This article reads like a poorly researched PR piece for the publishing industry.

They're not really saying anywhere.the books by third party sellers are fake. Then they must have come from the publisher legitimately one way or the other and hence the publisher must have been paid. The only difference is how much he was paid. It's likely some country branch of the publisher cut a deal to unload some books for cheap to a distributor and that's coming back to Amazon. So the publishing executive in that market made lot's of revenue in his scorecard at the cost of cannibalizing Amazon account seller's business.

This sort of thing is quite common and perfectly legal.

Unless you're buying a relatively new book, book buying on Amazon is an incredibly painful experience. I've given up almost altogether. There are a number of outright fakes, but the main problem is the massive number of really crappy print-on-demand OCR/scanned books.

The only way I do continue to buy books on Amazon if they're sold by Amazon and fulfilled by Amazon, which it sounds like that will generally be less findable. It simply isn't worth the trouble. I have no sympathy for the publishers - I have no problem at all buying used books - but there is more to the story.

A few years ago, I started losing trust in Amazon as what was once a straight forward transaction began to look more and more like an algorithmic semi-scam. I would look for some item and the featured results would be 20% or more than the same item in some duplicated form.

For many years Amazon's business model was to generate revenue off of straight forward sales transactions. Today it has shifted to rents and extractions. Prime is perhaps a good first example. Using it complicates transactions and Amazon can arbitrage the eligibility and price of items to extract additional revenues on the fly.

However, textbooks are the prime of example of Amazon's new more extractive business practices. It's not just that Amazon wholeheartedly adopted the text book industry's obscene pricing models rather than disrupting them. Nor is it just that Amazon has extended the obscene pricing to rent out ebook versions of textbooks. No, the best expression of Amazon's newly found extractive business practices is in the availability and pricing of used older editions of textbooks on its platform. In the old days, Amazon was a steady source for fairly inexpensive obsolescent editions of current textbooks. Once Amazon seriously entered the textbook business, that seems to have changed and bargains available with deliberate search have disappeared.

There really was a change of mindset with Amazon Prime. It was a manifestation of a business cultural value that all customers are not equal as individuals. Maybe it is possible to position an ecommerce site as an upscale brand while still selling Schenzhen's spinners and iPhone cases and unlisted electronics of dubious safety for $0.01.

As I've lost trust in Amazon, I've started using Ebay for online purchases. Ebay is orders of magnitude more transparent. Transparency is a good way to create trust. It helps that Ebay's business model is not grossly misaligned with my wallet. It helps that the marker of trust is between buyer and seller rather than stars based on customer reviews. A seller with 10,000 transactions and 99% positive rating is a better indicator of an item's quality than 4 stars based on twenty reviews.

How is ebay better? The only counterfeit item I have bought on either site was a dell laptop charger on ebay a few years ago. It used to overheat and stopped working after only a few weeks use. Another time a product was never shipped and I had to go through the paypal dispute resolution process which worked fine if a little slowly. I'd have thought ebay would suffer from the same problems as amazon with counterfeit products and fake reviews and then it also has the whole shill bids problem. I moved over to amazon for almost all my online shopping and so far have not had a problem though I appreciate that may just be luck on my part.

I'm not sure how / what these folks who keep apparently getting scammed are buying, but I have ~200 books purchased in my history with 3/4 of them most likely used, and none have been fakes.

I constantly buy / add to my wishlist older hardcover books I'm interested in reading and will come back and check when the used price is low and buy either Like New / Very Good / Good and have been satisfied with the results. Nothing like getting a 800+ page hardcover book with barely any use delivered to your door for 6-10$.

If one is worried about quality don't by anything used that is less than Very Good IMO.

I don't disagree that a person can buy shoddy goods on either site. The difference for me is that as a marketplace, Ebay is more transparent. The article points out a specific instance of Amazon's opacity where the buyer has no information about the actual seller.

Maybe the merchant is Amazon itself and hence a fairly reliable seller. Maybe the merchant is some other less reliable seller. Maybe the the merchant has the item in stock. Maybe it does not. Maybe the price shown is in the buyer's interest. Maybe it is not the same as someone else might see.

The difference for me, is that in general Ebay has structured its business so as to create little incentive for manipulating individual transactions in an extractive way. As a marketplace, Ebay tends to provide consistent and reliable information to buyers (as well as sellers) regarding price and the transaction history of the counter party.

