Change is Hard

There is a lot of talk on the blogosphere about Amazon.com's new policy regarding books that are print-on-demand (POD.) Basically if I'm understanding it correctly, if a book is a POD than Amazon wants those writers/publishers to use Amazon's POD service rather than printing it themselves, sending it to Amazon and having Amazon send it out to the customers. If a publisher does not want to use this service then they request that five copies of the book be provided to Amazon ahead of time so that they can still provide timely shipping of their books. The publisher can do their own POD of books not sold through Amazon.

So if I'm understanding this, in the name of customer service Amazon is basically driving companies like iuniverse and and others that made the self-publish business viable into the ground while growing their own self publishing interest Book Surge.

Everyone seems to have been complaining about every move that Amazon has made since the beginning of Amazon time, but... as each change comes along, it seems like we finally adapt and adjust to it. Is this just another blip?

OR is this actually a first step in moving everyone towards e-books? If all small publishers become dependent on Amazon, will Amazon one day be able to say... no more paper books for you self-publish folks.... Everything has to be electronic! And once everything is electronic how will libraries work? Will the whole idea of a public library be eliminated because there are no 'solid' books for people to borrow and read?

There's no question about it, the book business is under massive change and it's hard to predict where we will be in ten or twenty years.