Yesterday, I posted about an email blast I got from Lulu saying my book had been picked to be part of the Amazon Marketplace program. Today, I have more information to add to that for the authors who are in the dark just as much as I am over the information presented in this Lulu email, or lack thereof.
Today I came across a blog post from author Sarah R. Suleski, who also received the zombie-like email saying her book had been picked to be in the Amazon Marketplace program as well. The title of her post is “Alisiyad on Amazon,” followed by the words “Sort of.” I clicked on these words only to be redirected to the Amazon listing of her book.
I immediatly noticed that Sarah’s book has no ISBN, and has instead been assigned an ASIN number. This stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number. Also, there was only one copy available for purchase, and you guessed it! It’s from the third party seller, LuluPress. It’s listed for $20.75 before shipping. With no ISBN, I decided to check out Sarah’s book on Lulu.com. On Lulu, it indeed has no ISBN and it retails for $15.96. The LuluPress copy on Amazon does reflect a 30% mark-up just as their email said it would.
PodPeep posted about this today and thanks to Emily Veinglory, I was led to a Lulu.com Forum where this issue is currently being discussed. Here is some information from the forum which actually provides more details than their email blast did…
Here are the details of this initiative as it stands. Keep in mind we’ll be tweaking this until it makes financial sense for the author and for Lulu. It’s a work in progress:
1. It’s free to join (or… stay, in this case!)
2. You can opt-out at any time by sending your Project ID to amazon-opt-out@lulu.com
3. If your books sell though the LuluPress Amazon Marketplace channel, you’ll be paid your “print” or “lulu” royalty (if you’ve got distribution, that’s the higher of the two royalties) and your sales will show up in your account the following day. They won’t be labeled anything different; it’ll just look like a lulu marketplace sale.
4. You’ll be paid according to your remission settings.
Pricing on Amazon Marketplace:
1. if you’ve bought the 1-year eBay/Amazon listing service, your price will be the same as your Lulu price. (please be patient if it’s not, we’ll be updating all of them in the next few days, and will continue to update them frequently for the highest accuracy possible)
2. if your book doesn’t have distribution on Lulu (PBY/PBL), your retail price on Amazon will be marked up 30% to cover the cost of selling/listing on Amazon marketplace.
3. if your book has distribution, the list price on Amazon Marketplace will be 5% LESS than your retail price on Lulu and the other retail channels to which distribution has given you access.
We are getting some complaints about private access books being made available for sale on Amazon Marketplace, and we’ll be removing them today or tomorrow. Pleases send the CIDs of any books that need to be removed at amazon-opt-out@lulu.com. We’ve gotten a few orders for private books and we’ve just been refunding the amazon customers. Our ordering system actually prevents Private books from printing, so your confidential/private projects are safe whether the Amazon listing is live or not. We sincerely apologize for the mistake!!
If this was a “work in progress,” then I don’t think Lulu should have rolled out an email notification in the manner they did. That manner being that the email didn’t even tell me which of my books had been chosen to be in the program, and it also gave no specifics as to what the program is about. I guess Lulu assumes every author out there should already know.
Many people are probably asking how can Lulu list books on Amazon without an ISBN. That’s easy! They’ve joined the many on Amazon who are operating what’s called a Z-Store. For a monthly fee, businesses can upload their entire unique inventory to Amazon, everything from clothes and gift baskets to books and movies. You can assign each product your own SKU (stock keeping unit) but it will also be assigned an ASIN. If it is a book that has an ISBN, the ASIN is the same. Amazon loads your products to their site, they email you when someone buys it, they charge the customer’s credit card, you pack and ship the product, and Amazon pays you a lump sum from all sales (minus their15% commission) at the end of the month.
Advantages for Lulu:
- They stand to make a few extra bucks from the mark-ups if they can keep their shipping expenses low.
- Double exposure for books with no ISBN. They’re now selling in two places!
- Added perk they can add to their products and services! “No ISBN needed to sell your book on Amazon!”
- Marketplace orders are fulfilled from the seller, which means Lulu isn’t forced to use Booksurge to fulfill these orders. No printing and set-up fees from Booksurge!
Now the Disadvantages:
- Obviously from the forum and from the lackluster email, Lulu didn’t do their homework and rolled this out too quickly and with too many kinks.
- They had books up on Amazon before the email went out!
- Private projects were accidentally listed on Amazon, although Lulu states they took them down and refunded buyers.
- Authors are still getting paid the same royalty even though Lulu is making more.
- If the Marketplace turns out to be a good investment, Lulu will probably charge new authors a fee for it in the future.
Now, how can you as a Lulu author (or any self-published author for that matter) take advantage of the Amazon Marketplace and use it to your own full potential? I know I said this in the post yesterday, but here it is again…
- Use your author or bulk discount and invest in copies of your book.
- List the books for sale on Amazon in the Marketplace feature by clicking on the Sell Yours Here button on your book’s page. It’s free to list single copies. You do NOT have to open a Z-Store.
- Beat the list price of your book! The lower the price you can afford, the closer your book will appear at the top of the Marketplace listings.
