Is there a smokescreen being created by publishers as Amazon
threatens POD for out of print titles? A book should never go out of print!
Surely this is the publisher’s obligation to keep their back-list available and
a move to POD for titles which have ran their course with a publisher is a
simple and effective solution to keeping books in the hands of readers and
author’s fans. There was an argument which I saw recently that some publishers
are worried because the quality of POD is inferior. All the more reason for
publishers to source an excellent POD supplier and provide the quality they can
control. By the same token Amazon have no right to simply hi-jack titles and
print them POD but the onus is on the
publisher to ensure that authors can generate income from their back-list.
If any authors are struggling with this issue with their
publisher then it really needs to be confronted head-on with the publisher and
the author’s agent if he or she has one. Clauses must be added to contracts
which guarantee the availability of titles through POD once a print run has
been exhausted.
POD used to be a dirty word but I guarantee many readers
would not spot the difference between an excellent POD title and a print run
book. I can honestly say that many of our POD titles have actually been better
than the print runs supplied by one of the UK’s leading printers.
Amazon’s tactics here may be viewed as being wrong but what
they are exposing is a very real neglect of many author’s who simply fall off
the radar because the publisher is too busy pursuing the next 12 year old
literary genius or d-list celebrity memoir. Clearly Amazon cannot simply
produce a POD version without the consent of the publisher but this state of
affairs should not be allowed to happen in the first instance. Publisher’s look
after you author’s and ensure that while under contract their books are always
available. It’s that simple really.