Now all this is with the caveat that I generally use Ebay as a replacement for Amazon and therefore am not heavily invested in the auction process. Usually the only time a enter an Ebay auction over buy-it-now is when the auction is ending soon and there's not much bid activity and the item is on the long tail...I don't use usually use Ebay to buy high demand or high ticket items via auction.

But again, for me it is that I find Amazon's purchase process is often untrustworthy. Essentially, Amazon's search is broken when measured against my economic interests (and great when measured against Amazon's). In short, Amazon has become an adversarial marketplace where my adversary is the house. Ebay's auctions are adversarial, but I'm not up against the platform and the economics of the transaction for me do not depend on how the platform leaks information...and there are few incentives for Ebay to evolve in that way and many incentives for Amazon to do so.

I was with you until eBay! Unless something dramatically changed, eBay invented the shitty reseller business model when it began catering to power sellers and ignoring the multitude of scams in the market.

Ebay has evolved during the same time periods that Amazon has evolved, though my observation is that in the opposite direction toward increasing trust via transparency in the market. On Ebay, increased transparency is aligned with the common interest of trustworthy power sellers. Amazon has one power seller and increased opacity is in its interests.

I don't doubt that this is your experience. Personally, I've benefited greatly from buying used books from third parties on Amazon. Unusual books that are long out of print, useful for my research, for $5 shipped? It's great. And so far, they've all been in near-perfect condition - usually books sold by libraries that have never or rarely been checked out.

I have no problem with the quality of used books, when they are what they say they are. I buy anything old or unusual on AbeBooks for the most part, which apparently is part? owned by Amazon. There are some POD results, but they seem to be mostly correctly labeled and to not flood the marketplace nearly as much. I own a lot of books that were printed in the 1800s but still in great shape.

This phenomenon is definitely most prominent in the market we're talking about (though I've also seen it with much newer books), so to take an example, consider Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Da...

The first print copy in my search results is titled "History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia - Frederick The Great-Complete Table of Contents: 22 Volumes". This is literally a print-on-demand copy of the table of contents. The first reviewer also notes that it's "hard to read." It also costs $10. The next print edition is also a POD of the table of contents. The next is a print edition of the "first volume" (what the first volume actually consists of is not mentioned; the work was published in different editions with different volume counts) by Forgotten Books, which is a relatively OK POD publisher. (I would buy it if truly desperate, but not normally.)

Continuing to go through this search, I can't confidently find a single good copy of any volume. I think maybe the "Elibron Classics" copy of Volume X is good. Some of the POD are better than others. Some of them are clear scams - for example, the "Works of Thomas Carlyle" for $14.40 that claims to be his complete works...in 336 pages. (Carlyle's actual complete works would fill quite a bit more space.) I think the $1500 one on page 2 might be good, but there's no picture.

It's not that good, cheap copies of the book don't exist. I recently bought a full set of an 1900 edition for $80, which was still higher than I liked, but finding full used sets can be difficult. Here's tons of copies of "real" volumes: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Carlyle&so...

This is an especially egregious example, since I don't think the book has been reputably printed since 1969 and it's in the public domain; for most books the bad stuff is merely interleaved, instead of being almost all you can find.

That sounds frustrating. But thanks for the reminder about Abe's.

Didn't Amazon acquire Abe's like 10 years back?

yes, they were acquired in 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbeBooks

I'm not saying this accounts for the entirety of the crappy print-on-demand issue you're seeing, but it might account for some: a lot of big publishers make their backstock be POD if it's old enough.

For instance, at the bookstore I work at, when we order older Penguin Classics books directly from Penguin Random House, there's at least a 50% chance that we're going to get crappier POD copies from them, the publisher. We list our store's inventory on Amazon, and there have been a few times when a customer returned such books to us, angry that we sent them a POD copy, even after I explained they're actually the copies the publisher sent.

That said, we sometimes order books off Amazon for a customer when they're from a publisher we're not planning on placing an order with anytime soon, and it's downright appalling how many sellers send beat up used books as "new" books, or send falling-apart books as "used" books. Can't say we've seen a lot of POD books come in that way, unless they're from tiny publishers who do most/all of their books that way.

You must be in a different market niche than me. I buy a lot of books and I've had no issues at all, even from third-party sellers of old books.

