Update on the lawsuit of BookLocker against Amazon and its green aspect

More and more news from the book world are coming these days from court rooms. Now it's an antitrust lawsuit that was brought against Amazon.com by Booklocker, an independent POD publisher.

Mainebiz reported that the lawsuit entered a new chapter after a federal judge denied Amazon's request to have the suit thrown out.

This case caught our attention as it's basically about the freedom of authors and publishers that use Amazon's marketplace services to choose their printer, which not only has important legal and financial consequences on the POD industry, but also environmental ones.

BookLocker is a small print on demand (POD) publishing company that is selling Amazon to sell books. The process is very simple: when a customer is ordering one of their books on Amazon, the company sends the order to a printing company contracted by BookLocker. The printer would then ship the book directly to the customer using an Amazon label.

So far, so good and this is a common practice used by many POD publishers. Now, here's the catch: as Mainebiz reports, in early 2008, Amazon began telling companies like BookLocker that it would only directly sell print-on-demand books printed by a specific printer, which happens to be a subsidiary of Amazon called BookSurge.

BookLocker claims in court this is an unfair business practice that amount to a violation of federal antitrust laws. By forcing publishers to use a specific printer, the lawsuit alleges Amazon is preventing access to the benefits of a free market. In addition, the quality and price that Amazon's subsidiary, BookSurge, offers is not on par with what BookLocker currently can find in the marketplace. "BookSurge charges higher fees than [BookLocker currently] pays for printing, and BookSurge prints books of lower quality than [BookLocker's] printer and other printers," the complaint says.

Amazon filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, denying BookLocker's claim of product tying, but about a month ago, Chief U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock Jr. denied Amazon's motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit. Judge Woodcock said there was enough evidence in the case "to permit the plausible inference that Amazon is unlawfully forcing purchase of its (print-on-demand) service."

It will be very interesting to follow this case, as it has a great importance to the POD niche, which as Angela Hoy, who owns BookLocker with her husband Richard, told Mainebiz "is very tree-friendly and also more reasonable, financially, for authors and publishers alike." We definitely agree with her on this point.

We are pro-choice especially when it comes to printers, and not just for the sake of fairness, but also for the sake of sustainability. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the green practices of BookSurge, and actually I read they use FSC-certified paper with recycled content, but nevertheless, even if they're as green as it gets, I believe competition can push the envelope further for them as well as for other printers and make sure publishers will have more green printing options.

We'll keep following this interesting case and keep you posted so stay tuned!

Best,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Green printing tip no. 17: How do you save money on your next print job?

We have another tip for you today on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you information on green printing in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is discussing a question that is raised now more than ever when it comes to green printing:

How do you save money on your next print job?

Tip #17
Saving money is the first priority of many businesses and organizations who need print jobs, and we get many questions on how you can go green and still save money. As we wrote here before there's no contradiction between the two, and I would like to suggest couple of ideas on how it can be done.

1. Ask for alternative papers that are comparable to what you are looking for. I have a few ideas on saving you money.

- Use Sugar Cane Tree Free paper instead of Seed paper
Seed paper is one of the most expensive papers on the market today. My clients cringe when I tell them each 13 x 19 sheet is $4.00. If you can get away from having the seeds grow into flowers when disposing the paper, I like sugar Cane as a substitute. It is Tree Free, and looks recycled. It is 1/10th the price.

- Use 80# uncoated text in 100% PCW, when switching from 100# gloss recycled text for your next run
The uncoated text paper bulks higher than coated paper. The 80# text would feel as thick as the 100# coated text, and save you 25% in the amount of pounds of paper needed.This would also save money on postage for any mailing jobs.

- Use a 90 bright white grade, instead of 96 bright white for your newsletters
That would save you $700, if you needed 500 pounds of paper. Our 90 bright 100% PCW paper is half the price of our 96 brightness papers in 100% PCW. If you needed 5000 pounds of paper, that is a huge $7000 savings.

2. Let your printer or your agency suggest alternative page sizes
Before you design the project. Sometimes ½" can make a big difference in your print bill. I just asked a client to go from 10" x 4" to 9.5" x 4", on their flat size, and we saved our client a ton of money,. We ran a 13 x 19 sheet, and I could get 6 out of the 13 x 19 size sheet, instead of 4 out.

