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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
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:31PM (19 children)
But that means nothing. Are they alleging that the books are not actually new, or that they are stolen or counterfeit?
"The publisher throws their hands in the air, saying that they can't do anything about this"
That would seem to indicate that they are not stolen or counterfeit, wouldn't it?
"I think that the publisher should look into where those "new" books are coming from. "
Well yes, they're either stolen or counterfeit or the publisher should already have been paid for them.
The only other possibility I can see is that they've been written off. They used to tear the cover off and send that back in to prove it had not sold, to economize on postage, and if you knew the right bookworms you could pick up books very inexpensively as a result - but with that missing front cover. You can't sell a book missing the front cover as new, that would be noticed for sure.
You seem to be implying these are books that were supposed to have been shredded? If that can be proven they should at least be able to sue the crap out of whoever was supposed to do that... but that's mostly a due diligence issue and it's on them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @12:05AM (9 children)
OMG, Arik, just RTFA and stop speculating FFS.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 22 2017, @12:32AM (4 children)
Without speculation, there would be no SoylentNews. We are like Wall Street in that respect.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 22 2017, @01:54AM (3 children)
I beg to differ, magister.
Some of the Wall Street speculators actually win something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 22 2017, @05:59AM (2 children)
Wall Street only "wins" filthy lucre, and at the cost of their soles! Have you ever seen the bottom of a Wall Street financier's shoes? Only when he was kicking your for sleeping in the alcove at the front of his Very Large and Impressive Financial Building? Then you get my point.
On the other hand, the wealth and riches to be had on SoylentNews defy description. Rampant speculation may be bad for actual markets, but here it can produce ideas never before thought, connections and correlations that have never occurred to anyone's mind before in history! Of course, it also could be that somebody did not RTFA, again!! But at least wild speculation never crashed SN, unless, sadly, it is speculation by the totally unhinged about right-wing nut-job conspiracies, or Runaway1929.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 22 2017, @06:30AM (1 child)
Not for the lack of trying, no.
Sometimes I have this uneasy felling TMB is just floating his ideas as a way of stress-testing SN.
I mean... look... he's quite predictably self-repetitive and yet (predictably) his posts generate a flurry of comments. There has to be a rational method behind this madness.
(you wanted speculation. Here's one not coming from a right-winger and, at the same time, adds no useful idea to the conversation).
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 22 2017, @06:43AM
Interesting! Put me down for a hundred thousand.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday May 22 2017, @01:30AM (1 child)
The article doesn't answer the question. The article doesn't make a lot of sense actually, and that's what we're discussing. Hope that helped you catch up.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Whoever on Monday May 22 2017, @02:57AM
But that's the point isn't it? It's quite clear that you didn't read. Your postings in this story discussion have been based on speculation and ignorance.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday May 22 2017, @03:08PM (1 child)
The Fine Article (Vox) offers two suggestions where third-party sellers get their books from:
1. promotional copies sent out to reviewers and bloggers etc.
2. buying books from warehouses with minor damage
Option 2 clearly includes the third party paying for the book. So the publisher and author should be getting paid in that case. Option 1 doesn't clearly state that. Then again, these were copies the publisher chose to give away for free. If the volume of what the publisher is giving away for free is so large, that resell of parts of that will hurt its bottom line, maybe it shouldn't be sending out so many free copies.
The other Fine Article (HuffPo) has this to say:
So either the publisher was already reimbursed, or the publisher chose to give the book away for free.
Neither of the two Fine Articles alleges widespread fraud/theft of books.
If there's a suspicion of widespread illicit acquisition of books that are then resold, that should be investigated.
Amazon offering the cheapest new version of an item that you are looking for is not a problem, it's what people expect from Amazon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @03:40PM
> Amazon offering the cheapest new version of an item that you are looking for is not a problem, it's what people expect from Amazon.
If you believe this I have a bridge you might be interested in. Amazon prices are often cheapest in areas where they are trying to dominate a market segment (started with books) but then quickly rise once the competition has been killed off. New, first quality, books are often available for less at many other outlets, including in some cases direct from the publisher.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 22 2017, @01:07AM (3 children)
Here's the relevant paragraph from the article. Pardon the formatting.
A representative I spoke to from one of the big five publishers theorized that
third-party sellers might be selling some of the free promotional copies that
publishers routinely send out to critics and bloggers just before a book is published
-- not the galleys, which are clearly marked "not for resale," but the free
promotional copies of the finished book, which have no such marking on their covers
and often end up sold to bookstores like the Strand. Others have suggested that they
might be buying books with minor cosmetic damage from warehouses, just damaged enough
to be discounted but not so damaged that Amazon stops considering them "new."
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday May 22 2017, @01:15AM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 22 2017, @02:40AM (1 child)
> How can that number possibly be large enough to have the effect?
Again from the article:
It goes on to say that buyers can find sellers nonetheless. If that's correct, a seller needn't have a large supply of books to create a problem.
> [...] start marking them 'not for resale' which you'd think they would be doing from the start [...]
I don't know why they haven't been. At a guess, perhaps reviewers prefer to receive copies that are not stamped "not for resale" precisely because the reviewers wish to sell on those books, and are perhaps inclined to give more favourable reviews as a result.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday May 22 2017, @03:13PM
I agree that Amazon should clearly distinguish between one seller being out of stock and an item being out of stock for all sellers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)
Generally speaking, I'm usually sympathetic to publishers when dealing with a force like Amazon, which now exercises huge control over the book market. But in this particular case, the publishers sound like a bunch of whiners -- unless I'm missing something.