I haven't had bad experiences with books on amazon, but amazon sold me a charger with a fake Intertek mark (Intertek is an UL competitor). When I told amazon their response was to refund the purchase (good), but continue selling the charger (um, are you fucking kidding me?)

product: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013US9FFY

Intertek's statement: http://www.intertek.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=34359...

Shameless plug for the Friends of Washoe County Library, to which I have a personal connection and can attest to their books being 100% real (and cheap!). Selection probably ain't great (it relies on book donations, and it only includes the books with high estimated value; the cheaper books are sold in-person by the bag), but it's certainly a start.

I honestly don't understand how Amazon is still a thing in the US. At least hn and Reddit discussions make it seem like there are a lot of fake products being sold. Is it extremely overblown?

In Germany I've never had this problem and never heard of others having it.

I guess this goes to show how unrepresentative online commentary can be, and how easily unrepresentative info can distort our mental model of the world.

Far from "not still being a thing", Amazon is absolutely massive in the US, and usage continues to grow at a fast clip. I've never had a problem with fake goods, and I've never met anyone in person who has. Then again, I buy primarily from Amazon or the manufacturer selling on Amazon. It might be because the UI pushes third party sellers.

It is likely the same people in every thread complaining about the issues they find in some niche book market most people don't care about. They are likely telling the truth but it also probably doesn't affect that many people.

I would agree that the problem decreases with the popularity and recency of the book. If you're talking about a newly published bestseller, which is what I imagine most people buy, your chances of running across a fake are pretty small in my experience.

I would be afraid that this could change that, though - especially when e-book editions are released concurrently, it takes only a modicum of effort for a scammer to pirate the book and produce a realistic looking fake. (The advantage here, I suppose, is at least the presence of an official e-book means a professionally edited fake, rather than what you tend to see for out-of-print/old books.) Part of what makes that experience so much smoother is generally speaking, right now, if you go search for a new and/or very popular book, you'll be buying from the publisher or from Amazon.

How would you know that you didn't receive a counterfeit​?

If I can't tell the difference, does it matter to me?

Personally, I've transitioned to the library and local bookstore model for my book purchases.

i wish there was a setting for this. i really don't like the third party system on amazon.

Do you actually buy things on Amazon? Have you bought things from third party sellers? Maybe third party sellers aren't selling fake books yet, but no doubt they will be soon.

I spends thousands of dollars a year on Amazon, and I simply won't buy from third party sellers because they're notorious for selling counterfeits, having terrible shipping, problematic returns, etc. It's easier to avoid them altogether than it is to go through the hassle and disappointment of dealing with the bad ones, and there are a lot of bad ones. On top of that, Amazon apparently just doesn't care - I've seen product pages where 50% (or more) of the reviews claim they got a counterfeit that didn't work, yet the counterfeit seller(s) is still the default option.

The third party seller program has completely undermined the trust I had in Amazon. In the past I'd buy on Amazon because I could trust I was getting a legitimate product with a solid return policy that would arrive on schedule in a few days. All of that disappears with third party sellers.

If I can't find an item sold directly from Amazon (which is getting harder to discern), then I don't buy it on amazon.com.

I think the concerns of the "publishing industry" also apply to authors that self-publish on say, Amazon's CreateSpace.

How? As long as it is not piracy, how are they affected?

Here are some quotes from the article:

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. -- Some of the comments in this thread link to pictures of counterfeit books.

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. -- This would cost the author a sale. Many shoppers don't realize that the Buy Box is only one merchant out of many.

This policy is part of Amazon’s ongoing, years-long quest to drive down the price of books. -- See the App Store for the endgame of race-to-the-bottom prices.

How would an offer which is out of stock win the buy box? I'm pretty sure that if there's at least one seller with stock, that the buy box would show one of them.

Did you read the article? This was mentioned and multiple tweets were quoted.

Yes, I did. And followed the links in the Tweets. The article suggests that it's possible that the buy box winner is out of stock, whilst at least one seller (Amazon or a third party seller, e.g. the publisher) is in stock. The tweets don't assert that. The links and screenshots referred to by the tweets also demonstrate no such thing.

Specifically, regarding the tweets:

- One of the links is to an Amazon page. The winner of the buy box when I open the page is 'In stock'

- The other link is to a HuffPo article, which contains some screenshots. The screenshots include buy boxes, but none of the screenshots show a buy box that's been won by an out-of-stock seller.

