Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a new thing, but something I learned to do from this post: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbixaux2x" rel="nofollow">https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix...</a><p>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.<p>In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after I returned them.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Also, Amazon both prints and distributes these books, so QC is in their hands from the start.
If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.
Before getting pitchforks out, I'd like to see what this person considered "damaged". If - and I know this is a big if - but if it's something extremely minor, such that almost anyone would consider it to be in "like new" condition, then frankly that would be a case of Amazon doing the right thing, rather than pulping a perfectly good book and printing a new one. The fact that this person is apparently not providing any photos of said damage makes this hard to judge (and honestly raises my suspicions a bit).<p>> 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.<p>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?<p>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.
From the author's perspective, this is not expected according to their agreement with Amazon. Unfortunately from the consumer's perspective, this is not surprising at all. Everyone I know has received a "used" item sold as "new, sold by Amazon.com." Whether it's due to commingling, or an attempt to reduce waste, or plain corporate greed, I have no idea. Just saying that if I returned a book on Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon sold to someone else, even if I was the author of the book.
> 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.
Recently Amazon has been sending me items that were clearly returned and poorly repackaged or damaged in the last year. This isn’t something I encountered or noticed prior to 2023.<p>Their screening policy for returned items may have changed.
My favorite, or I suppose least favorite…, was when I received a “new” book that came with a bookmark of a single square of toilet paper.<p>Unsure about you all but there’s only one reason I might use a square of toilet paper as a bookmark.
The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be paid twice for two orders, one returned.<p>I assume what's being left implicit is that they're actually <i>not</i> 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?
I feel like Amazon is so shady nowadays. I ordered a CD drive a while back just incase I needed it, and the brand/seller included a thing to get a gift card if leaving a review. I thought that was a little unethical, like a bribe so I mentioned in the review giving them like a 3 star if I remember. The next day Amazon disables my ability to leave reviews on that seller, and anytime I go review other sellers my reviews are held for review when they used to be instant from what I remembered, unless they changed it for everyone.
I guess I believe it's possible, but I've ordered hundreds of books off Amazon for going on 25 years now, and I've never not gotten books in the condition I paid for. It feels like it would be a weird and ineffective scam for them to pull, not exactly lucrative and pretty easy to get caught on. As I say, possible, but <i>weird</i> if true.
The realities of a warehouse operation make this inevitable (I’ve run an 8-figure/yr online distributor). Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Folks just click “damaged” to get a refund and Amazon has to have warehouse workers, not professional book inspectors, receive the returns and note their condition.<p>This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.
They also ship books in oversized boxes with no padding. If you're "lucky", they combined your book order with your order for something hard and heavy that can help beat the book up while the box tumbles.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I guess if I'd returned that book, it simply would have gone -- damaged -- to someone else.
Ironically books are the one thing I don't buy on Amazon. eBay has a much better experience, easily 9 times out of 10 I'm confident I'm buying the book in the picture, and usually there are several pictures of the exact condition.
I’ve never personally bought a book from Amazon but my wife has a few times and each time she’s returned it saying it looked beat up. I figured she was just being picky (very on brand) but perhaps she was onto something.
I found this quote enlightening:<p>> 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.<p>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?<p>We recently discussed abuses of copyright law. This qualifies as an abuse of copyright law IMHO.