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Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

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Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#71

Post by systoll »

sparky_z wrote: post #57
joabaldwin wrote: post #44

Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a new thing, but something I learned to do from this post: https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix... In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to herself as author copies. In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after…

Thanks for chiming in! If you don't mind, I'm trying to understand the exact accounting implications of this for you. In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup? C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or…

According to Amazon, it’s ‘B’.

B & C look the same from outside, of course. You’re not paying retail printing prices, but they might eke out a couple pennies of profit.

For customer sales, the royalty is 60% minus the print fee. The minimum retail price is 5/3 the author price, and still gives the author nothing.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#72

Post by gurchik »

From the author's perspective, this is not expected according to their agreement with Amazon. Unfortunately from the consumer's perspective, this is not surprising at all. Everyone I know has received a "used" item sold as "new, sold by Amazon.com." Whether it's due to commingling, or an attempt to reduce waste, or plain corporate greed, I have no idea. Just saying that if I returned a book on Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon sold to someone else, even if I was the author of the book.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#73

Post by Zircom »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #3

Who returns books?

I just finished returning 15+ books, I purchased the wheel of time series but every single one had a stupid "now an Amazon prime series" badge on the front cover that was not pictured in the display image and they look awful with it.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#74

Post by michaelmrose »

ajross wrote: post #48
Dylan16807 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it? He clearly didn't think it was "still fine" to be sold as "new".

> What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it? Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.

Intended result with made up numbers for purpose of illustration.

Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50.

100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author.

Authors balance sheet

-100 +50 +200

Net +150

What actually happened

-100 +50 +190

Net 140

By re-using the royalty free copies which ought to have been destroyed as damaged they directly took money out of authors pocket and put it into their own whilst dishonoring the spirit of the agreement to pay n dollars per unit.

They didn't bitch about damaged product because such fuck ups come out of Amazon's bottom line whereas a form of theft literally every real publisher would recognize as theft comes out of theirs.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#75

Post by cool_dude85 »

sparky_z wrote: post #9

Before getting pitchforks out, I'd like to see what this person considered "damaged". If - and I know this is a big if - but if it's something extremely minor, such that almost anyone would consider it to be in "like new" condition, then frankly that would be a case of Amazon doing the right thing, rather than pulping a perfectly good book and printing a new one. The fact that this person is apparently not providing…

>Why would a return that is then resold result in a double royalty payment?

This was not marketed as a resold return to the customer, they were told they were buying a new book.

It obviously results in a loss of royalties - the customer goes to buy a new book, no new book is printed. Rather, Amazon sends a returned copy, and the author doesn't get the royalty that's paid when a new book is printed.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#76

Post by joabaldwin »

systoll wrote: post #71
sparky_z wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for chiming in! If you don't mind, I'm trying to understand the exact accounting implications of this for you. In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup? C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or…

According to Amazon, it’s ‘B’. B & C look the same from outside, of course. You’re not paying retail printing prices, but they might eke out a couple pennies of profit. For customer sales, the royalty is 60% minus the print fee. The minimum retail price is 5/3 the author price, and still gives the author nothing.

Yep, it’s B, supposedly sold without a markup, although I’m sure someone must be making some money. They do limit the number of author copies to 1000 (per year I guess? Haven’t checked), so that people don’t just abuse that and sell all outside of Amazon.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#77

Post by cool_dude85 »

Judson wrote: post #64

The realities of a warehouse operation make this inevitable (I’ve run an 8-figure/yr online distributor). Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Folks just click “damaged” to get a refund and Amazon has to have warehouse workers, not professional book inspectors, receive the returns and note their condition. This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagre…

>Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition.

Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy?

>This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.

But not good enough for the author, who loses a royalty payment.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#78

Post by joabaldwin »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #39
beanjuiceII wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where does he say that? if someone buys his books in bulk to sell them, isn't that the initial buy?

Not if it's a special author's copy with no royalties. It's not completely clear what's going on, maybe returns cause other issues, but he's claiming no royalties from either sale. If he's not just confused that's a big deal.

Correct, author copies have no royalties, that’s what I was claiming there. So if Amazon resells those after I return them, it won’t register as a new print. Expanded more on it on another reply to this thread.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#79

Post by jarjar2_ »

pbnjeh wrote: post #52
takoid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ThriftBooks is great most of the time but the quality can be quite hit-or-miss.

I've had a few outright duds with them, but mostly their product has been as expected. EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items not infrequently get damaged during transit. I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box. The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD h…

Hrm. I've never ordered anything from them beyond books. I'm at 58 books so far this year from them, and they've always arrived as I've ordered them. I've had a couple of books listed as new come in boxed packaging instead of the plastic envelope. Nothing ripped or crushed so far.

I wish they did ship a little faster. As it's usually 10-12 days from when I order it before I get it. Then again I'm usually getting free shipping and if I'm not I'm only paying $1.60 for media rate, which is a hell of a deal.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#80

Post by joabaldwin »

michaelmrose wrote: post #74
ajross wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it? Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.

Intended result with made up numbers for purpose of illustration. Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50. 100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author. Authors balance sheet -100 +50 +200 Net +150 What actually happened -100 +50 +190 Net 140 By re-using the royalty free copies which…

That’s exactly it (I’m the author). Now, regarding the “bomb” comment, it certainly was that—I saw someone post about this and wanted to see if I was suffering from the same issue, so I’m glad I planted those bombs to verify. And I see nothing wrong with doing it as an exposé on social media, because that’s how you get Amazon support to freak out and look at your case and solve the problem. It’s not an isolated incident, and I wish I could just say “fuck Amazon,” but being my first time publishing, I have no option here other than use Amazon or I’ll lose 95% of my sales. It’s unfortunate that I have to work with people who do this, but it’s just the reality for 99% of self-published authors.
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