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Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

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Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#11

Post by danssig »

toyg wrote: post #9
wccrawford wrote: post #2

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if these were physical books, the law would require that they pay the author. The agreement wasn't that they get to change the price any time they like. The agreement was that they get to match competitors. They violated that.

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss…

>Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free.

I would say it's more like some people walked out of the library with them. The author most certainly did lose something: sales.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#12

Post by toyg »

derefr wrote: post #10
toyg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss…

If this is true, then content piracy should also be legal. (Amazon effectively did the same thing as a pirate posting the file to a torrent tracker: they satisfied some of their potential customers with a free copy, invalidating them as real customers.) Conversely, if piracy should be illegal, then this is false, and Amazon is in trouble.

Content piracy is unauthorized distribution. Amazon here was authorized to distribute the material; they are in trouble if and only if the authorization was somehow revoked when the price reached zero.

My point that there was no real loss is tangential to the actual case.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#13

Post by threepointone »

leerpm wrote: post #7

There may be a start-up idea here: an application to allow authors to easily monitor changes to their ebook prices?

Sounds more like a feature in a bigger app, but yes, I agree with you. There's something there.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#14

Post by ck2 »

Who sells in a marketplace where someone else sets your price for you automatically without your approval?

Amazon isn't a distributor in this case any more than the person who owns the tent at a fleamarket allows people to sell underneath it.

In any case, Amazon's automatic algorithm to save themselves money from having to pay humans to do it nipped them this time and they owe the author. Do the right thing and settle Amazon. Take it out of the programmer's pay if necessary - better yet their manager who was supposed to review the code before it executed.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#15

Post by MattBearman »

I think Amazon should be made to pay something, although maybe not the full $13k, simply to make damn sure that they sort out their systems and this doesn't happen again.

If Amazon gets off lightly they probably won't change anything, and this could happen to some other unsuspecting author.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#16

Post by cbr »

danssig wrote: post #11
toyg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss…

>Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. I would say it's more like some people walked out of the library with them. The author most certainly did lose something: sales.

> The author most certainly did lose something: sales.

But they didn't lose 6000 sales, they lost however many sales they would have made at $6. So it's tricky to quantify the damages.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#17

Post by toyg »

danssig wrote: post #11
toyg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss…

>Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. I would say it's more like some people walked out of the library with them. The author most certainly did lose something: sales.

No, it's like people read the book, went home, and wrote it down again. The original book is now back in the shop and the publisher is free to sell it.

How can you "lose" a sale that you don't know you'd get? I bet 6000 downloads for an unknown writer of zombie-pulp wouldn't have happened without the £0 price tag. We can argue about it all day, but the fact is that there is no direct loss, and if there is an indirect one, it's still very, very hard to quantify.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#19

Post by illumen »

ck2 wrote: post #14

Who sells in a marketplace where someone else sets your price for you automatically without your approval? Amazon isn't a distributor in this case any more than the person who owns the tent at a fleamarket allows people to sell underneath it. In any case, Amazon's automatic algorithm to save themselves money from having to pay humans to do it nipped them this time and they owe the author. Do the right thing and settl…

'Who sells in a marketplace where someone else sets your price for you automatically without your approval?'

Most people who sell products do. You sell at your wholesale price, and the retailer sets the retail price.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#20

Post by cbs »

toyg wrote: post #9
wccrawford wrote: post #2

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if these were physical books, the law would require that they pay the author. The agreement wasn't that they get to change the price any time they like. The agreement was that they get to match competitors. They violated that.

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss…

Your point only hold up if the _only_ reason for compensation in the case of physical books would be the cost to the publisher to print them.

I'm trying to understand your point as far as intellectual property. Is it your belief that IP should not be compensated for and the only cost of the work should be whatever is necessary to the goods into consumers hands, be it physical or digital distribution?

I'm not trying to debate that particular position on intellectual property with this post, I'm just trying to establish if that is in fact the position you're taking.

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