Piracy/counterfeiting is a real concern

There's a potential of grey market imports. If a publisher has a lower quality, but much cheaper, product for one market, and a higher quality more expensive product for the US market, buyers should have the choice, but should also know what they're buying.

Publishers use ISBN #s to differentiate the quality and content of their books today. Unless the publishers are trying to deceive consumers by using the same ISBN # for significantly different quality copies of a book then I don't see how this is a new risk to consumers.

Adding to this, if a seller on Amazon sends you a different ISBN than the one you ordered, you can return it, because that's not what you ordered.

Those cheaper copies for non-US markets are what's typically called (at least in the textbook world) as "international" editions. They're not allowed to be sold on Amazon, as per Amazon's policies. It's a shame too, because textbooks are usually so very expensive.

And as noted elsewhere, they have different ISBNs than the US editions, so if a seller send and int'l edition when you ordered a US edition, they did not send the book you ordered and the ISBN discrepancy proves that, so you should return it and complain to Amazon.

Why? Unless the cheaper product is of an inferior quality than the more expensive product, then it is capitalism trying to route around an artificial cost.

I would not be happy if a publisher would make such things. I mean there's mostly a hardcover and a paperback version, yes. but if they actually make books in lower qualities for others markets, that would be hilarious. why should somebody from a poorer market only have access to bad quality products? isn't this some sort of discrimination?

> why should somebody from a poorer market only have access to bad quality products

It would be even worse if customers in the poorer market only had access to products they can't afford. The important thing IMHO is that the lower quality version also has a lower price, and that, in case of re-import, there's a way for customers to know.

Price discrimination, yeah. You make cheap versions of a product for people who are very price sensitive- that is, people without much money. You still make a profit, they get a version of the product they can afford.

I did this with math textbooks in college. You can buy "gray market" books, which are versions made for foreign markets but bought by resellers and reimported to the US. They're the same exact book, but printed without color, on cheap paper in a cheap binding. This was perfect for me, since they were also much cheaper than the US edition.

If anything, the discrimination was going the other way. The only way to get a cheap copy of the book was to buy it off the gray market- the punisher wouldn't sell the cheap editions inside the US.

In a country like India, we had eastern economy and similarly other subsidized editions. If a book costs 100 USD, it is beyond range of most students, as this crosses their monthly budget.

So, while arbitrary these barriers have the place till we have movement of people.

They offer no conclusion on how sellers can materialize thousands of copies of a book out of thin air.

"Not a single cent goes to the publisher" can only be true if they are selling illegal copies printed somewhere else, which I imagine would be extremely easy to spot. If they are buying 1) "slightly used" books, the publisher and author have already been paid, 2) "not for resale" copies, why on earth would the publisher print _thousands_ of promotional copies? Such nonsense.

Illegal copies are also a rampant problem on Amazon, though, so this increases the odds that the big Buy Button ships you a counterfeit.

https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256

https://www.ft.com/content/5dba91b0-e1c7-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e...

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...

We've had at least 5 books counterfeited on Amazon. In each case the counterfeit inventory replaced our inventory and owned the Buy button.

> They offer no conclusion on how sellers can materialize thousands of copies of a book out of thin air.

Acquiring used books and selling them as new. (Obviously, its not out of thin air, but that's not at all required for the problem.) That's at least one way.

> "Not a single cent goes to the publisher" can only be true if they are selling illegal copies printed somewhere else, which I imagine would be extremely easy to spot.

By whom? It might be easy to spot that it was a lower quality work if you compared it to the genuine article, but that doesn't really tell you that its a counterfeit vs. a problem somewhere in the legitimate supply chain that resulted in a low-quality run. Without a genuine article to compare against, there's no way to distinguish it at all from the publisher just doing low quality work to cut costs.

> "slightly used" books, the publisher and author have already been paid

They haven't been paid for each copy that was sold to the end purchaser as "new"; both the end purchaser (who isn't getting what they paid for) and the publisher (who isn't getting their share of the transaction the end purchaser intended to make) are victims.

Are you suggesting that publishers should get paid _again_ for every transaction involving used books? That's part of the nonsense.

> They offer no conclusion on how sellers can materialize thousands of copies of a book out of thin air.

Claimed, but unverified stock? Print-on-demand counterfeiting.

Though they don't need to materialise books out of thin air. They can buy up used books and mark them as new, for instance.

I think it would not be that hard to counterfeit a Harry Potter book, print a few thousand copies in China and put them on Amazon. Or is there some way of counterfeit proofing in books?

