Amazon allegedly resells damaged books
twitter.com
twitter.com
In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to herself as author copies.
In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after I returned them.
From an order of 50 author copies, I returned 14. Packaging was fine, so it wasn’t a problem with how they bumped up during shipping. They were misprinted, or had folded covers (they tear easily after a fold, really bad), some were printed beyond the bleed area (that’s what bleed is for, you can’t be printing beyond it), and a few were printed slightly off angle. One particularly bad copy was even cut an inch smaller than it should’ve been, trimming every single page and cover, text and all.
So yeah, that’s why I returned them. But I do give you that some of those defects would go completely unseen by someone at a warehouse. You flip through the book, all pages seem to be there, but how is a person there supposed to know what the margins of the book look like? But most errors would not pass a regular printing press QC, particularly the damaged covers.
Also, Amazon both prints and distributes these books, so QC is in their hands from the start.
In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup? C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or equal to size of the royalty? D) Sold above cost but with a discount smaller than the size of the royalty? E) Sold at full retail price but without any royalty?
I very much doubt A because then Amazon would basically be operating what amounts to a free vanity press. But maybe they'd throw in a couple as a perk.
I also doubt B because then they would be operating a revenue-neutral vanity press, but maybe it would still be worth it to them if they counted on gettong enough non-author sales to make enough margin to fund the operation.
I also doubt D or E, because if so, then why would anybody order "author's copies" of their book?. Just get your friend to order them for you and reimburse them and you'll come out ahead.
I would guess the answer is C. But in that case, it seems to me that you are getting implicit royalty on those "author's copies", but those royalties are baked into the discounted price rather than being distributed to you later. (I suppose this might also have advantageous tax implications for you on those implicit royalties, compared to the alternative where you just order normal copies and get your royalties later.) Am I wrong about this?
B & C look the same from outside, of course. You’re not paying retail printing prices, but they might eke out a couple pennies of profit.
For customer sales, the royalty is 60% minus the print fee. The minimum retail price is 5/3 the author price, and still gives the author nothing.
I frequently get books that have the errors this author described. It's normal in cheap books. I've even seen those errors in guilt-edged, leather-bound collectible books.
Edit: They also tried to send a replacement, marked it as undeliverable, and charged me for it. I don't think Amazon was always this bad.
They put the shipping label ON the retail packaging. No box! This is FBA. Of course it was scuffed and scraped all to hell.
Personally i think this is a great move that reduces overpackaging and its associated environmental impact
I've chosen to do Amazon's Amazon Day Delivery service several times, but I have stopped doing it, basically without a choice. It's guaranteed to worsen the packaging. They just throw everything in a big enough (normally bigger than it needs to be) box and put a piece of paper in there and call it good. It's just unacceptable. Plus, their incentives for doing so are not good, often non-existent, and you are still paying the full Prime price, which keeps increasing.
If I happen to want a self-published-printed-by-amazon book (ie. not available at any other store), I'll really think twice about it, as the quality is probably total crap. The last one I got had screenshots that were all unreadable (and the main content was mostly in the screenshots, without explaining text otherwise), and looked like it was printed at about 15 dpi.
OOTH, I've never had problems with BN or Bookshop.
> Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed.
Why wouldn't this be true? Why would a return that is then resold result in a double royalty payment? Is that something that happens for traditionally-published books that are returned and resold?
It might have to do with the fact that these particular books were "author's copies" but I don't have enough information about how those work in a print-on-demand context to know whether this actually results in a loss of royalties in this case. Did they pay for them to be printed as a self publisher or were they provided for free as part of a contract with an external publisher? Does Amazon's internal system distinguish between "author" copies" and other orders, or do you just order some copies of your own book via the standard interface? Would the author's replacement copies go through that same system or would they be printed like normal and incur royalties? No idea.
It's not completely clear what's going on, maybe returns cause other issues, but he's claiming no royalties from either sale. If he's not just confused that's a big deal.
