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News & ArtsFriday, October 29, 2010
Books Amazon.com Subsidiary Will Not Let Self-Publishers Write About Amazon.com
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 3:23 PM
This is really kind of strange:
On Tuesday, writer Michael N. Marcus submitted the manuscript of his latest book, The Brainy Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing, to the CreateSpace print-on-demand service for printing. As one might expect, Amazon came in for some mentions—indeed, given the effect they’ve had on the self-publishing landscape, it would be surprising to see any treatise on self-publishing in the present-day that didn’t mention them. Marcus said that the mentions were “approximately 99% positive.”CreateSpace sent him the following response:
"The interior file submitted for this title contains text referencing Amazon.com. Please remove all text and/or logos which reference Amazon.com."
This is made all the weirder by the fact that CreateSpace is an Amazon subsidiary.
Marcus went to another self-publisher instead. The response does sound to me like an automated reply of some kind. This is the kind of instance where it would be great if Amazon.com's publicity team answered my phone calls—I left a long message with the Media Relations Hotline, which I suspect is an answering machine in a dank, empty warehouse—but I bet that's not going to happen anytime soon.
2
how do you know the issue was criticism?
it looks like an automated response.
maybe it's just to avoid some sort of conflict of interests or keeping authors at arms length (so as not to let an author say 'this is an amazon book' or something).
it looks like an automated response.
maybe it's just to avoid some sort of conflict of interests or keeping authors at arms length (so as not to let an author say 'this is an amazon book' or something).
4
Uh oh, someone got a form letter from an entry level customer service person! Better blog about it!
Hey Paul, have you even thought about interviewing some local authors or publisher people about the publishing industry in the time between your last dumb fucking blog post?
Hey Paul, have you even thought about interviewing some local authors or publisher people about the publishing industry in the time between your last dumb fucking blog post?
9
@ will
Talking about the general siding with big publishers and printing pretty much any industry press release he can get his hands on, as well as snippy, meaningless shit like this. By all means, bash Amazon, but bash them for real shit, i.e. their anti-union stance, their overworking employees, that kind of thing.
What I get from Paul's posts, though, and well, yours, is just petty sniping Amazon, rooted in preference for some kitchy series of toys from a competing company, and some odd instinct to side with major publishers at all times. Which is incredibly frustrating, because major publishers are the fucking devil.
Talking about the general siding with big publishers and printing pretty much any industry press release he can get his hands on, as well as snippy, meaningless shit like this. By all means, bash Amazon, but bash them for real shit, i.e. their anti-union stance, their overworking employees, that kind of thing.
What I get from Paul's posts, though, and well, yours, is just petty sniping Amazon, rooted in preference for some kitchy series of toys from a competing company, and some odd instinct to side with major publishers at all times. Which is incredibly frustrating, because major publishers are the fucking devil.
10
This is almost certainly because CreateSpace is in California. While they are a subsidiary, Amazon is very careful to maintain a clear separation between Amazon and CreateSpace to avoid the requirement to collect sales tax on items sold in California. For the same reason, there are very strict guidelines on where Amazon's logo can appear on the CreateSpace website and what verbiage they use to describe the relationship to Amazon, CreateSpace employees are not allowed to have @amazon.com email addresses if they work out of California, etc. It sounds shady and lawyer-y but its pretty standard for situations like this. I don't know why this merited a mention on the Stranger.
11
Actually, I see Amazon media relations quoted all over the place. Apparently they do reply to real journalists and legitimate, knowledgeable bloggers who don't have an ax to grind.
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