- In the product description, state that the seller is getting a “Signed, 1st Edition” of your book!
- Sign the books and include a bookmark or other “freebie.” Also include a thank you note with your author website/blog address.
- Email the buyer a tracking number for their purchase. Include a blurb about your other books, your author blog, or an invitation to sign up for your newsletter. Make the buyer feel special and let them know they are getting the book right from the author!
By the way, for those Lulu authors with no ISBN, but Lulu is selling your book on Amazon with an ASIN, you too can list stock for sale right on that page and beat that LuluPress price! Don’t believe me? Check out Sarah’s Amazon listing again and you’ll see the Sell Yours Here button on the right hand side. Click on that button and you’ll be redirected to the page where you enter your price and description. It literally takes only 60 seconds and there are no upfront fees to pay.
Shannon,
Thank you for the excellent feedback. As you say, we should have done a better job communicating this to our users. I can’t stress enough that we are hearing this from a lot of our customers, and while we can apologize the more important fact is that we will do better. We will be doing a better job of communicating this moving forward, and we will be taking everyone’s feedback into consideration. We want this program to succeed, because first and foremost we want to make our authors more successful. That’s why we launched the Amazon Marketplace initiative – we want to make it as easy as possible for our authors to get listed on Amazon and sell more copies of their books.
We truly appreciate your feedback on the program, and if you have any more suggestions or ideas, please let us know.
Thanks,
Nick
One problem I found with this is that Amazon does not let you register as the author of your book and update the product page if you do not have an ISBN. Entering the ASIN is not accepted. So my page has only the book cover and price, with no other information at all. Many, many Lulu authors are up in arms over this move as for many of them there are differing legal ramifications which will cost them time and money to sort out. Also, like myself, many books were intended only for the Lulu Marketplace. Lulu say they chose the 100,000 top sellers, which is baloney as some authors have sold 0 of their particular book. Interesting, too, that Lulu chose the most expensive version of my book. Check out http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=111595
Linda-
You are absolutely correct. Since the ISBN-less product is part of LuluPress’s personal Z-Store, you would not be able to make changes or add anything to the listing, like the product description, etc that you see on any book’s page that has an ISBN.
Use your frustration and that Amazon listing to your advantage! Invest in stock of your book and list it for sell there, and beat the LuluPress price if you can afford to.
Best of luck,
Shannon
LLBR
I probably did something wrong, but when I listed my book there with “Sell Yours Now” button, Amazon indicates that they will be taking a 30% commission if it sells. I’ll still make more than just selling it through Amazon myself but I wasn’t planning on that when I priced it.
Interesting article, I wondered about that email I received from Lulu but didn’t think about trying to use it to my advantage. Thanks Shannon!
Dan
Fascinating post. Thanks for sharing all your research.
–cynthia
I got this email from Lulu this morning – what does it all mean?
“Your publication, Viticulture – An introduction to commercial grape growing for wine production, was listed on Amazon as part of Lulu’s Amazon marketplace pilot. We’ve been reading the forum posts and emails and have learned a great deal since we launched the pilot. The majority of our authors have responded positively and many are already seeing an increase in their book sales.
Based on your feedback and after reading the policies of several marketplaces, we’ve decided to match your titles listing price on Lulu with the listing price on Amazon by removing the 30% markup.
We want to stress that this is a pilot – moving forward, we will work closely with Amazon and other marketplaces, as well as solicit your advice to decide on the most effective manner of offering this service to you. We are evaluating many options, including how to best allow our authors to opt in and how to include a mark-up to cover the retail fee. Once we have the service fully defined, we will choose an end date for the pilot and communicate in advance how you can decide whether to continue to list your title on Amazon or not.
Our long term goal is to help our authors succeed, which in this case means giving you the option to seamlessly distribute your books to as many marketplaces as possible. We may not always get it right the first time, but we are committed to providing you with the tools you need to generate more sales for your titles.
Thank you for participating in this pilot program. If you would like your book removed from Amazon’s marketplace, please email us at
amazon-opt-out@lulu.com. If you have already asked us to de-list your title, please ignore this message – we apologize for the inconvenience and are removing your title as quickly as possible.
Kind regards,
Lulu”
Hi Stephen-
It means Lulu has gotten enough flack from their authors about the 30% mark-up that Lulu is removing it for now and “re-evaluating” how they can best make money at this. But in usual Lulu fashion, they’ve chosen to say that in as many words as possible to confuse authors and to sound like it’s a good thing. In reality, it is a good thing, but still not a decent approach as the mark-up is something they should have thought about from the beginning or polled authors for an opinion.
Regards,
Shannon
LLBR
Yes – they have removed the 30% price increase. And shipping from Amazon is only $4 instead of Lulu’s stupid $6. This is awesome – my 472 page trade paperback is selling for $15.99, which is within spitting distance of retail prices. On Amazon – decent shipping – and total out-of-pocket expense to me is $0.
Now if only Amazon would get on the stick and let me register as the author with my AISN, everything would be grand!