Another example is our own landfill brochure. We had a page size of 6.5 x 6.5 inch for our 28 page plus cover brochures. We could only get two up on our 13 x 19 size digital paper. By making the page size 6 x 6, we could run 3 up, and since we had 8 forms, that saved us over 30% on our print
costs.

Do you have more questions about going green and saving money on your next print job?you can email to greg@ecofriendlyprinter.com. If you have any questions you would like us to address in future tips please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Latest tips:

Green Printing Tip #16 - Can green printing be done on a rush basis?

Green Printing Tip #15 - Are PDF files the best fit for every document?

Green Printing Tip #14 - Can directories be green?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://www.gregbarberco.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

Kindle's Princeton Pilot not a Success

By way of Treehugger we learned about the results of a recent pilot program in Princeton University, using Amazon's Kindle e-reader device in place of books. Apparently, less than 2 weeks after 50 students were given Kindles to use in three of their courses, they were not satisfied.

It seems that while e-readers may have arguably come a long way as an alternative for reading books, at least the Kindle is far from being a suitable tool for academic learning.

From the Daily Princetonian:

"I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool," said Aaron Horvath '10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. "It's clunky, slow and a real pain to operate."

Horvath said that using the Kindle has required completely changing the way he completes his coursework.

"Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages -- not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs," he explained. "All these things have been lost, and if not lost they're too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the 'features' have been rendered useless."

So, not there just yet. However, clearly e-book readers and the companies that manufacture them have been insinuating themselves into the future of education conversation. This pilot program is just one of similar news items such as the recently announced upcoming school library without books. What does this mean? That things are changing. This failed pilot is simply another source of feedback for the improved user interface for a device that one day will be able to provide students, their teachers and academics at large the right tools for paperless learning.

Margaret Atwood has a new book and the greenest book tour you've heard about!

Margaret Atwood is releasing a new book "The Year of the Flood", and as Treehugger reports Atwood's book tour is a very green one. It might be the greenest book tour you've heard about so far.

What makes it so green? here are some more details from the book's website:

Book tours take energy, and not just that of the author. Airplanes, trains, taxis; hotels, meals, the powering of lights and heat for events and appearances – all consume.

In an effort to keep this tour as green as possible, all those involved have agreed to make the following choices wherever possible.

• To make the events as local as possible, by using not only local talent but also local food, organic if available.
• The author is taking the VegiVows for the duration of the trip, with the exception of non-avian and non-mammalian bioforms once a week. Like the Gardeners, however, she will permit eggs, viewed as a sort of nut.
• To carbon-neutralize the travel, with the help of the calculations of ZeroFootprint; to go by train when possible.
• To choose hotels and other sleeping places that have environmental policies, whenever available.
• To choose paper that is Ancient Forest Friendly and approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, with the help of Canopy
• To choose CD covers that are environmentally friendly, and organic cotton only for the items in our Café Press store
• To request the event venues to serve only shade-grown, organic, fair trade coffee, which is bird-friendly – unlike sun-grown and pesticide-sprayed, a huge destroyer of songbirds.
• To avoid bottled water.
• The biggest challenge for the author will be keeping the luggage to a minimum. The rules for the wardrobe will be: ONE OR MORE OF: Had it for years; organic cotton; hemp. And remember: Think pink, pack black. It dirts less.
  
  

Kudos to Margaret Atwood for her efforts to keep the book's footprint to a minimum. As you can see the book is also using FSC-certified paper so it's eligible to be included on our new green lit initiative "It's Time for a Green Book" and we hope to get it included.

Here are more details about the book:

Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners – a religion devoted to the melding of science, religion, and nature - has long predicted a disaster. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women remain: Ren, a young dancer locked away in a high-end sex club, and Toby, a former God’s Gardener, who barricades herself inside a luxurious spa. Have others survived? Ren’s bio-artist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers? Not to mention the CorpSeCorps, the shadowy policing force of the ruling powers… As Adam One and his beleaguered followers regroup, Ren and Toby emerge into an altered world, where nothing – including the animal life – is predictable.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

A new partnership promotes Sony Reader for borrowing eBooks in public libraries

The eBook format is is moving forward quickly - more online stores, more devices, more readers. And now it's penetrating a place that until lately was almost exclusively associated only with physical books - the library.

