Amazon Buys Booksurge: Been Here Before

The news from Tenebris is that Amazon.com is buying print on demand company Booksurge. It also sounds like more corporate behemouths are sniffing around the POD marketplace.

The thing is none of this is new: iPublish, iUniverse, XLibris are all left over from the last Internet bubble. In fact Amazon rival, Barnes and Noble once had a tab for one of these POD publishers right on their site.


The problem I see is that most of these old guard POD publishers are really just a new twist on vanity publishing. While that may be a successful business model for the publisher, I do not think it is very good for the authors. Newer outfits like Lulu.com and Cafe Press, which work on more of a commission model seem like a better choice for authors. Because these companies do not take the author's money up front they have a greater stake in promoting their catalog and in seeing that their authors have a chance to succeed.