Authors OnLine -

The following letter from our Editor, Richard Fitt was printed in May's editon of Writer's Forum, written after he read a previous letter about the discounting of books practiced by Amazon.

17 March 2008

The Editor
Writers Forum
Bournemouth

Dear Sirs,

Your article in April's issue about Dave Patten telling Amazon to stop selling his book because of excessive discounting caught my eye. I would point out that this article is somewhat misleading, since it is impossible to stop an individual trader selling a specific book without completely withdrawing it from the distribution system. Because Amazon get their data feed from ISBN agencies such as Nielsen Bookdata, if you register your ISBN then it will be on Amazon!
    Books are not sold to individual outlets under the control of the publisher, let alone the author. They are controlled by the distributors who will supply any outlet that holds an account with them. Certainly no distributor is going to take a book on the basis that it is not supplied to Amazon. They would be cutting their own throats, it would be impossible to police and is probably against the 'restriction of trade' laws. I'm afraid in a free market economy, any trader is entitled to sell any goods for whatever price they like, even at a loss (especially if their Wall Street backers are prepared to pick up the tab!).
Dave Patten's publishers will have set their wholesale price with the distributors and he will be receiving the same royalty payments no matter what retail price the bookseller sets. And his argument about independent booksellers doesn't hold water either, since that argument will apply to every book they stock, from Jeffrey Archer blockbusters to niche publication, not just Dave Patten's. That's simply the old argument of small high street shop versus supermarket buying and discounting power. Amazon are not behaving any differently from TESCO or Sainsbury.
    A quick visit to Amazon's website, where Mr Patten's book is of course still for sale, actually painted a slightly different picture. Amazon themselves are selling the book for £11.49, a quite reasonable discount of £1.50, Where Dave Patten gets his £8.57 (£7.41 the day I looked) retail price from, is with the independent merchants that Amazon allow to trade off their site, who are touting 'new and used' copies. Now with these people, or rather Amazon's policy towards them, I do have an issue or two!
    Firstly as a Print On Demand publisher, almost invariably as soon as we release a title into the distribution system, despite my certain knowledge of having yet to sell a single copy, these traders will claim to have 'new and used' copies. This is total nonsense and quite frankly, darn right dishonest. We have even bought so called 'used' copies to test the system, only of course for a new copy to turn up from a print batch manufactured after we placed the order! We now warn our authors of this somewhat underhand practice before we receive the inevitable questions as to how used copies are on sale within weeks, or sometimes days, of release!
    Secondly, when we withdraw books from the distribution system they remain 'for sale' on Amazon's site for months or even years afterwards, with all the resultant chaos and upset that can cause. And the reason given by Amazon, yes you've guessed it, so that their traders can continue to sell 'used' copies. I would accept this arrangement if Amazon made an effort to differentiate between new and used, and make it clear that the book was now 'out of print', but, unlike a high street bookshop, the customer has no way of checking availability other than to place an order, which of course we will never be able to fulfil!
    On the other hand since Print On Demand publishing and Amazon are absolutely perfect bedfellows (they don't have to hold stock and we can print and supply within a few days), without them our business would not be nearly as successful, whatever their discount policy.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Fitt
Managing Director
Authors On Line Ltd