I think it would be difficult. You'd have to get copies of the book's content and cover art that are suitable for print and then find a press willing and able to create copies that are indistinguishable from the originals. Now you have bought and paid for 10k or more books sitting in China or some place where you think you're mostly safe from copyright enforcement. You'll have to ship those books to Amazon's warehouse and hope Amazon doesn't realize what you're doing and hope the publisher doesn't look for these kinds of scams and have your inventory confiscated while they file criminal charges against you. You're also hoping that consumers don't realize their copies aren't the same quality they expected and start negatively reviewing you... and for how much profit?

I'm not sure about the volume, but I have encountered this relatively frequently on Amazon. To be fair, is is less common on in-copyright books, but it is a problem.

Finding a press isn't a problem for these people. There are tons and tons of such outlets and some of them are apparently less reputable or more willing to look the other way than others. On-demand printing has completely changed the game.

I think one way of getting around the "Amazon caught on" problem is by having many, many "different" sellers selling from your same inventory. The reviews aren't a big problem, because Amazon will show the same reviews for different versions of the same book - even if it has different sellers, or is a different translation, or a different edition. (Ignoring all this, this makes a a HUGE pain when trying to decide which translation of a book to buy; normally I don't care much about edition, but if it's a foreign language work I want to find out what translation people prefer.)

Generally at least you get a poor-quality of the book, but sometimes the scam descends to the level of e.g., printing and binding the Wikipedia article of the book.

As I mentioned above, I have almost completely given up on buying books on Amazon because of these problems. Unless it's Sold By Amazon and Fulfilled by Amazon, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I think you're right, it's not exactly rare to have these kinds of problems on Amazon.

Here's an interesting example: Stroustrup's "A Tour of C++".

A purchaser warns: "Buyer beware: Amazon is selling counterfiets": https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R26ANHFODF42VE/re...

Notice the top comment on the review is from Stroustrup:

"Thanks for warning others about this appalling fake. I'm shocked. After seeing your explanation, I have contacted Addison Wesley."

I'm not sure if the books were really outright fakes or just a "print on demand" of very poor quality. I wouldn't be very happy either way though as a customer.

> Amazon will show the same reviews for different versions of the same book - even if it has different sellers, or is a different translation, or a different edition. (Ignoring all this, this makes a a HUGE pain when trying to decide which translation of a book to buy; normally I don't care much about edition, but if it's a foreign language work I want to find out what translation people prefer.

It's even worse -- Amazon will show "This book is available on Kindle" and link to a completely different translation's Kindle version. They are not equivalent.

It is easy to create perfect covers via Photoshop for less than a couple hundred bucks. Content for ultra popular books should be easy to get as well in great condition.

This is a long article that confuses the issue. The root of the problem, if it even exists, is that some sellers sell bootleg copies on Amazon. That is what the article should be about rather than the buy box.

For my recent books, there have been third-party sellers that materialize almost instantly, before any of them could have possibly received a copy. They are probably using merchant-fulfillment, where the merchant holds the inventory and is responsible for shipping. Most of these are probably legit, because they can buy from a distributor on-demand (probably CreateSpace, i.e. Amazon, which is the same company that prints my book) and resell them. But there are dozens of sellers, so I have no idea which are legit.

PDFs of my Kindle version have also shown up immediately on download sites. It would not be hard to make bootleg copies on-demand, list them, and ship them to customers. Not all Amazon customers use Prime, and may be willing to wait a week or two. To get Prime status, the sellers would have to use FBA and ship inventory to Amazon.

Note that this is how every other product on Amazon works, and there have been plenty of complaints about counterfeit products: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-p...

Do you have any evidence of this kind of copyright violation for books on Amazon? I can imagine it does happen, but if it happens at any sort of significant scale (say more than e-book piracy) the publishers or the author of this publisher-friendly article would have mentioned it.

The one story I know is this one https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256. There have been a lot more. There are a few different issues the article doesn't touch.

It's been documented, but not at a large scale. Dave Burgess had his book Teach Like a Pirate owned (https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080) and Bill Pollock says on this HN thread that five of his company's books were pirated.

If the experience of other manufacturers/brands are anything to go by (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641), I fear more and more pirates will get into books now that it's possible for them to own the buy box. It might not be a huge problem now, but I predict it's only a matter of time before it becomes one.

I don't, but the article posits that there are thousands of copies of a title sold that don't come from a publisher, so it is implied. They also mention promotional copies but that is no large quantity.

at least 1500 copies in our case.

Here: http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch....

Yes.

> the big five publishers theorized that third-party sellers might be selling some of the free promotional copies… which have no such marking on their covers and often end up sold to bookstores like the Strand.

If these promotional copies already being sold by other bookstores then what's the problem? If they shouldn't be sold then the publishers should clearly mark them as not for sale.

> Others have suggested that they might be buying books with minor cosmetic damage from warehouses…

Presumably these slightly damaged books were originally printed and sold by the publishers too, so what's the problem?

> Presumably these slightly damaged books were originally printed and sold by the publishers

Frequently, those copies are fraudulently written off as destroyed at the cost of the publisher; the publisher didn't make their money off the sale.

> If these promotional copies already being sold by other bookstores then what's the problem?

Being sold in a mom&pop bookstore is a very different case than being sold through the biggest internet retailer.

> If they shouldn't be sold then the publishers should clearly mark them as not for sale.

Sometimes it's the authors who get the promotional copies and attempt to give them out to fans or friendly distributors as a method of marketing; some of whom are dishonest about their reasons for asking for promotional copies.

Not that simple.

This was a terrible article. The complaints have nothing to do with the buy box. I can think of three ways that "publishers aren't getting paid" could be true:

1) Books are stolen

2) Books are counterfeit

3) Books were purchased through "unauthorized" channels, e.g. free review copies

None of these is a problem with the Amazon buy box. We don't complain that "Samsung doesn't get paid when people buy Samsing TVs at Best Buy" and I don't see how this is any different.

I think Amazon is guilty of a lot of shady practices that harm businesses (like co-mingling potentially counterfeit Fulfillment by Amazon inventory with Ships From and Sold by Amazon.com inventory). But this article makes no sense.

> 3) Books were purchased through "unauthorized" channels, e.g. free review copies

I don't see anything wrong with someone reselling a free review copy of a physical book. If you don't want people reselling free review copies, then don't give them out in the first place.

Also, I've heard from multiple authors that issue #2 is definitely still a problem at Amazon.

Oh I absolutely agree, nothing wrong with people selling review copies. My point was that review copies for sale is an entirely separate issue from which seller wins the Amazon Buy Box.

> 1) Books are stolen

> 2) Books are counterfeit

> 3) Books were purchased through "unauthorized" channels, e.g. free review copies

> None of these is a problem with the Amazon buy box.

Perhaps in your experience, but that's not the case. Counterfeiting, at the very least, is an actual current problem on Amazon for all sorts of items, including books.

Used, stolen or grey-market books are also not beyond the pale for unscrupulous sellers.

Yes, Amazon definitely has a counterfeit problem. But that's not a problem with the buy box.

If it were, then Amazon could say to publishers, "We fixed the counterfeit book problem, now customers have to click on another link to buy fakes from third party sellers." But putting counterfeits 2 clicks away instead of one click away isn't actually a solution.

There's a lot to criticize Amazon for. I just thought the linked Vox article was incredibly terrible reporting.

That it isn't a problem with the buy box per se does not mean that them changing how the buy box works isn't hurting publishers.

Your number 2 is definitely not true. Counterfeit books have been sold though that Buy button and may still be.

Yes, and counterfeit books have also been sold through third party sellers who don't have the Buy Box – it's a problem independent of the Buy Box.

The problem is, when counterfeiters become the default in the buy box, it gives them market they wouldn't otherwise have.

If you go to a bootleg site, you expect bootleg books. If you go to Amazon, you expect legitimate books.

The only thing that seems off is the Buy Box Winner being out of stock. If they're out of stock, some other seller should be the Buy Box Winner. Otherwise it misleadingly looks like everyone is out of stock for that title—which is bad for buyers, bad for sellers, and bad for Amazon.

Indeed.

This seems somewhat similar to the issue that often the buy box seller does not ship to the buyer country (but some other seller, e.g. Amazon, would ship).

Soooo... publishers should start labeling their promotional copies as "not for resale" and problem solved?

At least from what the article describes, it really does seem that simple.

And this doesn't even appear to have anything to do with Amazon specifically -- the article even states these promotional copies "often end up sold to bookstores like the Strand".

Counterfeiting is the real problem.

