SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 stormwyrm on Monday May 22 2017, @02:33AM (2 children)
So tell me, are these “third-party sellers” running their own printing presses producing their own copies of books without the consent of the author or publisher? In that case a lawyer would be in order for blatant cases of copyright infringement. Seems not though. Having a look at the article comes up with this:
(emphasis added) Now, I think I would refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram [wikipedia.org]. There’s this thing called the doctrine of first sale which makes most of these things legal, and if I can get books cheaper and legally in that way, so much the better. Cry me a river: publishers already got paid for your book and authors already got their royalties at some point in the majority of these cases. They aren’t entitled to them as many times as a book is resold! The “hurts” part, well, that depends on the contractual relationship of the distributor/wholesaler who does it to the publisher. If you allowed them to do that, then well, I hear the world’s smallest violin playing Hearts and Flowers for you. And I imagine reviewers’ promotional copies make up a minuscule fraction of these books and in that case, well, they decided to waive that as a promotional cost to begin with.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday May 22 2017, @03:37AM
You have missed the point that they are representing these copies as new. If they have already been sold, they are not new.
This is not a case of used books competing with new.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:38AM
> are these “third-party sellers” running their own printing presses producing their own copies of books without the consent of the author or publisher?
Wild speculation (copied from earlier thread) -- many books are printed in China and other places far from the eyes of the North American or European publishing company offices. Perhaps the printing/binding companies are printing extra copies beyond the number ordered by the publisher. Once the printing/binding process is set up and in production this would be extremely cheap. Similar to the grey/black market for "fake" designer clothes that are made in the same factories as the brand names, but sold out the back door without knowledge of the original brand/designer.