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

posted by on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:41PM   
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

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Original Submission

• Re:Really? Re:Really? (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)

  by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday May 22 2017, @01:21AM (#513243) Journal

  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:

  Amazon’s third-party sellers have to offer new books, not used ones, but in many cases they don’t seem to have bought their books from publishers. No one is quite sure where their books come from, including, it seems, Amazon itself. [...]

  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.”

  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:

  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.

  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.

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• Re:Really? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:59AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:59AM (#513258)

  > 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!

  Parent