I'm wondering if part of the anxiety is about the used market spilling over into new - a distinction which to most is about the way a book looks and feels rather than its commercial provenance. Nothing really stops a book dealer to list a used book as new if it sufficiently looks like one. And as long as they have enough reputation clout on Amazon, they will short-circuit the publishers' sales chain and win the Buy Box.

> Nothing really stops a book dealer to list a used book as new if it sufficiently looks like one.

Nothing stops them from listing as new even if it doesn't look like one. Its not like anyone is examining the copy in person before buying on Amazon.

> Man Booker Prize nominees routinely sell as few as 3,000 copies.

This was really surprising to me. They link to this article.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-boo...

This only seems to hurt publishers (and maybe consumers, depending on how the Buy Box algorithm is implemented/designed). This also happens to be a boon for third-party resellers.

My grandpa is actually one such possible beneficiary of this (though I don't think he would normally be the default for various reasons). In his retirement, he volunteers with a fundraising organization that supports his county's library by reselling donated books; cheaper books are usually sold by the bag in "book sales" (held adjacent to the library itself), but my grandpa's specialty is actually the Amazon storefront, through which the more expensive books are sold. Since there's no acquisition cost (they're donated), each book can be sold at prices way lower than they could be by for-profit sellers while still pulling in the same or similar net income.

It sounds like the Buy Box algorithm factors in whether a book is consistently in stock, however, which is problematic for him (since nearly all his sales are one-off), and it probably doesn't include non-new products. It's still potentially beneficial if he gets, say, a pallet of new college textbooks or something (which hasn't happened yet AFAIK, but hey, one can dream, right?).

Indie publisher here. I am also a board member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, which has come out against the new Buy Box policy.

The big question on everyone's mind is where the new third-party books are coming from. Here are my personal views:

* Many publishers suspect that the books are not actually new, but rather are used from various sources and are being sold as new. However, there hasn't been any proof that this is a widespread phenomenon. OTOH, there is practically no barrier to a seller making a "new" claim for a used book. The main disincentive is Amazon might punish them if it's discovered or enough readers complain.

* Review copies are being sold as new. I know two publishers who have received complaints about this from readers who purchased a "new" book from Amazon, only to discover that it was marked as an ARC or not for resale.

* Third-party sellers are getting their hands on overstock or returns from retailers that were supposed to be pulped or destroyed. I have heard of two businesses that have operated in this realm, but both appear to be legitimately purchasing overstock as opposed to buying copies that should have been destroyed.

* Third-party sellers are accessing wholesale channels intended for retailers or libraries. These sales are legit, but publishers get less money from them. See the Createspace thread below (first two pages) for a discussion of one case.

* Some of the new books are pirated. This is my personal view that is not widely shared, but I believe this is going to be a big problem going forward, based not only on two documented cases this year (Dave Burgess' pirated copy of "Teach Like a Pirate" and Bill Pollock's "Python for Kids", see links below) but also because it's such a widespread phenomenon elsewhere on Amazon. It's a matter of time before pirates discover it's open season for books, and more and more will rush in using cheap short-run digital or print on demand to own the buy box.

There may be other sources as well. If the books are used and are being sold as such, it's accessed through a wholesaler, or it's overstock sourced legitimately, that's not an issue. But publishers should be concerned if used books and review copies are being sold as new, or pirates are eating their lunch.

1. https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080

2. https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256

3. https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/message/76847#76...

ETA: Wholesale channels bullet and "new" claims details

* Used books means the publisher (and author) got paid. It is an issue between the buyer and seller (and Amazon as the broker).

* Why are the publisher producing so many review copies that this is even possible? And why isn't "review copy" plastered on every page? Why doesn't it have a different ISBN number (or no ISBN at all)? This just screams of publisher incompetence.

* Selling legitimate overstock is not a problem. Additionally the publisher (and author) got paid. Selling "destroyed" books is, again, the publisher being incompetent. Typically a publisher will have the first page or front cover returned to prove it was destroyed.

* Fake books are a legitimate problem, but the articles goes out of its way to say that that isn't happening multiple times.

Outside of fake books, most of these other theories read more like conspiracy and don't make rational sense on the face of it.

* I have no issue with people selling used books. As with any good, if you own it you should be able to resell it.

* Publishers send out review copies to get reviews. I used to mark our review copies but reviewers don't like that. For some, their compensation from whatever source they write for for is the book they review.

