Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by eropple » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 3:58 PM UTC

danssig wrote: post #45

slowpoke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would say it's more like some people walked out of the library with them. No. If anything, they are walking out of the library with a perfect copy of the book, while the library still has the original. Nobody looses anything. People need to stop clinging to paid distribution of content as a business model. It's obsolete.

But your model isn't right either. An author has to have a way to be compensation and depending on charity (of thieves no less) just isn't valid. The book has value or it doesn't. If it has no value then it shouldn't be created.

The unpleasant implication of slowpoke's "model" (and it's really just recycled Stallman nonsense) is that they'd really do it for the love of the art, and to hell with such ephemeral things as "eating".

Guess they have to get a job or something.

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

#62

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:21 PM UTC

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…

>The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss, the damage is hardly quantifiable (it might actually turn out to be a net positive in the end, given all this free publicity). //

Legally you're wrong.

This is the reason why you can't call giving away someone else's copyright work on purpose "non-commercial". If you enter the market with the same product for free you interfere with the commercial operation of the rightful owner who is selling for a higher price. You can't generally sell a book to a person who has already been given that book for free. Moreover the effort in promoting the book has been lost without reward.

Now granted it might work out that giving away the product for free acts to increase overall sales. But it's not Amazon's place to make that call (the Bit-torrent/bootlegger defence I suppose you'd call this). Amazon infringed on the copyright of the author.

IMO the legal system should come down hard on a company that is trying to leverage copyright for their own gains whilst simultaneously denying the creator of copyright works the reward of their labours.

Consider a converse situation, that I take a product from a distributor (Disney say), duplicate it and give it away for free. How many millions of pounds do you think I'd be on the hook for?

Incidentally I'm not saying that is right, I'm saying that's how copyright law plays out.

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

#63

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #49

nknight wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were authorized to distribute the content according to the terms of the contract . It appears they distributed the content outside of those terms. I'm sure there's language to ensure they won't get hit with damages, but they should be.

And the same contract says that they are not liable for damages in the event of an error. The contract does not support a claim for money, that case is a moral one rather than a legal one.

So the question then is can you disclaim copyright infringement in this way, did Amazon do it right?

They'll probably do the corporate thing and give $50k to a lawyer to check the contract rather than giving compensation for the costs they have forced on their client.

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

#64

Post by jerf » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

Never use metaphors for online issues. They simply don't apply, the online world has far too many differences from the physical world for them to ever work. It isn't like "leaving books around a library", it is like "digital online content was accidentally priced for free when it shouldn't have been and some people downloaded them". This isn't such a complicated situation that we need metaphors to navigate the morass, not that they ever help anyhow since it inevitably causes people to get distracted by arguing over which inapplicable metaphor is more accurate instead of simply addressing the question at hand.

What really matter here is the breach of contract. The contract specified when Amazon can drop the price, that condition was not met, they dropped the price. Apologies or blaming computers are not what is called for here.

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

#65

Post by ck2 » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

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.

Actually, if you go by RIAA settlements and court verdicts, non-physical items are actually worth exponentially more than physical.

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

#66

Post by jobu » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

dminor wrote: post #48

jxcole wrote: post #43

Am I the only one who read this and though, well that's sad for the author, but isn't Amazon asking for too much in general? I mean, we're talking about e-books. I imagine I could probably make an online bookstore that sells ebooks and gives the author 75% of the selling price. Amazon is taking $5.99 and offering him 35 or 70 cents. I fail to see how it could remain in business with the relative ease with which you c…

They're offering 35% or 70%, not 35 or 70 cents.

35% is a terrible rate for an ebook.

You can only get %70 if you charge more than $2.99 and opt-in to Kindle Lending. Does that mean that authors don't get anything for books read through Kindle Lending? That seems terrible if true. Kindle Lending is the reason I finally signed up for Amazon Prime, and I would expect authors to get a cut of that revenue.

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

#67

Post by rick888 » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

It's funny how amazon won't pay for their mistakes, yet sellers in their marketplace are kicked off for much less. If you have over a 1% failure rate, you are warned. If it continues, your account is put on hold and you might even be kicked off permanently. Failure can be a return, refund, or bad feedback (it doesn't matter why).

If a customer says they didn't receive a package and file an A-Z claim, they win 99% of the time, even when the seller has proof of delivery.

I understand that we don't want bad sellers ripping people off, but Amazon should at least hold themselves to the same standards.

They also can't really seem to get their act together. In the past 6 months, every time they make a change to their system, sellers lose orders for weeks. Amazon won't ever admit this of course, but as a seller, I can't chock it up to a coincidence anymore.

It really makes me wonder what kind of code base they are working with.

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

#68

Post by danssig » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

jonnathanson wrote: post #52

slowpoke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would say it's more like some people walked out of the library with them. No. If anything, they are walking out of the library with a perfect copy of the book, while the library still has the original. Nobody looses anything. People need to stop clinging to paid distribution of content as a business model. It's obsolete.

"People need to stop clinging to paid distribution of content as a business model." If there's no money to be made in producing content, then nobody will produce content (aside from financially independent amateurs, in the model of the 18th century novelists). There needs to be some way to monetize the labor and time that goes into the production of art and entertainment. IMO, anyone who claims that paid distribution…

Ads is the one people keep reaching for, but if we continue with this route what will we be advertising exactly?

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

#69

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #16

danssig wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's tricky to figure out the damage, yes, but I think an award of sales times normal royalties would be fair here. If the RIAA went for the number of whole copies distributed times normal sale price times three in their lawsuits I wouldn't find them to be a terrible organization.

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

#70

Post by adestefan » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

elehack wrote: post #24

adestefan wrote: post #8

You list with them, you play by their rules. They're not locking you into their store in anyway shape or form.

Except he was playing by the rules, and got shafted anyway. They erroneously price-matched, making his book free, and depriving him of royalties. Their mistake; his loss.

I'm sure there's an area of the contract that he agreed to when he listed his book that Amazon is not liable for pricing mistakes.

So there's the trade-off: you're listed in Amazon's market that is seen by more people than probably any other e-book market and you're getting royalties directly, but if Amazon screws up, too bad.