Very recently, Amazon made a small, barely noticeable
tweak to the way it sells books. And that little tweak has publishers
very, very worried.
The change has to do with what Amazon calls the “Buy
Box.” That’s the little box on the right-hand side of Amazon product
pages that lets you buy stuff through the company’s massive retail
enterprise. It looks like this:
It used to be that when you were shopping for a new copy
of a book and clicked “Add to Cart,” you were buying the book from
Amazon itself. Amazon, in turn, had bought the book from its publisher
or its publisher’s wholesalers, just like if you went to any other
bookstore selling new copies of books. There was a clear supply chain
that sent your money directly into the pockets of the people who wrote
and published the book you were buying.
But now, reports the Huffington Post, that’s no longer the default scenario. Now you might
be buying the book from Amazon, or you might be buying it from a
third-party seller. And there’s no guarantee that if the latter is true,
said third-party seller bought the book from the publisher. In fact,
it’s most likely they didn’t.
Which means the publisher might not be getting paid. And, by extension, neither is the author.
Understandably, both publishers and authors are deeply unhappy about this change.
Who gets to be the default seller in the Buy Box?
Amazon calls the default seller in the Buy Box — the one
who gets the business when a customer clicks “Add to Cart” without
looking for more options — the “Buy Box winner.” It uses an algorithm
to choose a Buy Box winner for each product it sells, prioritizing
sellers who offer low prices, use Amazon Prime, have good customer
feedback, and keep their items in stock. It also requires that items
sold by its Buy Box winners be new, not used, and only approved sellers
may compete for the Buy Box. Sometimes Amazon itself wins the Box, and
sometimes third-party sellers do.
When I asked Amazon about winning the Buy Box with regard
to books, a company spokesperson sent me this statement and requested
it be printed in full:
We have listed and sold books, both new and used, from third party
sellers for many years. The recent changes allow sellers of new books to
be the “featured offer” on a book’s detail page, which means that our
bookstore now works like the rest of Amazon, where third party sellers
compete with Amazon for the sale of new items. Only offers for new books
are eligible to be featured.
However, the Authors Guild points out
that “Amazon does not sell or stream copies of movies and television
programs that are distributed by anyone other than the authorized
distributor,” so the bookstore isn’t working exactly like the rest of Amazon. Update: After
this story was first published, an Amazon spokesperson contacted Vox to
refute the Authors Guild’s statement, noting that Amazon does allow
third-party sellers to win the Buy Box for “other physical media
categories such as DVD’s and CD’s, as well as all other categories on
Amazon” but allowing that “digital content, including ebooks, video, and
music are all licensed directly from the rights holder.”
If the author and publisher aren’t making money from book sales on Amazon, who is?
Here’s what happens to your money when you buy a book
from Amazon itself: A certain percentage of the cost goes to the
publisher. (Amazon’s terms vary from publisher to publisher, but that
share is usually around 60 percent.) The publisher uses that money to pay the author, cover its expenses, and contribute to its profit margins. Amazon pockets the remaining 40 percent for its own purposes.
Here’s what happens to your money when you buy a book through Amazon but from a third-party seller: Amazon gets
15 percent of the total sales price, including shipping, plus a flat
rate of $1.85 per item. The rest goes to the third-party seller. Not a
single cent goes to the publisher, which means nothing goes to the
author — but Amazon has made a profit either way, and without having to
shoulder the expense of shipping and warehousing.
Why aren’t third-party sellers paying publishers?
Amazon’s third-party sellers have to offer new books, not used ones, but in many cases they don’t seem to have bought their books from publishers.
No one is quite sure where their books come from, including, it seems,
Amazon itself. The industry publication Publishers Lunch reports that
Amazon third-party sellers who worry about breaking the rules have reassured one another
that they’re not doing anything wrong by citing the fact that Amazon’s
guidelines “as always, [say] nothing about provenance, nothing about
purchasing through distribution.” It doesn’t matter, in other words,
where the books come from, so long as they are new, unmarked, and sold
cheaply.
A representative I spoke to from one of the big five
publishers theorized that third-party sellers might be selling some of
the free promotional copies that publishers routinely send out to
critics and bloggers just before a book is published — not the galleys,
which are clearly marked “not for resale,” but the free promotional
copies of the finished book, which have no such marking on their covers
and often end up sold to bookstores like the Strand. Others have suggested
that they might be buying books with minor cosmetic damage from
warehouses, just damaged enough to be discounted but not so damaged that
Amazon stops considering them “new.”
Penguin Random House has confirmed on more than one
occasion that it sent a series of emails to third-party sellers
inquiring as to where and how they acquired the Penguin Random House
books they’re selling, and says it shared the results with Amazon.
Amazon, for its part, has assured the industry that it is committed to “removing bad actors.“
Hey, all I see here is that I get easy and convenient access to cheap books. How is this hurting me as a customer?
For Amazon’s customers, this policy change has a few downsides:
1. If the Buy Box winner for a book is out of
stock, it will look to most customers as though the book is out of stock
everywhere. You’ll have to click through several buttons to get to a list of all the sellers
on Amazon that carry the book and find one that’s still stocking it.
Amazon’s algorithm is weighted toward sellers that are known to keep
their books in stock, ostensibly to avoid this very inconvenience — but
judging from the frantic state of Book Twitter, a number of books appear
to have already fallen into this trap, particularly debuts.