* There are numerous entities in the publishing supply chain and always the potential for holes or bad actors.

* We've had five books sold as fakes.

Though shouldn't the issue with used books being sold as new and ARCs being sold as new get sorted out just by customers complaining to Amazon about sellers? And if that doesn't fix it, isn't Amazon's handling of that the real problem, in those cases?

As someone knowledgeable about this stuff, what was the actual buybox policy change? As a third party seller, I've been getting emails from Amazon for years about winning the buybox, so I'm confused about what actually changed recently, since the article made it sound like third parties winning the buybox is a new thing.

The buy box policy has been in place for other categories for years. Only earlier this year did it open up for books. Prior, only the publisher controlled the buy box, although it was possible for sellers of new copies to be listed on the link to the third-party sellers.

Regarding the ARCs marked as such: not every customer will complain to Amazon. Some readers don't care, others complain to the publisher or the seller.

Amazon's handling of inventory has been a problem for a long time. This HN thread talks about commingling issues for products other than books (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641) which is mostly about pirated merchandise. Warehouse workers don't check or Amazon doesn't care. For the ARCs, I think most are fulfilled by the seller as opposed to going through Amazon FBA so there's no way for Amazon to even look at the book. They're going on the seller's word that it's a legit product for sale.

At least five of our titles were counterfeited on Amazon. The counterfeits replaced our main inventory and owned the Buy button.

Bill, did you find out the source of the counterfeits? I know you said earlier it was Createspace for at least one of the titles.

We know the source of only one of the five titles. We're still trying to find details on the other four. That one was CreateSpace.

I don't know if this is only new for books or new in the US or if I somehow hit a trial of this feature, but I've had this buying a music CD from Amazon UK. I hit the usual default "Buy" button in the buy box and the CD was shipped from a third-party seller in another country.

Kind of annoying as it was a Father's Day gift (so the order must have been about a year ago) and the unexpected international shipping meant it didn't arrive until after the day itself. I'm pretty sure there'd been no indication of this on the sale page.

Yes, lately I have bought books at Amazon that were not originals. Even now they sell print outs of ebook only books. Really annoying, takes more time now to make sure you get proper ones.

Isn't selling used goods, but not clearly labelling them as such, potentially illegal in some jurisdictions?

I wonder if this affects createspace books. I don't see how it would, but then maybe I'm missing an angle.

Publishers' lament. Good riddance.

Exactly... in a world where you can self publish both print and electronic versions of books... are publishers adding enough value to justify protection of their profits?

This argument is akin to saying "now that anyone can publish a blog or tweet, what's the point of news places like NYT or WSJ?" I don't believe either negates the needs or benefits of the other. In addition to what others have mentioned, with publishers (just like with established news organizations), you can (usually) expect a certain level of standards and thoroughness with the end product, at the cost of fewer and less diverse works. With self-publishing, you can find end products that might have been passed over by publishers for various reasons (not a big enough market, too controversial, etc). Each is beneficial, each is necessary.

Publishers pay authors up front to write novels. They also provide quality editors and marketing on their dime.

So, yes, there is absolutely value in what the publishers provide.

Author here.

At least, from my experience, they are. No Starch Press went above and beyond when working on my book, and they're currently getting hit hard by the counterfeiting issue.

Not like there's a need to justify anything here, but I'll go over some of what a good publisher does. Multiple waves of editing with an editor who knows you, knows your content, and works with you every step until everybody is happy. Technical review, where they seek experts who ensure the validity and accuracy of the content; just like we developers use code review, good publishers provide tech review. Copy-editing, proofreading, redrawing of graphics, constructive feedback, the list goes on. For an author, all of these steps are quite daunting, but, by then end of the process, the content is far beyond what it was upon initial regurgitation. That's not even considering the amount of marketing they do after release; getting authors radio and podcast interviews, news articles, and book signings at conferences.

Have fun soloing that and still keeping your day job.

They're adding a lot of value. Part of my novel-buying process on Amazon is checking the publisher, specifically because self-published books have such awful writing.

You didn't like "The Martian", did you?

No, I didn't, but in that case the problem wasn't the horrible writing I complain about above. "The Martian" has much better writing than the general run of self-published novels.

Some publishers do, some publishers don't.

This clickbait title explains nothing.

Seems like a natural progression in the survival of the fittest sense.

clickbait title intensifies.