Crap.

An update on the Amazon/BookSurge/POD publisher situation:

Monday, March 31, 2008, 5:10 PM: Angela Hoy tried to reach Bob Young at Lulu this morning. His secretary said he would call at 4:00 PM. She called Angela after 4:00, and said he wasn’t available, but agreed to put me through to Gale Jordan, Lulu’s Director of Public Relations. Gale Jordan said she would try to have the Vice President contact me. She called back a few minutes later to say he was not available (that he was on a plane). She then basically said they wouldn’t be able to give us a statement before our deadline. I asked if anyone could talk to me tomorrow morning. She said no, that they were all out of town at a remote location. I asked if they really couldn’t talk to me or if Lulu just didn’t want to comment. She said, “A little of both. We’re just not going to comment.”

Angela left a message on John Feldcamp’s (Xlibris) voicemail today. He has not returned her call.

Angela left a message on Kevin Weiss’s (AuthorHouse/iUniverse) assistant’s voicemail today. He has not yet returned her call.

An AuthorHouse author contacted Angela today and said he was told by his AuthorHouse representative that AuthorHouse was in “intensive negotations with Amazon.” I can’t, of course, confirm that is true, but the silence from these big three POD publishers speaks volumes.

Damn.

tags: Amazon extortion greed print-on-demand

March 31, 2008 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment

Et tu, Amazon?

EDIT: Looks like someone started an online petition. You can find it here. And no, you don’t have to donate money. Just close the tab/browser when you get to that point. Thanks, folks.

First of all, it looks like the site’s back up and responding a bit more quickly. That’s great and all, but I’m still not renewing with these guys.

Second of all, I just got back from the grocery store, logged on to my favorite news site Fark and found a nifty little gem. It’s an article by Angela Hoy, the publisher of WritersWeekly and Booklocker. It’s a bit lengthy, and I know internet attention spans are short these days (including my own) so I’ll cut it down to this:

Add 'Et tu, Amazon?' to Google Bookmarks

tags: Amazon print-on-demand publishing the Are You Fucking Kidding Me? department

March 29, 2008 | Filed Under Blog | 5 Comments

Vroom

Work continues on this new story, The Idea Salesman. I’m not sure if it’s going to be worth anything, or if it will ever see the light of day, but for now it’s a carrot in front of my face and I absolutely cannot stop.

My host is doing a server migration, starting around midnight tonight, so if the site is down, this is why. They say it could take up to 48 hours which is retarded. My service with them ends on the 22nd. I’ll have service with BlueHost before then. And all of you folks out there probably won’t even notice the changeover.

Unfortunately this means I won’t be able to do a damn thing to the site over the weekend, so for all two of you who actually wanted to read something in the stories section, you’ll just have to wait.

In the meantime I’m going to go type up what I wrote by hand today. With any luck, I’ll pick up speed and crank out the whole thing. Maybe I’ll type so fast my keyboard starts to melt, like this: