AtlasBooks Distribution Blog

We would like to respond to a recent post we had regarding one of our trading partners and distribution competitors.

Anonymous:

How can I say this nicely? I can’t. My 2010 experience with New Leaf Distributors was an expensive nightmare. I would not recommend New Leaf to anyone after this experience. What I was promised did not happen and my financial losses may continue to mount for years due to working with New Leaf Distributors.

I had turned down 7 distribution offers for my award winning movie, and chose New Leaf because they were the only distributor who promised to honor my ongoing business with Amazon and NEVER compete with me.

The lady assured me that they would NEVER compromise my income but rather add to it. The submission lady also did the contract with me. After much discussion, she said she couldn’t put the Amazon promise into the contract but assured me her word was gold.

I signed on and had to invest $450 for an account opening ad. Sales were good that month, almost paid for the cost of the ad and graphic artist. Sales have been meager ever since.

In April my healthy Amazon business came to a sudden halt-NO SALES! I researched my account and learned that New Leaf had compromised their promise and were now taking ALL of my sales.

When I called the lady at the top, she apologized and said that the CEO of New Leaf did a blanket sweep of (many of) their client’s Amazon products in early 2010 without consulting the vendors. I was aghast!! She said I was not the only vendor who was upset and that another angry vendor HAD gotten their Amazon sales returned to them.

I thought New Leaf was integral and (somewhat) evolved. I was wrong. She apologized and said she would do what she could to get my Amazon sales returned to me-but it was too late. She no longer works for the company (coincidentally?) after being honest with me.

She told me on the telephone that she had personally walked my collection of award winning products into the CEO’s office and told him that she had made an agreement with me and a few other clients to NOT sell our products on Amazon, but still it happened.

She was instructed to give me a choice of giving New Leaf ALL of my Amazon sales – or sending all of my products back to me. I quit with them at once.

Not only was I invested $450.00 but I had additionally been asked to write a story for their Evolve Magazine about my work. It was pages long and full of gorgeous photos by the time I completed the third re-write for their editor. It took me days and the editor was delighted.

The punchline of my experience with New Leaf is that my products were returned to me (2 DVDs were missing and 4 DVDs had broken cases) and my Amazon movie pages said “CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE” for 7 weeks!! After many hours on the phone with Amazon lawyers and staff, my movie business is still damaged & deeply impacted by their CEOs poor business ways 5 months later.

The CEO of New Leaf wrote me a couple of very distasteful letters at the end. Rather than apologizing he denied all of his wrongdoings. He wrote,”Had you been selling TO Amazon, we would not have touched your business. You are selling THROUGH Amazon as a marketplace vendor, not TO them.” So he felt it was just fine to steal my sales and I have not seen a penny of my money in 5 months!!!

A promise means nothing to New Leaf. All that matters is the contract which says they can sell anything to anyone anytime.

Vendors beware if you have a healthy business before working with today’s distributors! They want your Amazon sales for themselves and offer very little benefit to your sales.

I have lost over a thousand dollars in Amazon sales so far, wasted $750 (includes the graphics cost) for the ad they made me buy, and wasted days writing the article that will NOT run.

New Leaf was a waste of time and money and my Amazon business is completely damaged due to their incredible lack of integrity and honesty.

If she had told me they would be selling my products on Amazon in the beginning I would have NEVER signed with them and she knew it. She no longer works there.

What they did – and are still doing is wrong!

Anybody else out there have a similar experience?

Vendors beware!!! You will not be paid (most likely) either.

Please note that this publisher was working directly with New Leaf in this instance, not through AtlasBooks. As a distributor, New Leaf is a competitor. However, because New Leaf is one of our trading partners as a wholesaler and we continue to do business with them, we want to take some time to dig into this comment.

First, here is a brief explanation of how a company can be both a trading partner and competitor.

New Leaf is the world’s largest wholesale distributor of books, recorded media and sidelines related to the subject areas of spirituality and metaphysics, natural alternative wellness, and conscious living. So as a distributor, New Leaf can interact directly with publishers (as was the case of the publisher who posted the comment above), or they can act as a wholesaler (as they do in their relationship with AtlasBooks).

The benefit of working with AtlasBooks and having New Leaf as a wholesale distribution partner through our distribution program is that the publisher has access to not only the full reach of New Leaf’s customer base, but also the many other outlets that AtlasBooks provides. Also, the relationship with New Leaf falls under the same guidelines set in the AtlasBooks agreement so the publisher doesn’t have to worry about setting up terms, payment schedules, etc. with various trading partners. And instead of having to deal directly with New Leaf, the publisher has their assigned AtlasBooks customer service representative who can assist the publisher with questions about any of our trading partners.

So what about all the negative comments in this post? Does the publisher experience these from New Leaf while working with AtlasBooks? To me, it sounds like aside from discontent over the way sales are handled, an underlying cause for the frustration the publisher experienced is lack of communication. This person says they weren’t notified when a policy changed, they didn’t understand how the relationship with Amazon worked, and something a sales person promised did not make it into a contract.

I cannot speak for New Leaf, however at AtlasBooks communication is key. At the set up of every account, the publisher is assigned a customer service representative. That “live” person is there for any questions the publisher may have via telephone. We also communicate with our publishing partners through several means including email, direct mail, our newsletter, and even this blog. We also have a publisher resources section on our website that explains a lot of the questions we hear frequently from our publishing partners.

Whenever we can’t promise something to a publisher, we let them know. Due to our representation agreements, we are unable allow every selling channel exception a publisher may request (which sounds like the case with Amazon in the publisher’s complaint above, please check back later this week for a discussion on how AtlasBooks works with Amazon). However, we let the publisher know that we cannot accommodate their request. Because even when we can’t do what a publisher wants, we think it is important to explain the situation so that we can have shared expectations with our publishing partners.

It is our intent to be open with our publishing partners because that is what we are, partners. As our mission states, our mission is “to offer the book publishing community the best and most comprehensive services in a profitable, team-oriented environment.”

Again, please check back at the end of this week for a discussion of how AtlasBooks partners with Amazon and how the publisher is effected. Amazon is a big player and they operate under various systems, so we feel it is important to give you information to better understand this key player in the book industry.