Other LanguagesWashington Attorney General's Office Public Notice
Re: Inquiries Concerning Amazon.com’s “Print on Demand” Policy
April 23, 2008
The Washington Attorney General’s Antitrust Division has received many complaints regarding the new “print on demand” or “POD” policy recently implemented by Amazon.com. We want to thank all of those who have brought this matter to our attention and who have provided information and insight into the questions. We appreciate the concerns that have been expressed.
We have reviewed each of these complaints and we have contacted Amazon to explore the concerns that have been raised. Amazon responded to our inquiry by directing us to a publicly posted “Open Letter to Interested Parties” in which they describe their new policy.
Some of the complaints that we have received state that Amazon is refusing to sell books printed by Lightning Source or other POD publishers, and will only sell POD books printed by BookSurge. Amazon addresses this question as follows in its letter:
Do I need to switch completely to having my POD titles printed at Amazon?
No, there is no request for exclusivity. Any publisher can use Amazon's POD service just for those units that ship from Amazon and continue to use a different POD service provider for distribution through other channels.
Alternatively, you can use a different POD service provider for all your units. In that case, we ask that you pre-produce a small number of copies of each title (typically five copies), and send those to us in advance (Amazon Advantage Program-successfully used by thousands of big and small publishers). We will inventory those copies. That small cache of inventory allows us to provide the same rapid fulfillment capability to our customers that we would have if we were printing the titles ourselves on POD printing machines located inside our fulfillment centers. Unlike POD, this alternative is not completely "inventoryless." However, as a practical matter, five copies is a small enough quantity that it is economically close to an inventoryless model.
The complaints that we have received have come from across the country. It appears that the markets involved are national in scope. Thus, it may be more appropriate to refer this matter to one of the federal antitrust agencies for review.
For these reasons, and based on the information that has been provided to us, the Attorney General’s office does not plan further action on this matter. However, and as noted before, this is not a conclusive legal opinion and anyone who feels he/she has been harmed and wishes to pursue a remedy should consider consulting with private counsel.
If you have additional information or have evidence that what Amazon is representing is not true, please feel free to file a complaint form and submit it to the Antitrust Division.