Sony, developer of the Sony Reader Digital Book, has partnered up with OverDrive, the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and audiobooks to libraries, to offer readers an easier way to borrow e-books from the library. How does it work exactly? Here are some more details from their joint press release:

Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network (http://search.overdrive.com) offer eBooks compatible with the Sony Reader. Users simply browse or search their library website, check out their selected eBook with a valid library card, and download to a PC. Once downloaded, the eBook may then be transferred to the Sony Reader via free Adobe Digital Editions software.

...In addition to reaching new and existing patrons via the Sony and OverDrive network websites, OverDrive will train librarians on how to help patrons use the Sony Reader with their download service. OverDrive provides download services for more than 9,000 libraries, schools and retailers worldwide with support for PC, Mac^®, and Sony^® Reader, as well as the largest collection of iPod^®-compatible audiobooks for libraries.

This collaboration looks like a win-win model and will definitely help to move forward the integration of the eBook format into libraries. I think it's an important step also in terms of keeping libraries updated and relevant in the digital age. Now we'll have to wait and see if this collaboration will be an exclusive one or we'll see future similar collaborations with Amazon and other providers of popular e-book reading devices.

If you want to check if your public library is a member of the OverDrive network, visit http://search.overdrive.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promotin sustainble reading!

Bloggers and publishers: please join our green lit campaign: 1 Day, 100 bloggers, 100 green books, 100 reviews

As part of our efforts to promote green books, i.e. books that are printed using recycled and FSC certified paper, we're initiating a special project called "It's Time for a Green Book": 1 Day, 100 bloggers, 100 green books, 100 reviews.

If you're a publisher or an author that have books that would be a good fit for this campaign, we would like to invite you to participate in it and get your "green" books reviewed.

If you a blogger and you review books on your blog from time to time, then we would like to join this campaign and review a "green" book on your blog.

The idea is to have 100 bloggers, who review books on regular basis, simultaneously publish on Tuesday, November 10 2009, their book review of a "green book" of their choice. We want to use the power of the internet and social media to promote "green" books and increase the awareness of both publishers and readers to the way books can be printed responsibly and sustainably. We hope the magnitude of this initiative will help grab readers, publishers and others' attention and get them to think about and discuss the future of books and how the "green" factor should be part of it.

How we do it? We're preparing now a list of at least 100 books that are meeting the "green" criteria (recycled or FSC-certified paper), with preference for newer books to the participating bloggers, who will be able to choose then the book they want to review (on first come first served basis). Then, we would ask the publishers to send them a review copy accordingly. Bloggers will publish simultaneously their book review on Tuesday, November 10, exactly at 1:00 PM EST.

What are the benefits for publishers/authors? This is not only a great opportunity to promote new books printed in an environmentally sound manner and make their "greenness" more recognizable, but also an opportunity for publishers to get further recognition and appreciation of readers for their commitment to the environment and to green publishing.

If you want to participate or you have any questions please don't hesitate to email me at raz@ecolibris.net.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

We have a winner on our "Living Green: The Missing Manual" giveaway

We had a giveaway of "Living Green: The Missing Manual", which we reviewed here on September 12, and we have a winner!

We asked you to share with u how your green journey begin and what was the first green step you took. We got replies with great stories and the winner is Danika, who wrote us the following:

I can't say exactly when I started becoming green. It was a process for me. It started in Marin County, CA seeing small ponds with signs that warned people not to swim because the water was toxic while birds stood in the water. Then, watching the local rock quarry grow and grow and realizing what a violent thing it is to rip the earth apart like that.

The final step was a friend's wife having breast cancer at about the same time as the first Green Festival was held in SF. I became militant about keeping myself and my family away from toxins and the Green Festival inspired me with so many ways to do so. Now I have an ecofriendly business and am producing a local ecofestival.

Congrats, Danika! You won a copy of "Living Green: The Missing Manual". We will also plant a tree for it with our planting partners and add to the book our "One tree planted for this book" sticker.

Thank you also to all the other participants in the giveaway! We enjoyed reading your stories and invite you to keep checking our blog, as we have some more great giveaways coming up.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!