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Three months ago, I wrote a blog post detailing the contract battle between Amazon and IPG, book distributor for Medallion Press, publisher of my thriller, FINAL VECTOR. In that post I detailed the reasons why I found Medallion's support of IPG unacceptable. You can read the entire post here, if you're interested.
In the intervening three months, I asked for and received a reversion of rights letter from Medallion for FINAL VECTOR, leaving me free to pursue another publisher for the book or even, as was my intention, to publish the book myself.
I was just about at the point where I was ready to re-release FINAL VECTOR - I mean, literally, a week or so away - when I discovered IPG and Amazon have reached agreement on a new contract. This means Medallion's electronic titles (of which FINAL VECTOR was one) will once again be available for purchase at Amazon.
As I stated in my post back in February, the inability for readers to purchase my book at the world's largest ebook retailer was the reason why I wanted my rights to FINAL VECTOR back. Now that it will once again be available in that venue, I have withdrawn my request for a reversion of rights and plan to leave the book with Medallion Press.
Why would I do that? Why voluntarily stay with a publisher when I could release the book on my own and get a bigger cut of the royalties?
Here's why: Medallion Press showed faith in one of my novels when, to that point, no one else had. They believed in an unknown writer enough to offer me an advance and a path to publication at a time when self-publishing was still considered basically career suicide for a novelist.
I wanted all along to justify the faith they showed in me by earning out that advance through sales and then by making both of us - gasp! - money. I was well on my way to doing so when the rug was pulled out from under both myself and Medallion Press thanks to a contract dispute they had nothing to do with.
Am I crazy? Maybe. I have in my possession a letter enabling me to make more money from, and have more control over, a book that I wrote, and I am going to completely disregard that letter. If that makes me crazy, then so be it.
But some things are more valuable than the almighty dollar. Not many, I freely admit, but there are some. One of those is integrity. I like to think I have some. And I want to show Helen Rosburg and everyone at Medallion Press that they knew what they were doing when they signed me.
This is not to say I won't ever request my rights to FINAL VECTOR back from Medallion, but if I did it before earning out that advance I would always feel like I had walked away from a job before it was finished. My folks raised me better than that.
P.S. - Now that the book is available again, it is priced exactly where I was planning on pricing it - a very reasonable $3.99. If you've read and enjoyed my Amazon bestseller THE LONELY MILE, I think you might like to give this one a try as well...
A little over a year ago - February 10, 2011, to be exact - Medallion Press released my thriller, FINAL VECTOR, in ebook form. Sales were sluggish for most of that year, until finally beginning to hit their stride in early February of this year.
Following the phenomenal success of my next thriller, THE LONELY MILE, FINAL VECTOR began to develop a following, spending most of the first three weeks of this month hovering between #75 and #100 in Amazon's Political Thriller category. Sales, while not earth-shattering, were steady and increasing.
On February 19, I made the disturbing discovery that FINAL VECTOR was no longer available for sale at Amazon. Not wanting to overreact, and assuming there was some sort of computer glitch going on, I did nothing. The book remained unavailable the next day, and by the 21st, when it was STILL not available at Amazon, I informed a representative of my publisher, assuming the situation would be rectified.
It wasn't, and I have no idea when it will be, if ever.
Medallion Press uses IPG as their distributor, and when negotiations over the terms of a new contract between IPG and Amazon fell through, Amazon made the decision to pull all IPG ebook titles from their digital marketplace. According to IPG President Mark Suchomel, "Amazon.com is putting pressure on publishers and distributors to change their terms for electronic and print books to be more favorable toward Amazon...I have spoken directly with many of our clients and every one of them agrees that we need to hold firm with the terms we now offer."
I'm being advised by Medallion Press that they support IPG's decision and am being asked to support Medallion in the interest of fairness and balance. Here is my take: Not being privy to the details of the negotiation between IPG and Amazon, it would be presumptuous of me to support either side.
I am being asked to take on faith that Amazon's contract demands are unfair to IPG, and perhaps they are. But without seeing those demands I cannot know. Here is what I do know, though. Amazon is the largest ebook retailer in the world and they are growing, and any distribution agreement for one of my books that does not include Amazon is unacceptable to me. Period.
Amazon is perceived as the big, bad bully on the block, and if IPG, or anyone else, wishes to make a stand against them on principle, that is their right. More power to them. But their principled stand is affecting plenty of other people who may or may not wish to be affected.
I'm not here to shill for Amazon. I don't know whether they're trying to bully IPG or not. But the nature of negotiation is that the side with the power gets to dictate the terms of the agreement. The more the power rests with one side, the more that side can set the terms. It's the way of the world.
And here's the thing. Amazon is the eight hundred pound gorilla in the ebook world because they are not afraid to try new things, to innovate. My thriller, THE LONELY MILE, has become successful largely due to promotional processes Amazon has developed and used to promulgate their success.
Anyone who does not like the way Amazon does business is free to shop elsewhere, and, in fact, should do exactly that. But my goal as an author is to entertain readers, and being asked to do so without having the opportunity to entertain the millions of readers who routinely shop at Amazon does not work for me.
FINAL VECTOR is still available at other outlets, such as Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million and others, and of course Kindle Fire users can download apps allowing them to purchase the book elsewhere and still read it on their Kindle. But all of that is beside the point, which is this: IPG's job is to distribute my book to where the readers are. If they are unable or unwilling to do that, they should step aside for a distributor who will.
