Amazon Selling Buy Buttons for Books to Third Parties

News: 

Amazon is back in the headlines with a new program where third-party book re-sellers can "win" buy buttons. Those little buttons you click on when you buy a book on the site. 

This can spell bad news for authors and publishers. The re-sellers wouldn't be buying copies from publishers, so money derived from those sales will not go to publishers or authors. 

Authors Guild and other organizations are alerting its members about the payment downfall from this whole ordeal. 

Amazon says the whole thing is going to work like the rest of their site, where third party sellers are allowed to compete with Amazon on the sale of new items. Can this drive the price down, as well? 

Some say that Amazon is trying to up its sales, forcing publishers to use the print-on-demand services it owns. According to the guild's scenario, if you or I purchase a hard cover, Amazon would print their own copy and ship it--cutting costs on storing inventory. 

Would this drive people back to brick and mortar stories to get their books? At least they'd know what they were getting--not some print on demand copy of the real deal. 

Amazon has good prices, and convenient shipping, but if you aren’t getting real merchandise, what's the use? I would hope Amazon would say in the description that the book is a reprint and not an original for the publisher. At least the consumer would have advanced knowledge. 

Here is the link to the Publishers Weekly article: 

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/73542-new-amazon-buy-button-program-draws-ire-of-publishers-authors.html 

Let me know what you think of this info by commenting below. And follow to get more stories, horror fiction and movie reviews. 

WCM 

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