Matt Norcross, the owner of McLean and Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Michigan, is spearheading a campaign to support IPG and its client publishers in the distribution company’s standoff against Amazon.com over terms for the sale of e-books
Norcross told PW Thursday that McLean and Eakin’s website will promote IPG books indefinitely with a banner prominently displayed on the store’s home page that links to a page featuring IPG titles. McLean and Eakin staffers intend to place Facebook and Tweet links to IPG titles as well. And, in an e-mail sent to bookseller contacts across the country, Norcross requested that they join him in supporting IPG.
"Anything you see on our website (banner, etc.) you many use, please,” Norcross wrote, “It would be great if we can get many stores to do something like this, so feel free to pass this idea along to whoever you like.”
“Indies are committed to the written word,” Norcross told PW, “McLean and Eakin has never refused to sell a book based on our margin. Clearly, Amazon is only committed to Amazon.”
In an interview with PW, Norcross compared the situation between IPG and Amazon.com to the 2010 e-book pricing disagreement between Amazon.com and Macmillan during which Amazon temporarily pulled Macmillan titles from its online bookstore. “It’s almost identical,” Norcross noted, recalling that McLean and Eakin created an in-store display of Macmillan titles, and spotlighted Macmillan titles on the store’s website as well. Norcross and his wife, Jess Norcross, called “20 different stores” and urged them to do the same in support of Macmillan.
Norcross, who is an American Booksellers Association board member, emphasized in his communications with other booksellers that he is acting upon his own initiative as an individual bookseller, not as an ABA board member.