"That’s one page out of 600+, I returned 14 books: one was cut to the wrong size (actually cutting the text, like an inch smaller), others had totally bent covers and pages, others were printed beyond the bleed area (offset too far from the max allowed), or printed at an angle."
to me it seems a bit dramatic, if a customer felt that was an issue they'd just get a refund from amazon
Basically this author did a bulk order of his own book from Amazon[1], found something wrong, deliberately returned them and then laid a deliberate trap just to generate exactly this buzz.
[1] Pretty weird to begin with. Marketing copies of your own work are normally part of your contract with the publisher. Why is he getting them retail?
Because he's self-publishing. I can't imagine printers would offer that perk to self publishers, because then you just become a free vanity press.
He clearly didn't think it was "still fine" to be sold as "new".
Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.
Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50.
100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author.
Authors balance sheet
-100 +50 +200
Net +150
What actually happened
-100 +50 +190
Net 140
By re-using the royalty free copies which ought to have been destroyed as damaged they directly took money out of authors pocket and put it into their own whilst dishonoring the spirit of the agreement to pay n dollars per unit.
They didn't bitch about damaged product because such fuck ups come out of Amazon's bottom line whereas a form of theft literally every real publisher would recognize as theft comes out of theirs.
I complained, and they sent another.
That too was scribbled all over, notes on every page.
The book wasn't that expensive, I was a bit annoyed, but it's a rounding error to me, so I just ordered another thinking no way would this happen again, and because I did need it quicker than I cared to go through the service desk again.
The third was also marked on every page.
I complained, and they gave a refund for the 2nd one but not the 3rd... all of them were ruined though, none of them could be gifted (which was my intent), and ultimately I just sent it to landfill / recycling / incineration.
I keep learning, if I actually care about what I receive I avoid using Amazon. They're fine for some things, but the list of things they're fine for seems to be ever decreasing.
All of this was UK btw, YMMV elsewhere and with different categories of goods, etc.
Also, when I got the refund, which took about 20 minutes of my time, the tone was weird "congratulations, we're able to offer you a refund today"... this wasn't a prize, it was crappy goods and you weren't even fully setting me good, I dread to think of the number of refunds for obviously damaged goods are not honoured such that this was worthy of congrats.
Louis Rossmann recently tested some of the highest-rated fuses sold on Amazon. It took over 8A to blow a 2A fuse.
By now I only order there if I can't find a more local alternative, the only remaining area where Amazon is still ahead (or rather, not behind) are delivery times.
5 stars, would burn again
Depending on the category of fuse and the time it held at a lower current before ramping it up to 400%, it may have operated as intended.
(Squinting at the C type trip diagram in my fuse box, it appears the fuse will withstand 2x rated load for 6 seconds before tripping, 4x for 1.5 seconds or so.)
Notes as if someone was using it for study or an exam?
If so, you would expect that they'd want it more than the 14 day return period.
I don't rate it highly, but the person who I was gifting it to expressed an interest in trying it.
the three copies I had were all completely filled by other people, meaning I'd received three peoples deepest internal reflections and outpourings in addition to the books all being ruined by being so heavily written in. I've no idea where Amazon gets their books from, these were all sold by Amazon (which was my attempt to try and avoid marketplace things).
I can see why you'd imagine study aids, I guess that happens too.
This was not marketed as a resold return to the customer, they were told they were buying a new book.
It obviously results in a loss of royalties - the customer goes to buy a new book, no new book is printed. Rather, Amazon sends a returned copy, and the author doesn't get the royalty that's paid when a new book is printed.
https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/1741484863985770912
I'm calling it "damage" just for simplicity's sake on the note, although some were properly damaged (bent covers, weird creases, etc, although not during shipping since they were surprisingly well packed in this case), while some were miscut/misprinted.
Regarding royalties, it's better explained on the reply I posted to the main thread. But I'm still unsure about how that might resolve, but I have the specific order number and will try to get an answer. I have not had time to deal with KDP support yet (will as soon as I get home next week).
These two statements below should be uncontroversial:
1. If Amazon prints a defective book and rejects it in QC then Amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. Another copy should be printed and shipped and the revenue distributed as normal.