Contrary to appearances, new copies of @AdriAnneMS and @begemotike’s SHADOW RUN are still in stock on Amazon!
In many cases, Amazon has eventually updated the Buy Box winner to
replace the out-of-stock third-party sellers, but it often takes days
for change to go through.
Just so you know, you guys, SECRETS, LIES, AND SCANDALS is NOT out of print. THIS is happening. 😦 https://t.co/16lYFocPkB
2. This policy makes it harder for publishers to make money. That makes them less likely to publish risky books. As Authors Guild president Mary Rasenberger told the New Republic,
“The connection that people fail to make is that if publishers have
less money, then they have less to invest. That means they can’t afford
to take risks on the kinds of challenging books they’ve published for
centuries.”
Exciting, artistically interesting new books are not
guaranteed moneymakers. Well-respected middlebrow books are also not
guaranteed moneymakers. Man Booker Prize nominees routinely sell as few
as 3,000 copies.
Right now publishers can afford to subsidize a few prestige titles
every year with the profits they make on the types of books that
generally do sell well — erotica that made a big splash when it was self-published, pulpy thrillers from established authors, and so on.
When publishers make less money, they have less money to
spend on interesting, valuable books that are unlikely to make a profit.
That means those books are exponentially less likely to ever make their
way to you, the reader.
3. This policy is part of Amazon’s ongoing, years-long quest to drive down the price of books. If
Amazon succeeds, fewer people will be able to make their living as
writers. That means fewer and worse books will make it to the
marketplace.
Amazon routinely takes a loss on its book sales,
often charging customers less per book than it pays publishers and
swallowing the difference. It’s a priority for the company to be your
preferred bookseller, even if it has to take a hit; its business model
can accommodate the loss, because it generally makes up the extra
dollars on the last-minute impulse buys customers toss into their
shopping carts. Meanwhile, on the e-book side of things, Amazon’s low
prices help drive sales of its Kindle. But that also means it has set
certain customer expectations: Many Amazon customers now believe that
books should be cheap — cheaper to buy than they are to make.
It is already punishingly rare for writers to make a living wage from their books.
As Amazon drives down the cost of books, it will become ever more rare.
That means fewer people will be able to invest the time and effort it
takes into becoming a writer, which means a lot of talented writers —
especially working-class writers and writers of color — will go unheard.
All of which means that you, the reader, will be missing out on some
excellent potential books.
Yikes
If you want to make sure, then click on the <X new> button below the book. You will then see all of the potential sellers.
THIS IS IMPORTANT, especially for independent authors like me who rely on book sales for our livelihood.
When buying from Amazon, please make sure you’re buying NEW books directly from Amazon whenever possible. Authors do not get paid for third-party or used-copy sales, and that can have a detrimental effect on our ability to keep the lights on.
@julietsemophase@scripturient-manipulator and any other authors following me (I love you all but I’m terrible at remembering names), you might wish to share this with your readers?
Yep, this is a real sucky thing. So PLEASE choose the option to buy directly from the author/publisher, not a third party, otherwise Amazon screws us. Or better yet, buy via Smashwords!!!
Considering Amazons latest moves into physical paperback publishing on demand (yup, it’s in beta, or it was, I got an email about it before Christmas as a candidate for the beta), none of this surprises me. And it’s unfortunate that their publishing services is still one of the best ways to ensure you get paid fairly and that your work has a wide global distribution–provided you are published with them and no one else.
My prospective rates and sales as an author is substantially better than anything I’ve been offered by indie houses, including the houses I worked for as an editor. The rate of pay from ten years ago is not what it is now…and that’s because the indie houses can’t compete with the sale rates of Amazon and the circle just keeps on spiralling.
So y’know, maybe not boycott Amazon?? because some of us do need that revenue and are making our livelihood that way–and trust us some of us feel dirty about it, but we enjoy being able to eat too and you can chew on morals all you want but you’ll still starve to death…but please do ensure that like the above commenters have stated, to ensure you are buying new only, especially for us small time people who don’t have the backing of a publishing giant and years in the industry to protect us.
Buy new. Complain to Amazon about the way they are doing business. Diversify the way you buy. Look for authors who have patreons and publish through other sites like smashwords. And please don’t torrent our work. Part of the reason Amazons prices are so low is to try and compete with the illegal distribution of content.
Save up and spend a little more on the authors you want to see succeed. Money talks, so make sure you’re sending the right message with yours.
So the seller people want to use to ensure the publishers get paid is Amazon itself??
Yep, because then Amazon has to pay the publisher.
Third party sales generate 0 income for the publisher, which means the author gets zilch. The same is true of buying secondhand copies of books from thrift/used book stores, but that’s less damaging to sales because at some point the book has been paid for and the author has seen some revenue from that book.
(Some places like half price books that sell new and used books do pay towards publishers, so if I need to save, I will usually buy from a place like them)
Also, if you can’t afford a book but still really want to read it? Libraries are still a thing and they will buy copies of things you want to read if you request them.
Some authors depending on their contracts even get paid for everytime a book gets checked out or shared through the library cloud. So again, please don’t torrent fiction or distribute it illegally. You might think you’re sticking it to capitalism when you do, but all it really does is make sure the industry finds new ways not to pay content creators.
30, She/her. Used to be DreamingPagan a long time back. Multi-fandom, mostly Black Sails these days but with a lot of Tolkien and funny things interspersed. Complete language and history nerd - be warned. I write fic and occasionally I talk about ships.
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