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Amazon Changes the Way it Sells Books -- May Hurt Publishers

posted by on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the amazon-would-never-be-underhanded dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Very recently, Amazon made a small, barely noticeable tweak to the way it sells books. And that little tweak has publishers very, very worried.

The change has to do with what Amazon calls the "Buy Box." That's the little box on the right-hand side of Amazon product pages that lets you buy stuff through the company's massive retail enterprise.

[...] It used to be that when you were shopping for a new copy of a book and clicked "Add to Cart," you were buying the book from Amazon itself. Amazon, in turn, had bought the book from its publisher or its publisher's wholesalers, just like if you went to any other bookstore selling new copies of books. There was a clear supply chain that sent your money directly into the pockets of the people who wrote and published the book you were buying.

But now, reports The Huffington Post, that's no longer the default scenario. Now you might be buying the book from Amazon, or you might be buying it from a third-party seller. And there's no guarantee that if the latter is true, said third-party seller bought the book from the publisher. In fact, it's most likely they didn't.

Which means the publisher might not be getting paid. And, by extension, neither is the author.

Understandably, both publishers and authors are deeply unhappy about this change.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:04PM (10 children)

    by butthurt (6141) on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:04PM (#513185) Journal

    This article is about books in paper, rather than electronic, format. Amazon.com's product pages for e-books only each show a single option for buying: the buyer cannot choose among sellers, except by finding a different product page, which will offer a different e-book.

    The article says "Amazon's third-party sellers have to offer new books, not used ones" but that's not true in general, as one may gather from other statements in the article or from a visit to the site.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by FakeBeldin on Monday May 22 2017, @06:57AM (9 children)

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Monday May 22 2017, @06:57AM (#513367) Journal

    Wait, which is it now? Paper or electronics? You and your sibling comment make opposite claims.

    The Vox article is talking about paper books, it seems.

    Third-party sellers may have obtained the books they sell in any number of ways. They might be a used bookstore that buys stock back from consumers at a cheap cost. They might troll book bins where people recycle books. They might have relationships with distributors and wholesalers where they buy “hurts” (often good enough quality to be considered “new condition”) at a super low cost. They might have connections to reviewers who get more books than they can handle who are looking to offload. And this goes on and on. Regardless, the books these vendors are selling do not qualify as sales because they’ve already been sold, or they originally existed as promotional copies. (Someone pointed out to me today that some of these third-party vendors are buying books through wholesale channels, but it begs the question of how Amazon is measuring “new condition.” And if you’re buying a used book, it doesn’t benefit the author or the publisher.

    So the problem of the Vox article is physical copies of books that were under publisher control and now are in the hands of third parties. This causes the author not to profit from that particular sale. The particular gripe is that Amazon made it now the default, and that the actual offer from the publisher is lower / hidden away.
    Honestly: as long as the customer knows he's buying used books, I don't see the problem.

    If consumers don’t see the option to buy new, from the publisher, then Amazon is promoting piracy. Is this an extreme charge? Maybe. But the facts are the facts. Authors get nothing from used books because you’re buying something that’s already been bought and tracked as a sale.

    I believe in the USA this is called the First-Sale doctrine [wikipedia.org], which was first recognised in '08 - 1908 that is.

    I'd mind if Amazon was deliberately hiding the fact that these are not new books. But as long as buyers are not misled in this, the complaint seems to boil down to "but my business model worked until the Internet came along!"
    If buyers are misled, that is (in my view) wrong.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Monday May 22 2017, @07:18AM (1 child)

      by butthurt (6141) on Monday May 22 2017, @07:18AM (#513374) Journal

      > Wait, which is it now? Paper or electronics? You and your sibling comment make opposite claims.

      Amazon.com sells both paper books and e-books. This article is about publishers' unhappiness at third-party sellers getting preference on a book's product page. Amazon.com sells e-books in a different manner, with only itself as the seller; hence the issue described in the article does not pertain to e-books, only paper books. I was just saying in a long-winded manner that the person who wrote "these are digital books" was mistaken.

      I'm confused about what you meant by "sibling comment" (another comment of mine, or one I replied to?) but I hope the above clears up your confusion.

    • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday May 22 2017, @07:21AM (1 child)

      by davester666 (155) on Monday May 22 2017, @07:21AM (#513375)

      So the problem of the Vox article is physical copies of books that were under publisher control and now are in the hands of third parties. This causes the author not to profit from that particular sale. The particular gripe is that Amazon made it now the default, and that the actual offer from the publisher is lower / hidden away.
      Honestly: as long as the customer knows he's buying used books, I don't see the problem.

      Correction: This causes the author not to make any additional profit from that particular sale.

      The author/publisher made their profit when they sold the book the first time. And when the author/publisher sold the book, they knew the copyright laws as well as the first-sale doctrine, and declared "What the hell, I'll sell it anyway. Now give me my money!"

      • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday May 22 2017, @08:21AM

        by FakeBeldin (3360) on Monday May 22 2017, @08:21AM (#513388) Journal

        Exactly, which is why I don't particularly mind.
        Now the Vox article points out a few (legal) cases where a heap of books ends up with a third-party reseller. But since these cases still amount to a legal transfer of ownership from the publisher to the third party, I don't see the problem.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 22 2017, @12:44PM (4 children)

      by VLM (445) on Monday May 22 2017, @12:44PM (#513462)

      And if you’re buying a used book, it doesn’t benefit the author or the publisher.

      If you think they're butthurt about this, wait until the "general public" discovers the India market textbooks I've bought off Amazon.

      I got the latest edition of some control theory text as an India-Only book for quite a bit less than USA text prices. Because the government funds student loans so the publishers know they can screw American college kids so they most certainly do just that, using the legal system to help.

      I'm pretty sure the control theory textbook I got was the latest 12th edition of Dorf's MCD, and I paid like $25 for what was not marketed as the India edition but was marketed as the economy edition, instead of paying college student $214 (yeah $214 no kidding thats what textbooks sell for now, thank you government guaranteed student loans). Is it worth upgrading from an older edition to the latest for $214, hell no, but $25, well, maybe?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @03:36PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @03:36PM (#513540)

        Big publishers are going to be on this in a hot second. If you like using this workaround, I suggest you stock up quickly on your "made for India" books.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:19PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:19PM (#513771)

          >Big publishers are going to be on this in a hot second. If you like using this workaround, I suggest you stock up quickly on your "made for India" books.

          They tried. They failed. Got a bitchslap from the Supremes. So no recourse for them without buying a whole new copyright law. :)