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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: 1) by daver!west!fmc on Monday May 22 2017, @06:22AM (2 children)

    by daver!west!fmc (1391) on Monday May 22 2017, @06:22AM (#513352)

    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

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday May 22 2017, @10:32AM (#513430) Journal

    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

    in the end, the poisoner is chased into the monastery library where he knocks over a lamp, and the whole library goes up in flames, including Aristotle's Comedy, which is why we do not have it extant today.

    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

    by Arik (4543) on Monday May 22 2017, @12:05PM (#513450) Journal
    "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.)"

    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?