It's about time somebody stood up to Amazon on this issue--their attempt to strong-arm publishers into using Amazon's captive print service are outrageous. And I'm not surprised it was Booklocker. They're one of the few POD services that seems more interested in supporting their authors than in filling their own pockets. I've dealt with Angela Hoy before, and she's a straight shooter who tells it like it is. I hope Amazon backs down... before they are shot down by the courts.

This is quite recognizable from Amazon's behaviour in a different context: Kindle. Lock the book to the device, and lock both to the purchase method. Got to be resisted.

Worked for Apple.

Amazon Advantage IS onerous. The terms are a rip-off, whichever way you swing it. If I could find a POD service that served Europe, I'll be happy to switch to them instead of this ludicrous bunch.

Even better, they can handle the case where they don't actually hold the stock - Amazon only holds stock of the most popular items, if you order something that only sells a few copies a month, then it actually comes from someone like THE (now owned by Woolworths).

@Amazon:

"Hoy points out that her POD publisher can drop-ship Amazon-purchased items directly to buyers. But Amazon argues there are cases where books must travel through fulfillment centers first:

"If a customer orders a POD item together with an item that we're holding in inventory - a common case - we can quickly print and bind the POD item, pick the inventoried item, and ship the two together in one box, and we can do so quickly. If the POD item were to be printed at a third party, we'd have to wait for it to be transhipped to our fulfillment center before it could be married together with the inventoried item."

Amazon's claimed justification (in my experience) is nonsense because Amazon routinely multiple-ships and never waits for items to be bundled together. It eats the extra shipping cost because it can be paid quicker for those items that are shipped.