In the first public case of a publisher or distributor outside the ranks of the big six houses pushing back against Amazon's aggressive efforts to get better terms from its book suppliers, Independent Publishers Group recently refused to change its terms with Amazon and as a result, the online retail giant is no longer selling digital editions of books distributed by IPG.
In an e-mail to his publishers, IPG president Mark Suchomel wrote that Amazon "failed to renew its agreement with IPG to sell Kindle titles." He emphasized to Shelf Awareness yesterday, "They've chosen not to buy our stuff. We're not cutting them off." 
The move affects more than 4,000 e-titles. Print editions of titles by IPG publishers continue to be sold by Amazon. The distributor, the second largest in the country, has six distribution programs, including IPG, which distributes 261 houses, and Small Press United, which distributes another 274.
In the e-mail to clients, Suchomel explained the faceoff with Amazon this way: "As has been publicly reported, Amazon.com is putting pressure on publishers and distributors to change their terms for electronic and print books to be more favorable toward Amazon. Our electronic book agreement recently came up for renewal, and Amazon took the opportunity to propose new terms for electronic and print purchases that would have substantially changed your revenue from the sale of both. It's obvious that publishers can't continue to agree to terms that increasingly reduce already narrow margins. 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 not sure what has changed at Amazon over the last few months that they now find it unacceptable to buy from IPG at terms that are acceptable to our other customers." He added, "Hopefully Amazon will change their stance."
Suchomel urged client publishers to add the following notice to all e-mails, ads, websites, press releases, etc.: "This book is available in print or electronic edition at your local independent bookshop, www.BarnesandNoble.com, www.indiebound.org, iTunes, Kobo, and elsewhere. It is not currently available in a Kindle edition."
He also recommended explaining the situation to authors and having them "encourage traffic to those places that carry both print and electronic editions. Our website, www.ipgbook.com, is able to take direct consumer orders, but there is no better way to show our valued customers how much we appreciate doing business with them than to send orders their way."
He asked publishers to make their e-books available in all versions besides Kindle's proprietary format and "get those last remaining titles into electronic format so that the businesses that do support your titles can start selling them as soon as possible."
In addition, he wrote: "Remind family and friends of the value to our society of independent voices and ideas, and that independent publishers and bookstores need to be supported or they will go away.
"Practice what you preach. Support accounts that support your business. Ask the organizations you support to do the same.
"Tell your local booksellers that they have access to some electronic books that Amazon no longer does. ... IPG will be informing our other electronic book accounts of their favorable competitive position on our electronic titles."
Response from around the industry has been quick and supportive. Suchomel said yesterday that it's been "gratifying to talk to publishers and hear their support. They said it's ridiculous and we've got to stop somewhere."
He described IPG's terms as competitive and said, "I've never encountered anything like this before. We're reasonable. We're helping publishers be better publishers and be healthy publishers. We're easy to work with. We perform a valuable service to both sides of industry."
Kindle sales for IPG clients varies from publisher to publisher, depending on their specialties, Suchomel noted. "For some, Kindle sales are a good chunk of business. For others, they're not that significant. Our list tends to be a little more nonfiction; we don't have bestselling fiction, which is big digitally."
Suchomel hopes "to get the word out to consumers that the change doesn't mean the titles aren't available. Instead it means they just have to shop somewhere else to get them." He added, "Our other accounts seem to be happy to jump on this."
Despite the widespread coverage the change has received, Suchomel said his intention was "not to make this a big public deal. We didn't send out press releases. We didn't call anyone and say this is what's going on. We had to tell our publishers, and word got out from there." --John Mutter
Photo: WBEZ/Lynette Kalsnes