Here's what the Vox article in the summary says:
Okay, review copies are a thing, but outside of stuff like textbooks (for which publishers might send out thousands of free review copies), I can't imagine they make up a huge market. Maybe a couple hundred copies to reviewers at major newspapers, magazines, internet sites known for reviews, etc.?
In any case, if huge numbers of new or "near new" copies are flooding the market in 3rd-party sellers, it sounds like that's a publisher problem, not Amazon's problem. If they're sending out so many review copies that they are actually competing with profits from legit sales, maybe they need to tighten up their policy on who gets free review copies. If they're seeing "near perfect" books sold at deep discounts from their warehouses for damage so minor that they can be passed off as "new" on Amazon, maybe they need to reconsider their discount policies. (They should still be making money off of those books; just not full price.)
If, on the other hand, 3rd party sellers are sending out copies claiming to be "new" condition, and they're NOT -- that IS Amazon's problem.
The HuffPost article from TFS says this:
A "used bookstore that buys stock back from consumers" is selling USED books. If they are marketing them as "new" on Amazon, that's FRAUD. Same thing for anyone who might "troll book bins" for recycled books. I do think Amazon should have some standards for people who want to claim that they're marketing "new" merchandise on their site, and if they aren't willing/able to prove that their products are actually new, that's an issue.
There's a difference between "New" and "Used - like new." If sellers are marketing items as the latter, I don't see a problem with any of these things. If, however, they are marketing them as "New" rather than "Used," and Amazon is selecting them as a default seller -- that IS a problem.
I've never had an issue with book condition in Amazon purchases, but I have received poor condition, very poorly packaged (and thus slightly damaged), and simply incorrect (wrong item, wrong model, etc.) items from 3rd party sellers. In almost all such cases, I deliberately chose a different seller from Amazon, but if a 3rd-party seller is promoted to be the DEFAULT seller on Amazon, they better be selling the right stuff and the condition as claimed.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:59AM
> No one is quite sure where their books come from, including, it seems, Amazon itself
Wild speculation -- perhaps there is a grey/black market for popular books? Many books are printed/bound in China (and other locations far from US or European publisher headquarters). Perhaps these printers are printing extra copies beyond the press run that was ordered by the publisher? Once the press/bindery is all set up it could be extremely cheap to run off more copies. Similar to ersatz fashion goods that are made in the same factories as the big brand names.
If Amazon is fencing these copies (by not checking into the bona fides of marketplace sellers) I think that is Amazon's problem...because the publishers will sue them!
(Score: 1) by daver!west!fmc on Monday May 22 2017, @06:22AM (2 children)
That "tear the cover off" thing is for unsold pocket paperbacks which were historically a separate sales channel from retail book stores. (Pocket paperbacks were for casual sales in grocery and drug stores, not the retail book trade.) Return the covers to certify that the books were destroyed and get credit for the unsold copies.
In the retail book trade the whole book is returned for credit. But, the lots of returned books are often marked as "remaindered" and sold in lots to folks who then sell them individually in discount book stores. Often the remainder mark (usually made with a felt marker pen across the bottom of the text block) is not noticeable to someone who doesn't know the book biz, and even if you do notice it you may not care, it really doesn't interfere with reading the book.
Either way, the publisher treats these books as "not sold" for purposes of royalty payments to authors.
Selling a remaindered book as new online is questionable, but is not too far from what the discount book stores who sell remaindered books do.
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday May 22 2017, @10:32AM
Of course, there is the more severe approach, as described in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose [wikipedia.org], which interestingly enough involved a remaindered copy of Aristotle's work on Comedy, the second book of the Poetics. Nice plot, since we no longer have a copy of this work, due to copyright maddened publishers, or just puritanical Domincan monks, who poisoned the upper outside corners of the text, so that anyone who read it, and licked their fingers and thumb to turn the page (Parchment, it seems, requires more friction than paper) would die with a blackened tongue. At least that is what the Franciscans who were sent to investigate concluded. I have always wanted to do this, but
Good movie, [imdb.com] starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, with a really realistic portrayal of life in Medieval Europe, trust me, I was there. But don't get your saliva on books, it's just not right, or good for the books.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday May 22 2017, @12:05PM
Interesting, I remember quite clearly the bookstore in my town doing this back in the 80s, with paperbacks yes but pocket? Regular retail bookstore, full size paperbacks, boxes of them, brand new and untouched aside from that front cover.
"In the retail book trade the whole book is returned for credit. But, the lots of returned books are often marked as "remaindered" and sold in lots to folks who then sell them individually in discount book stores."
Ok, so these aren't books that have been stolen, they're books that have been returned to the publisher who then willingly sold them to someone else at a discount. Still sounds like someone wants to have their cake and eat it too. When you're selling the same thing out of the front door at top dollar and out the back door at a deep discount, backdoor sales can compete with front door sales. But this is still all on the publisher, I don't see how they can think this is someone elses fault.
"Either way, the publisher treats these books as "not sold" for purposes of royalty payments to authors."
So what we're saying is the publisher writes the contract so the author doesn't get any share of copies sold at a discount, proceeds to sell large quantities at discount, doesn't split the proceeds with the author, and then tries to act like IT is the victim here.
Yeah, that's sleazy.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?