The American Society of Journalists and Authors, the nation's trade association for freelance nonfiction writers, announced that it

"is disgusted with Amazon's announced move requiring that all print-on-demand (POD) books sold on Amazon's site be printed by their own print-on-demand house, BookSurge.

As of April 1, Amazon is requiring small publishers to sign a contract agreeing to such demands and the contract being offered to print-on-demand publishers, which ASJA officers have seen, also includes a confidentiality clause forbidding disclosure of not just specific contract terms, as is typical, but any discussion at all. Thus, small publishers who have signed the contract may not say so, much less reveal the pressure they were under.

In addition, Amazon is punishing publishers who sell their books at a discount from cover price directly on their publisher's websites. It is taking that discounted price as the book's "cover price" and then applying their own discounts accordingly."

Read what ASJA President Russell Wild has to say about this after the jump.

"We applauded when Jeff Bezos and Amazon gave small publishers and even writers who self-published a way to get their books before the public," observed ASJA President Russell Wild. "With these grabby, strong-arm tactics, Amazon negates all that and the years of goodwill it has built up with writers, who ultimately will bear the brunt of any price increases in the printing of independently published books."

ASJA joins PMA, the independent book publishers association, which also has spoken out against Amazon's move to forcibly get business for its own BookSurge subsidiary. The writer's group also will urge the Washington state attorney general's office to investigate whether Amazon's move constitutes restraint of trade or otherwise violates anti-trust laws.

The Authors Guild is also getting in on the action by reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon's bold move. They and many others, think something else is afoot.

"Ingram Industries' Lightning Source is currently the dominant printer for on-demand titles, and they appear to be quite efficient at their task. They ship on-demand titles shortly after they are ordered through Amazon directly to the customer. What's the rub? Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the "long tail" of publishing - the enormous number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate, make a lot of money for the aggregator. Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount - or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books - to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply."

The real rub here is that Amazon does not offer Ingram distribution so authors who desire Ingram distribution will have to pay double setup fees, process two different sets of files, with different formatting specs for each.