERE for more industry news 

Turkey Lurkey posted a quiz I thought would be fun to post. here. It’s called What Type of Writer Should You Be? Below are my results: 

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you’re from. And while you may have some problems being “normal,” you’ll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it’s epic films, important novels, or vivid comics… Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

Here are my thoughts: Science fiction is a genre I stay away from. So it’s funny that is the genre I should be writing. Though I will admit that people do find me strange and often wonder what planet I’m from.

Below is the reading Miss. Michele’s provided for the month of March and my interpretation. 

March – March brings Auria with an important choice to make in her life. The lack of cups in the reading tells Miss Michele this is not related to love, but in the overall way Auria lives her life and makes her income. Her very political, moral and sociological beliefs may be called into question, and she will have to either defend or deny everything she has stood for in her life.

Auria’s Interpretation – There wasn’t an important choice I had to make in my life or career. My political, moral, and sociological beliefs are always put into question. That’s what happens when one engages in such discussions. That said, this month wasn’t any different than any other in this regard. But the last line about defending or denying everything I stood for in my life is well…wrong.

Here’s the lowdown: According to WritersWeekly, Amazon’s has a new policy for writers who print their books through a POD…unless they use BookSurge, an Amazon owned POD company, their books will not be sold through Amazon. The buy button will be turned off on Amazon.com

The article goes on to say the following: “Mr. Clifford [of Amazon/Booksurge] said authors of those books [POD] could participate in the Amazon.com Advantage Program, meaning they would have to pay Amazon $29.95 per year PLUS 55% of the list price of their book, as well as buy and then send those books to Amazon directly for them to warehouse and ship to customers. In addition, their “eventual desire is to have no books from other POD publishers available on Amazon.com.”This decision will directly affect POD writers, including those who printed their books with iUniverse and Lulu.com.  

So if POD is an option you are considering, click here to learn more about how Amazon’s decision will affect your book sales. 

Appetizer
What does the color dark green make you think of?
Leafy greens that are full of vitamins.

Soup
How many cousins do you have?
Boy, first cousins close to two hundred. Hey, we’re Puerto Rican. My mom is one of fourteen and my father is one of twenty-two, I believe.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you?
9.5

Main Course
Name something that is truly free.
Nothing is free. Whether it be cash, time, resources, or emotional or physical collateral everything has a price. Maybe I’m just cynical?

Dessert
Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence.
I’d like to have a fiction book deal by next Spring.