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Amazon & Used Books II: Bezos Strikes Back
theodp writes: "Last week's call for authors to de-link Amazon from their sites has reportedly prompted Jeff Bezos to fire off a letter to all Amazon Marketplace sellers, asking them to help out by sending e-mail on Amazon's behalf in response to the Guild's call for Amazon to stop placing prominent used book ads on each title's main web entry and soliciting new books purchasers to resell their books through Amazon shortly after purchase.
Bezos wants everyone to be 'super-clear' that Amazon.com is supportive of and good for authors, indicating that Amazon's steep discounting of new titles and royalty-less sales of used books are two examples of how Amazon helps the book industry and
authors. Good to see Jeff's found a new cause, since it looks like he's done with up patent reform."
"Bezos wants everyone to be 'super-clear' that Amazon.com is supportive of and good for authors," - so that's why the Guild of authors wrote:
"Amazon's practice does damage to the publishing industry,.."?
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Libraries already pay extra for books because they loan them out (at least they do in the U.K. anyway).
Video Game cheats, hints a
Quality paperback and hardbacks cost about the same to produce. What you see in lower paperback prices is what is called by economists "price discrimination," that is, an attempt to cherry pick those willing to pay a higher price (hardback buyers) and still include those who only are willing to pay a lower price (those willing to wait for the paperback version.)
The only way to get paperbacks for $5 is to print them on crappy paper, with the cheapest binding, or go the Dover route and forbid bookstore returns.
And as for profit margins, 99% is laughable. Funny, on this marvelous invention called the Internet it is possible to look up profit margins on publishing companies and find out, for instance, that Penguin books, for instance, had a 12.9% operating margin in 2001. This with what they call a "record year" on the bestseller lists.
They don't pay extra for them in the U.S. I used to work at one and we frequently ordered new books from Amazon, as a matter of fact. They (this was roughly two years ago) gave libraries a nice discount on top of the discount they already gave for anyone who happened to buy the book.
Everyone seems to think the authors are trying to outlaw used books. They are doing no such thing. They don't like the fact that Amazon is selling used books almost immediately when the new ones go on sale (and I can understand their frustration with this). The Guild's response is to encourage it's members not to link to Amazon, but rather one of the other online bookseller that does no do this. It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Why send people to site where they may end up buying a copy of your book used (and you will get no money from it) when you can send them to another online bookseller where this isn't likely to happen? They don't like how Amazon is doing business, so they are trying to send their business elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
This is not necessarilly true. There are five states of books not in the hands of happy readers: new on the shelf; in the trash/recycle bin/fireplace; bought new then put on sale as used; considered non-sale by the store, with cover ripped off to prevent resale, and eventually either destroyed, sold in that state for dirt-cheap, or returned to distributor/publisher (rare); and finally, written off as a non-sale to the publisher, then sold in new condition anyways at dirt-cheap.
The first two conditions we don't care about.
Right of First Sale protects the 3rd condition (bought new, resold used). This is still, probably, what most used sales are.
The worrysome issue is when the new-store retailer has written-off the book as damaged, destroyed, or after a limited time, unsold. Sometimes the retailer and publisher can negotiate a lower royalty rate for unsold books (books are never returned anymore because shipping costs are too prohibitive; this is unlike cds, b.t.w.)...this results in the bargain-bin setups at BN and Borders.
But when the retailer has written off a book as unsold and the publisher doesn't want it back (as noted, they never do), the retailer is supposed to damage or destroy the book themselves. The author's guild is worried that Amazon may be taking books they've written off as unsold and selling them as used anyways (which is probably illegal under breach of contract, or at least really really bad form). This results in amazon selling new-quality merchandise at no royalty to distributor or publisher (or author), directly in competition with still selling the book at full price as it is still in their system as being "in print", but would require ordering from the publisher again.
Or at least, that's my interpretation of the guild's concerns...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe