We’ve all used Amazon. Some of us more than others. I imagine most of us are aware of the site’s option to buy with 1 click, right? I never use it, but I know it’s there. Now Amazon is allowing third party sellers to bid for the buy with 1 click option. Which isn’t new at all. Amazon has allowed this for other products but had excluded books. No longer.
What this means is that a third party could potentially be the first option to buy on the product page rather than the copy of the book Amazon purchased from the publisher.
My problem with this whole thing isn’t with Amazon. It’s with book publishers thinking they’re so much better than every other business. I’ve bought so many different products on Amazon when the first option is a third party seller and there was an option to buy from Amazon too. Publishers publish books to make money. THE END. Let’s not be fooled by their crying over not being the first option on Amazon.
How come publishers aren’t attacking Half Price Books? Their books are being sold by the hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions, and they aren’t seeing a dime from those sales. But Amazon is the bad guy. Like always.
Johnny Reads 
is the author missing out on a royalty due to third party sales? I seem to remember reading somewhere that that was a yes.
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Not necessarily. Third party sellers can also buy their stock of books through legitimate channels.
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Okay. Then it’s fine.
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Not necessarily isn’t the same as no. For those selling books in their millions, this probably isn’t a big deal. but for those locked into Amazon and who only sell a couple of hundred or even a couple of thousand, this has the potential to decimate royalties. You buy a book by Lee Child and resell it – Lee Child isn’t going to miss those royalties it’ll be one in millions. You buy and resell one of my books – that’s one in tens – and that can start to hurt. If the ‘you’ doing the selling is also someone I sent a book to for review – then not only am I missing the royalties once, I’m losing the cost of the book in total as well because I would have had to buy and post the book myself. In other words – the big boys will be fine, but the smaller press and the independents are going POTENTIALLY to lose out big time.
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Reblogged this on Cabal of Horror.
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When I first started reading this I thought it was going to be a horror show for self-publishers. I was glad to see that it dealt more with the plight of publishers. Not that I’m happy for them to have to now deal with this. I think some of the things that Amazon does is a bit sketchy. For instance, if I use their fulfillment by amazon as a seller and you are selling the same item there is a chance that I will get paid for your item (albeit they are exactly the same) and if that item comes back it’s on me. Not you. Even if your shipped broken product. Because we signed up for it.
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It does deal with self published books. If a seller has stock of that book it could potentially be the first choice on the product page before Amazon’s POD copy. Also, if you use FBA they are taking you out of the entire process and allowing you to access their customer base. If that’s not a good deal, then don’t use it.
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