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

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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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @01:32AM (#513248)

    My impression from the second link in the summary seems to be the worry is that the publisher's main link isn't the default option anymore. Instead the cheapest option is. So if the publisher sells to a retailer at wholesale prices (you know, how commerce works) and that retailer doesn't actually sell at the "Suggested Retail Price", then that retailer gets the default buy button option. In this case, the publisher is still getting paid, and the writers are still getting paid.

    All of these other assumptions I'm seeing written here, while some of them at least might be possible, are things that should eventually be caught if in fact illegal. (ie: bootleg copies from china or copies being made from some mystical super printer in someone's basement.) or will cause Amazon's reputation harm if not illegal but dishonest (used physical books being sold as "new", and there being on question they're not new.) or will result in the publisher no longer giving out those free promotional copies that don't explicitly say "NOT FOR RESALE". And really for that last one, why are they even still doing that. You want a promotional copy out there for people to read and review your book, just fucking give out a free e-book copy.

    And notice that this is NOT about e-books at all. That's why in the screenshot provided of the example book, the ebook copy was still laughably expensive. There's no way to shop around with those, and no way for a publisher to sell less than the Suggested Retail Price on those.