I was rather excited for about five seconds that Mr. Hart was going to be my first hilarious whinger but no he does actually have an argument. Editorial comment to follow:

Hello Mr. Stableford,

My name is Marcus Alexander Hart, and I’m the author of “The Oblivion
Society.” Thank you for your review this morning.

I wouldn’t think to argue with your opinions on the book’s content,
but I just wanted to address some of the many concerns you had
regarding its pricing.

> I have only read the first 100 pages and it left me in no doubt about how much it was
> worth and it isn’t worth over £10 ($15ish) for a paperback.

Actually, $15 is exactly what I sell it for on my website (with no
additional shipping charge in the USA). If you buy it at a personal
appearance or at a local bookstore that I’ve managed to sell inventory
to on my own, the price is $10 (significantly less than the £8 you’re
willing to pay).

I printed a quantity of books at a non-Lulu source so that I could
offer them as cheaply as possible. I agree that $19.99 is a
ridiculous price, but I will get into that in a moment.

> It’s that Amazon/B&N online distribution thing that pushes the price up. It irritates
> me that people don’t trust lulu.

It irritates me as well, but the trust issues aren’t mine. Let me explain.

Even before Lulu’s recent “all books in all outlets must be priced the
same” policy, when the Lulu books were sold at a discount to Amazon,
the sales through Amazon were still significantly higher. It doesn’t
matter if *I* trust Lulu or not, it would appear that the people who
wish to buy my book don’t trust them.

Before I upgraded to Global Distribution all I would ever hear was,
“Let me know when it’s for sale on Amazon.” I tried to explain that
they can get the exact same product from Lulu for a lower price, but
they weren’t interested. Sad but true.

On your “About Reviews” page you say “Oh, and c) books which may even
have made it into the buy pile but for some incomprehensible reason
are not available to the buyer as a paperback. This is scummy
behaviour. If I want to pay £7.99 or less for a paper printed copy of
your book rather than £0.69 for an e-book that should be my choice.
Not yours as the author. Or are you trying to send people away?”

Wouldn’t you consider selling exclusively on Lulu as that same scummy
behaviour toward the people (though misguided) who only want to buy
books from Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Buy.com, or any of the other
myriad of online shops Global Distribution opens the book up to? I
do.

Yes, the price at Amazon (and the others) is way too high. But that’s
why I sell autographed copies through my own website for a cheaper
price. I’m trying my best to reach the most people in the most
effective way.

> As an author I don’t believe taking a royalty of more than $1.50 is actually appropriate.

Some of your ire seems to come from thinking that I’m being greedy
with my royalty structure. “The Oblivion Society” is about 350 pages
long. $19.99 is the absolute lowest price I could put into the system
and still make my book available with Lulu’s Global Distribution. I
only make about $.80 on each sale.

> What we need from Mr. Hart next is a work that takes all the best bits of it and pushes
> them into a total A-game experience that is produced for a reasonable price.

Judging from your comments and your biography, I think you’d probably
like my new play “Walkin’ on Sunshine: A Quantum Physics Sex Farce.”
We’re doing two more live shows in Los Angeles, and then I think I’ll
be putting it on Google Video for the rest of the world to enjoy.

If you’re interested, keep an eye on StopTheStarlons.com to see when
the video is available. For free.

Thanks again for your review, and good luck with your own book.

Let’s address the most irritating question in here as a sort of catch all to everything I think is wrong with this argument. No. I don’t consider it scummy behaviour to force people to use Lulu. Lulu is where POD books are born. Whether people currently “trust” them or not that’s where they come from whether you buy them from Lulu or from Amazon or from Uncle Wally’s Honest POD Book Emporium. When that order goes through the order goes to Lulu for publishing.

Now Lulu must have been forced to make people jack up their prices by Amazon because that’s the kind of strongarm tactic Amazon loves. If you’re forcing Random House to sell dearer than you can, well, that’s corporate politics; if you’re forcing Marcus Alexander Hart to sell at some ridiculous price because you’re a moany whingey cry baby organisation that hates POD authors who are just trying to make a hard earned $0.80 royalty you’re the kind of person I won’t do business with. And hey! conveniently that makes the price of my book cheaper and hey! conveniently that means people can only buy it at Lulu.

It could be that this is an early adopter sting. As people become acclimatised to the concept of a POD book they may start to abandon Amazon as a source for them to go to Lulu to buy ones that have no ISBN and are about the same price (less shipping ouch) as the ones you can buy in the shops. Of course then Amazon and the ISBN people will start whingeing about how it’s not fair and someone took their lollipop and wa wa wa. But for that time it will be Lulu’s call what to do and I imagine after being kicked several times by these parties on the way up they probably won’t really care and will just laugh. I know I will.

Yeah it did annoy me that I thought you were taking a bigger royalty. The fact that you’re not just stupefies and depresses me as so many things in the book world do.

I know that people don’t really buy books from lulu. No one much except me and a couple of other people I know: the hardcore Lulu customer elite as it says on the door of our clubhouse. But if we don’t keep patronising their establishment and making people aware that it’s just as safe as buying from Amazon or B&N then Lulu will never make enough money to LOWER THOSE DAMNED SHIPPING COSTS!

And isn’t that all that we all really want?

My review of The Oblivion Society is below this. If you’ve got deep pockets you should check it out in preference to most of Tom Holt’s later efforts, most of Terry Pratchett’s later efforts and, despite the comparison, in preference to anything by Robert Rankin. He doesn’t beat Douglas Adams but there’s no shame in that.