In the online world, Amazon is to retail book sales as Google is to search. Sure, Barnes and Nobles has a significant “off line” presence… but when it comes to selling books online… no one does it better than Amazon. While Google is the 900 lb gorrilla of search, Amazon is truly the 900 lb gorrilla when it comes to online book sales.
Several years ago, Amazon quietly bought a small POD publisher called Booksurge. Recently, Amazon has decided to throw their massive weight behind this acquistion. The WSJ reports:
Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon’s Web site.
The move signals that Amazon is intent on using its position as the premier online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of book selling and manufacturing. Amazon is one of the biggest booksellers in the U.S., with a market share publishing experts estimate to be about 15%.
While Amazon appears to be doing all it can to keep this “off the record”…. they have been “caught” using the tried and true method exploiting FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) to boost their POD sales. Despite the fact that the “threats” have been made over the phone, small POD publishers are standing up and crying “Foul!” As a result, the blogosphere is responding in force.
I posted a list less than 24 hours ago that contained the first 62 responses to this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog in the post Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers. In 24 hours, that list has increased 100%. Here’s a link to the new list on Easy Author Web Sites.
Now, as an FYI for my readers of this blog…. the reason I’m not posting the 105 blogs reporting on this story is because most of the “uproar” over this situation is happening in the author/publisher arena. (I also didn’t “trackback” the link above so this post won’t appear in the comments section there.)
That’s one of thing most blogger’s don’t understand about link building. Google wants to see your site “referenced” by other SIMILAR sites. Since the main “topic” of this blog is marketing (thus the domain name… EZ Marketing Tool)… incoming links from other marketing blogs and web sites will “help” this blog. However, incoming links from author and publishing blogs might actually hurt… seeing as though this blog is relatively “young” and hasn’t established its “character” with the search engines.
Now, I did post this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog and my Virtual Impax blogs as a way to take the message outside the author arena. However, incoming links from author and publisher web sites will give little if any boost to those blog’s Page Rank. The link storm makes for a nice Monday morning greeting in the “incoming links” message delivered by Wordpress… but in the long run, in the search engine’s eyes… the incoming links to that post will have little affect on either blog’s stature.
Jumping on the bandwagon against acts of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) committed by corporate giants every now and again is GREAT exercise for your blog. It builds incoming links and helps to establish relationships with other bloggers. By taking a little time and compiling a comprehensive list which other bloggers can easily copy and paste into their own blogs, I’ve taken a major step towards establishing the credibility of a blog that is less than 6 weeks old. Admittedly, it took an investment of time to compile the list but so far, the results have been WELL worth that investment.
Oh, I should also point out that I don’t expect to “net” a single product sale from the visitors who come to the blog via this “activism” post. Those people already HAVE blogs which they are using. Definitely not my audience. This is solely a “link building” exercise which is necessary to develop respect from the search engines. These incoming links will help in the long run… as my blog matures and gains a Page Rank.
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