Amazon news

For you, who Amazon is your life blood, several timely pieces. Only registered Amazon 3rd party sellers are able to read the portions related to the discussion boards.

The Creating Book Detail Pages
beta feature available to Pro Merchants only, or in plain language: a new version of Amazon.com’s Bookloader.

Amazon also recently introduced "Fulfillment by Amazon" – a new service for sellers in limited beta testing.

"...instead of shipping orders to customers yourself, soon you will be able to ship your new and used products to Amazon, and we’ll handle the order fulfillment and post-order customer service. We'll store your inventory, and as orders are placed, we'll ship your products to your customers. We will even manage post-order customer service and manage customer returns on your behalf.

Amazon customers have been asking for years to be able to order from you – our third-party selling partners – and still use Amazon’s popular shipping offers, including Free Super Saver Shipping and our Amazon Prime program, as well as also choosing Gift Wrap for their purchases. With fulfillment by Amazon, customers will have access to all of these services..."

Amazon.com starts program to print books on demand:
"Amazon.com is helping publishers cut costs by eliminating the need for inventory. The Internet retailer acquired BookSurge in April 2005 to enter the print-on-demand book business. BookSurge has more than 10,000 titles, many of them out of print. Amazon.com is investing in companies to boost profit, which has fallen for five straight quarters."

The print-on-demand aspect puts an interesting light on the ability of sellers to create book listings for out-of-print titles and Amazon's new "Fulfillment by Amazon" program. Is there any guarantee once a bookseller's out-of-print book is in Amazon's greedy hands that the corporate giant won't be copying your book for future print-on-demand business? Of course, Amazon didn't previously list oop books in its catalog- until booksellers were allowed to creat a listing for those books. Now Amazon will be printing oop books and others- will they be creating listings for those titles or are unsuspecting booksellers in trying to sell books helping Amazon to further cut sales for the 3Ps? The thought for the day?

Last Sunday, Kevin Kelly had an article in the New York Times on the future of books- and all written works- being available as a free, digitally formatted library. Since the NYT wants your money to read the archived article, I am linking to a digitization consultant's blog, which only seems appropriate due to the subject of the article. I find it slightly ironic that the NYT is charging to read its archives when Kelly's article speaks of the digital library and the digitized works as something to "be published and swapped in the public commons..." It appears the NYT isn't philosophically there yet.