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
#2Amazon 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.
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#3Amazon 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.
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Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#4Amazon 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.
I'm sure their agreement had more than one clause. It could very well contain a set of clauses that limits amazon's liability to whatever it collects from customers (in this case, $0).
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#5Amazon 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.
I'm sure their agreement had more than one clause. It could very well contain a set of clauses that limits amazon's liability to whatever it collects from customers (in this case, $0).
Let's not confuse what's right with the law. The two are only occasionally related.
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#6Amazon 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.
I'm sure their agreement had more than one clause. It could very well contain a set of clauses that limits amazon's liability to whatever it collects from customers (in this case, $0).
Maybe, but lets be honest the price they would have to pay for this is what a few seconds profit? Compared to the risk of losing the next great author because they get scared away that is a very small price to pay.
Not to mention that he may have a case for piracy for commercial gain, in which case Amazon is liable for $300000 a copy (which, at 6000, is more money than most authors will ever see).
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#7There may be a start-up idea here: an application to allow authors to easily monitor changes to their ebook prices?
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#8You list with them, you play by their rules. They're not locking you into their store in anyway shape or form.
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#9Amazon 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 damage is hardly quantifiable (it might actually turn out to be a net positive in the end, given all this free publicity).
The digital world is funny like that.
EDIT: this is not to say that Amazon shouldn't be held accountable for their mistake, if there is a breach of contract involved; just that it doesn't matter whether there were 6000 downloads or 60.
Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away
#10Amazon 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…
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.