2. If Amazon prints a defective book and it is shipped returned due to defect then amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. A new book should be printed and sent to the customer (assuming they didn't ask for a refund) and no payment to author / no extra revenue recognition to Amazon.
But then:
3. It's better that Amazon resells products that are returned in perfectly good condition rather than trashing them (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-really-h... https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-returns/ and a ton of other easy to find links)
4. Amazon should not resell products returned that are defective.
The problem is: how should it know? They can't take the word of the customer returning the product. Amazon does resell high value returned items like TVs and monitors after checking them. But the cost of looking for the defect in the book is quite high -- I'd be surprised if it gets more than a casual glance/flip through.
I'm not sure what they should be doing in this case, but I do think the comment "This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed" is a side distraction.
True this was returned as "damaged" but how damaged was it? We aren't told and there are no photos.
1) This is the author, and these are rejected proofs or author copies. In which case, Amazon does not have the rights to sell them because they were not "returns".
2) This book has been sold once, and royalties have been paid, but it was returned, relabeled as "new" and sold again without a royalty being paid on that sale. The author and the customer have been cheated.
The thread has likely developed, but this is just going by my limited familiarity with publishing.
That's not very checked. And there's not much I can do but return it (they don't even have a "you got scammed, idiots" option to tell them to check again).
The math is simple. Books sent to customers minus books returned from customers equals royalties paid. And apparently that's not happening here.
Their screening policy for returned items may have changed.
What amazes me is how good the returns can be. At one place, anything returned by the customer was as good as new. Out of a hundred returns, ninety nine of them were as good as what we sent out from the warehouse, absolutely mint. The correct product was in the box, pretty much guaranteed. We had a local stock room that was just from the returns and could get product for people from this stock of returned items.
Sometimes there could be a problem but we would catch this by just a quick check of the box.
There was a team of a dozen of us in the customer service. Had the business been bigger then I am sure that the one percent of actually defective stuff would get resold for people to get very vocal about it on social media.
Then other people would grumble too, to reminisce about the time their order was 'thrown over the hedge' by the delivery company driver.
Before you know it, the whole thing could snowball out of control. Also, at a larger scale, we would attract 'American' customers that don't respect the product in quite the same way as in the rest of the world where consumer culture and education is different.
I am no fan of Amazon but I do respect the efforts of the people they have doing the work there. For the consumer that has never worked a day in retail, it is not all about you!
Furthermore, we see what we expect to see. Getting back to working in retail, I was never shouted at or abused by customers. I set off in the morning looking forward to a fast paced day with lots of happy customers. That is what I expected and that is what I got.
I have met others that worked in retail to be perpetually abused. They expected a day of abuse and they got it.
I think the same applies with Amazon orders. If you expect to be delighted with your orders then you will be amazed at how excessively well packaged everything is and how miraculous the timely delivery is.
However, if you expect everything to be dinged, counterfeit and a repackaged return, then this is what you will get.
Unsure about you all but there’s only one reason I might use a square of toilet paper as a bookmark.
For that and a few other reasons, I don't get books from Amazon anymore.
I assume what's being left implicit is that they're actually not paid for the 'KDP printing order' if it ends up returned? So then when someone else orders and receives that one and doesn't return it, there's a printed copy that was never paid out for?
Are you referring to the Dec 30 tweet text, the Dec 28 tweet text, or the paper note in the Dec 28 tweet's photo?
This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.
Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy?
>This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.
But not good enough for the author, who loses a royalty payment.
And creates other scenarios.
EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items not infrequently get damaged during transit.
I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box. The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD holder's mount is destroyed and the DVD's are just floating around in there.
I was stocking up on some older, "classic" CS titles, and I ordered several together (free shipping on orders over X dollars...). They arrived all crammed into one plastic envelope that looked like it had been dragged along for a while behind the delivery truck. (In reality, this is what the distribution center belts can do to an object, and a heavy package in a thin plastic envelope does not fare well.)
With just a thin, flexible plastic layer for protection, a number of corners on these "very good" books were bent and beat up. I've had covers arrive abraded. One title had one end of the binding crushed.
