Category Archives: Amazon busines practices

Amazon’s Packaging Has Gone to Crap

Anybody had a similar experience to this recently?

You order a book from Amazon, specifically a trade paperback. It arrives in a bubble envelope with bubbles that are pretty flat. You open the envelope to find the book damaged.

The damages can vary. Corners are usually bent no matter what other damage there is. The cover and some or all of the pages have a crease running the length of the book. The crease may or may not be noticeable at a casual glance.

I’ve had all of these happen in the last several orders. The one that takes the cake, though, is the issue of Occult Detective Magazine that arrived with a broken spine. I don’t mean the spine was cracked along its length because someone opened it too wide. The crack was across the spine. In other words, the spine had a bend in it of about fifteen to twenty degrees. The pages were torn  on the inside; they were layered like a partially shuffled deck of cards.

I wish I had taken a picture before I sent it back.

The replacement copy was creased across the lower right corner. The copy of Renegade Swords III that arrived yesterday had a crease down the right hand side, cover and some interior pages. Neither of these were worth the aggravation of trying to get a replacement copy.

It didn’t use to be this way. There was a time where the worst thing about the ‘Zon’s packaging was your book might arrive in a flimsy cardboard box with no packaging.

So, I’m going to start actively looking for alternatives to Amazon, at least for paperbacks. Trade published books I can order from B&N, which has its own set of problems, but I can have the books delivered to the store.

Any ideas about indie and small press print books, such as where I might be able to get them without going through Amazon? I know Lulu is an option for some products, but not all.  Suggestions would be appreciated.

Amazon Launches New Imprint Focusing on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Amazon announced this morning that it is launching a new science fiction, fantasy, and horror imprint, 47North.  Several top names have signed on, including Dave Duncan,  Neal Stephenson, and Greg Bear.  The imprint will publish in Kindle, print, and audio formats.  The entire press release can be found here.

Amazon Overcharging for Ebooks

David Gaughran  has posted a disturbing essay on why ebooks cost more through Amazon than in the US and a select few other countries.  You should read David’s post, especially if you live outside the US, UK, Germany, Canada, Ireland, and a few other countries.  In most of the world, including France, Spain, Israel, South Africa, India, and Brazil just to name a few off the top of my head, there’s a $2 surcharge added in addition to any sales tax or VAT.  This surcharge goes directly to Amazon, not to a government, and certainly not to the author.  While most of my readers are American, I know there are a few in countries in which Amazon slaps this surcharge.  David is encouraging his readers to buy through Smashwords or iTunes, because there surcharge isn’t added there and the author gets more money. 

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve recently become an Amazon Associate.  You may be wondering:  Will Amazon be displeased with this post, will they revoke my Associate status, and will I lose a revenue stream in they do?  The answers to those questions are:  Almost certainly, maybe, and not at all.  If Amazon were to even notice this small blog, they would almost certainly be displeased and could very well revoke my Associate status.  But at the present time, I wouldn’t lose a dime.  Because so far I haven’t made any money by being an Associate.  (Considering a recent post which stated that Locus Online, which probably gets more hits in a month than both my blogs combined have ever gotten total, only generated a few hundred dollars a month from links to Amazon, I’m not exactly planning my retire on my earnings.)

I’m less concerned about ad revenue than I am fair trade practices.  What Amazon is doing is hurting authors in the long run, as David so eloquently explained.  Since I hope to begin doing some indie publishing myself within the next year, I’m taking the long term approach rather than the short term by not offending Amazon.  Plus it’s just the right thing to do.