Douglas Caddy Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 The Powers-That-Be would like TrineDay to go away … http://trinedaily.com/2020/02/17/the-powers-that-be-would-like-trineday-to-go-away/?fbclid=IwAR2dV4rLp-sVCGT5fqT3rUEnM-d_yqEYuNDYlF_6jJqmyOwrF49vKMQupaE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 19, 2020 Author Share Posted February 19, 2020 Our democracy is dying. Irreplaceable TrineDay with its unique books plays a key role in keeping the lamp of liberty burning. Let us hope it can overcome the crisis that it faces today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Thorne Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 Kris isn’t getting any younger but I was always impressed how he was keeping things going. So it looks like the only way they could stop him was to try and cripple his company. I hope he can get past this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 You really wonder about Amazon. But he is correct about the book distributor business. This is why promotion is really important. Unfortunately we have a big problem in that regard: the MSM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Hancock Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 About all I can say its that its surely not unique to TrineDay, having worked with three small and two mid sized publishers they all have the same return policy problems, not just from Amazon but the storefront dealers that remain. About the only good news is eBook sales and that has its own unique problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 (edited) In fact, if you are a writer, and you want to get a book out there and you are not going to get a big publisher, I would strongly recommend doing what Joe McBride does: self publish through one of the better houses. They do all the work for you and you can pick your package of just how much you want them to do. Whichever package you choose, the royalty rate will be much higher than going with a regular publishing house. If I had to do it all over again, that is how I would have done my last two books. The other point is, demand a higher royalty return on the e book sales, since that is where the market is going. Edited February 19, 2020 by James DiEugenio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 I recall a lawsuit against TrineDay several years ago. I think they were sued by the subject of one of their books. I want to say that it had to do with the Pitzer death at Bethesda but I'm not sure. Does anyone remember that suit and how it came out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 (edited) I think its that guy who was on one of Nigel Turner's programs who said he was supposed to have been recruited to kill Pitzer. But he turned down the offer. He has passed on since. Edited February 20, 2020 by James DiEugenio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 Yeah, I think that guy's name was Daniel something. If he has passed on, maybe he can ask Pitzer now if he actually killed himself. I'm sure you've heard the joke about the researcher who dies and goes to heaven and asks God who killed JFK. And God says, "I've got a theory about that." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 Daniel Marvin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 10 minutes ago, David Andrews said: Daniel Marvin. Right. Did a Google search. He and TrineDay were co-defendants in a suit brought by soldiers who claimed they were libeled in his book. The jury found for the defendants. https://www.starnewsonline.com/news/20060202/jury-finds-for-author-in-lawsuit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 Some Amazon-government involvements: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/31/amazon-defense-cloud-computing-pentagon-jeff-bezos https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/13/amazon-war-cloud-pentagon-project-halted-microsoft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Troyer Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 This is from memory, but I believe Mr. Marvin also says in that video in his Army special sniper training they had a model/table of Dealey Plaza set up, as the perfect ambush situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted February 21, 2020 Share Posted February 21, 2020 Daneil Marvin was a member of this Forum, back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted February 21, 2020 Share Posted February 21, 2020 (edited) I just read Kris' article. As a former indie buyer for a large record wholesaler, I am in a unique position to comment. But first, let me explain. There are artists, who want to create and have someone else sell their records/books. Let's say, one artist=two records/books. There are record labels/publishers, who deal with artists and try to make their products widely available. Let's say, 50 artists, 100 records/books. There are distributors, who place these products with the large wholesalers and retailers. (This part of the equation is not as large as it used to be.) Let's say, 20 labels/publishers, 1,000 artists, 2,000 records/books. There are large wholesalers, who make the products from distributors available to retailers. (This part of the equation has also been cut down to almost nothing.) Let's say, 100 distributors, 100,000 artists, 200,000 records/books. (Now, to be clear, this is where I came in. I was in charge of buying this stuff for a large warehouse, and maintaining the database.) And then there are the retailers. (We sold our 200,000 skus to roughly 3,000 record stores worldwide.) Now, not to toot my own horn, but I made a name for myself within the record industry as someone unafraid to point out the obvious--that these four groups are not natural allies, but enemies, fighting over every last scrap. Here's why. 1. The artist needs the label/publisher to succeed, or else they won't get paid. Well, this works to the advantage of the label/publisher. They routinely withhold payment until they get sued, and often exaggerate the possibility they'll get stiffed or buried with returns by their distributor. 2. The label/publisher needs their distributor to succeed, or else they won't get paid. Well, naturally, this works to the advantage of the distributor, which will often oversell products to their accounts, in hopes they'll sell, and then refuse to pay their labels/publishers until they provide them with a new release. So, for this reason, it behooves labels/publishers to pace their releases, and not allow their distributors to unnecessarily "stock up"...it's the only way to keep the cash flowing. (Trust me on this...I bought for a distributor.) 3. Still, before that, I was a buyer for a large wholesaler. This placed me near the top of the food chain. As a result, a big part of my job was holding up payments to distributors until they took their returns. I mean, this only made sense. They pressured us into buying too much of something, now the bill is due, so, sorry, a bunch of it's going back, along with a bunch of stuff you oversold me last year that only now came back from one of our retailers. 4. This brings us to the top step. The big dog. The large retailer. There is nothing more dangerous to the entire food chain than an over-eager large retailer. While napster was a big factor in the decline of the record industry, it wasn't nearly as big a factor as Best Buy, IMO. Best Buy pumped millions of records into its stores at a reduced price, which undercut the chains paying full price. This was a knife to the back of chains like Tower, moreover, who'd been stocking far too many SKUs in their stores in order to create the illusion they carried everything. In any event, when a few big wholesalers went down, along with Tower, and Best Buy started shipping back much of what they'd bought, it knee-capped or killed dozens of distributors, and killed thousands of small labels. Now, here's the irony. Amazon was supposed to prevent this from happening again. It was supposed to allow customers access to just-in-time inventory, where there would no longer be thousands of unsold items of any given SKU out there somewhere that could be returned in lieu of payment. Apparently, some suck-up failed get the memo, and decided that Amazon needed to have more locations and more product, irrespective of rate of sale. And now Trineday has to pay the price for this screw-up. The bottom line, then, is this. There was no conspiracy to get Trineday. It was chewed-up and spat out by corporate arrogance and inefficiency. Amazon is a big dog, a very big dog. And when it took a poop it buried Trineday's lawn. (Now, to be clear. I'm not trying to make light of the situation. The owner of one of the distributors I dealt with committed suicide after we took some large returns on a few of his titles and we could no longer pay him with cash. It turned out that this was true with his other accounts as well. Apparently, he'd tried to dump a bunch of stuff off on a foreign market, only to have it boomerang back into the states and be held against what he was owed by others.) Edited February 21, 2020 by Pat Speer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now