I still appreciate getting several titles I've wanted for way off cover price. But I wish they'd take a bit more care when shipping.
And, you never know what you're going to get. With them, I've taken to trying to order such that DVD's and Blu rays won't ship together with books (you can imagine what happens). But, when an item may not effectively ship for up to a week, this takes some schedule juggling and follow up. Plus, that used item may sell out in the meantime. And it also means sometimes foregoing the free shipping you get by clustering items.
I guess these are all first world problems, but it's frustrating. Plus, good condition items get trashed for the sake of lack of care / expediency in one step. Wasteful.
I wish they did ship a little faster. As it's usually 10-12 days from when I order it before I get it. Then again I'm usually getting free shipping and if I'm not I'm only paying $1.60 for media rate, which is a hell of a deal.
They also seem to have become less accurate/consistent in the last year or so, with their quality grading. I've gotten a few "good" or "acceptable" titles that looked very good or almost new, but also some "very good" titles with extensive writing, highlighting, or damage.
Perhaps ironically, I've started looking for the same title used on Amazon, and if the options are comparable, picking a highly rated seller there, instead.
This year, I intend to try looking at eBay, more. Not just for books. For some things, but certainly not others.
Care is required, but there are good sellers and often better prices than Bezosland. This impression is partially formed by more recent comments from others that I've read. So, I'm going to experiment and check that out.
It shipped from a Texas location, and I seem to recall one or two other books from them that were also shipped that way. And that at least one of those also came from a Texas location of theirs.
Not always, but often enough that if I order a book from them, I try to remind myself to to wait to order until nothing else I've ordered has yet to ship. Then wait after I've ordered the book, until the book has shipped, before I order anything else.
I don't order that much from Amazon, but my orders often "cluster". For a recent example, the Christmas holidays. I got a beat up book cover because they upped the delivery date of the book by about a week (newish best seller), while in the meantime I'd ordered a heavy object that always ships the next day and that I didn't want to wait a week plus for. So, jacketed hardcover arrives loose in the oversized space next to big, heavy, sharp edged object, with no padding whatsoever inside the box.
I guess if I'd returned that book, it simply would have gone -- damaged -- to someone else.
As someone who takes care of their stuff, it's pretty annoying to get my books pre-worn.
Most of the time my Amazon books have arrived in good condition mostly due to sheer luck given the way they were packed. Sometimes a hardcover had a dented corner or a paperback had a bent spine. Not worth the hassle of returning and reordering (especially if the price went up since ordering as Amazon refuses to honor the original price). I do miss Book Depository as they would ship each book individually even when I ordered multiple items.
These days I try to avoid Amazon but keep getting sucked in when the price + shipping is cheaper or I can't be bothered creating an account on a website I have not used before.
Now it’s either in a padded envelope - still space for the book to move around - or it’s in a box with whatever else.
Creased covers, ragged corners, torn dust jackets… It’s awful if you want to give a book as a gift.
> From: Joaquín Baldwin, @joabaldwin > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book > is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I > don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. They > stole my money while scamming a customer.
So the author wants to be paid royalties on books he says are "damaged" that are brand new but that he says can not be sold to customers?
We recently discussed abuses of copyright law. This qualifies as an abuse of copyright law IMHO.
So if they sold a returned author copy that is known to be damaged then Amazon 1) failed to pay him for a sold book, and 2) broke some kind of rule in their contract where it promises to sell high-quality prints of his book to his readers. Sure, QA is not perfect and problems will happen, but selling a book that is known to be damaged does not count as an honest mistake.
It's not that he wants to get paid for the unsold inventory, it's that he believes he doesn't get paid at all when they resell as new the used inventory he rejected and returned in quality control of his royalty free author purchase.
And the consequences of not paying workers enough and not letting them relieve themselves in anything but Coke bottles.
Shoddy, on-demand print operators of the world unite!
With millions of customers every day so, the number of fuck ups is high in absolute numbers. It is, at least as far as I ever saw, minuscule in relation to the overall volume handled. Much lower, I might add, than anything I ahve ever seen in aerospace manufacturing for example.