Survival!?!

In the beginning…it was a relationship of mutualism. Publishers and authors needed outlets, Amazon needed product to fill it shelves and differentiate itself from the other book stores beginning to set up virtual shops. And it worked well. Red “Buy Now” buttons proliferated the internet. And with each red button, a subliminal message was being sent to the buying population. Golly gee, if that button was found on everything from John Grisham’s latest bestseller to that very esoteric tome on Patagonian economics, it was obviously the trusted place to go.

And Amazon made it easy for the loneliest of authors, the smallest of publishers to come aboard. A few clicks that even technophobes could handle and, boom, there you were on an equal par with a Stephen King or Random House. All those little blood red buttons fed Audrey Amazon very well and it grew and it grew until the day came when mutualism morphed into parasitism.

Amazon has no reason to care who they are going to bleed dry; who’s going to disappear from their shelves. They are playing a numbers game. They are betting there will always be someone who can’t wait to get their words into print, hang the cost. You see, they are in business. Unfortunately, the way they are currently doing business is directly affecting other businesses, like yours.

But what is happening to the POD world is something that happens daily in the world of people who make cars, washing machines, dresses, flea collars. Everyday businesses wake up to find a key supplier has just filed bankruptcy and shut their doors; war has broken out in the only country in the world able to supply their raw materials; several of their key people have run off and set up an identical shop…across the street.

That's why the same laws applying to survival of the specie also apply to business…adapt, mutate, or die. And now that the POD world has squawked and squalled, it’s time to hunker down and choose which of the three survival routes we are going to take in our own businesses.

Among numbers we’ve heard bandied around the publishing world is that 70% of all books published annually will sell less than 100 copies. So out of the approximately 200,000 books published, 140,000 will never be owned by anyone other the author’s family and friends. (This is not just POD books, large publishing houses birth their share of stillborns.) So obviously having a red button alone is not the ticket to fame and fortune.

The red button is just a tool and Amazon (B&N, Borders, Powell’s) is just a pipeline. It takes much more to prime the pump and get sales trickling steadily. And that’s the part POD publishers and authors have to take ownership of. We can adapt our numbers to hopefully feed Amazon and have something left over to survive on ourselves; we can mutate our business so it is no longer reliant on any one button; or we can hold a funeral for our hopes and dreams. The choice is ours…not Amazon’s.