Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Am I Missing Something????

Dear Lulu Author,
Congratulations, your book has been selected for listing on Amazon.com's Marketplace! As a result, your book will now be easily found on the world's largest online bookseller.
There will be some differences between your listing on Lulu and your listing on Amazon. Amazon charges a fee to list your book, and in order to cover that cost your book will be listed with a 30% markup; however your royalty will remain the same, and your book's price on Lulu will not change. Furthermore, your book sales on Amazon will reflect in your Lulu account immediately. Lulu is committed to helping you increase your book's sales and we hope you enjoy the benefits of listing your book on Amazon.com.
Kind regards, Lulu
You are free to opt out of the program if you are not interested in the benefits associated with having your book listed on Amazon. To do so, please reply to this email with the Project ID of the book you wish removed.
Copyright © 2002-2009 Lulu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
--
OK, now I am no genius when it comes to business decisions, but I am not mentally challenged either ... so, am I missing something here in this announcement from Lulu.com? Why would anyone in their right mind pay a 30% markup to buy a book from Amazon Marketplace when they can buy it cheaper from Amazon directly???? Were they eating hash-brownies at the executive brainstorming session? Lulu, if there is more to this rather lackluster marketing strategy, I wish you would enlighten us, and more importantly, enlighten your client base. Those who have paid for full distribution are not going to profit from this random marketing tactic. If it's for clients who haven't paid for distribution and just want to be listed on amazon, then why have you selected books already in distribution? I am sorry, help us out here with the logic. Thanks to Shannon over at LLBR for giving us the heads up. I am sure he will posting something about this as well.
-- c.anne.gardner

See Also: (added by veinglory)
Lulu forum thread

4 comments:

veinglory said...

When it comes to informing authors as to what they are thinking with plans like this Lulu is made of WTF....

Cheryl Anne Gardner said...

Oh good lord. Went over and walked the forum thread. I love the private projects finding their way onto Amazon. Nicely done, very effective, Lulu.

Every day, the reasons why I left Lulu become glaringly obvious.

LLBookReview said...

I'd almost place bets that eventually Lulu will attempt to charge authors for this Marketplace "service." Because now basically they can get your book on Amazon without you having to purchase an ISBN.

In the end, it's more profit for Lulu with the absurd mark-up and because you know these Marketplace sales are going around Booksurge. So, they aren't having to pay those printing fees.

For authors who don't know this business, it's going to look like a good deal which is exactly what Lulu is expecting.

-Shannon

Anonymous said...

I do like the idea. The implementation leaves something to be desired.

But hey, at the end of the day, I have an Amazon.com sales rank. That's not too shabby! I just wish it had been done as an opt-in program, not automatically.