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Oz bookseller fires back in online battle

Amazon in Dymocks’ crosshairs

Australian bookseller Dymocks, practically the “last man standing” as the combination of online competition, inept management and a rising currency decimates the local publishing industry, is firing back with what it calls an “end to end” online service for local authors.

Perhaps hoping that Jeff Bezos is busy looking for his missing rocket, Dymocks is prepping the service for an October launch.

Aimed at the vanity publishing market, the D Publishing: it’s a publisher with all the publishing value-add – things like book (or e-book) design, editing, cover art and so on – outsourced back to the author. However, D Publishing will assign an imprint to works and sort out their ISBN numbers.

The Dymocks masthead will then print books on-demand “anywhere in Australia”, where customers want a printed copy, as well as distributing e-books for authors that take that option.

If the model works, D Publishing will add design and editing services for authors (presumably with the risk put back on the author).

On the upside for self-publishers, the on-demand print model avoids the relatively high expense of most vanity publishing models. CEO Don Grover says existing self-publishing operations charge as much as $AU3,000 for a print run of 100 books. ®

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