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This is a long article that confuses the issue. The root of the problem, if it even exists, is that some sellers sell bootleg copies on Amazon. That is what the

This is a long article that confuses the issue. The root of the problem, if it even exists, is that some sellers sell bootleg copies on Amazon. That is what the article should be about rather than the buy box.

KevinEldon 9y ago
Do you have any evidence of this kind of copyright violation for books on Amazon? I can imagine it does happen, but if it happens at any sort of significant scale (say more than e-book piracy) the publishers or the author of this publisher-friendly article would have mentioned it.
- dilemma 9y ago
  I don't, but the article posits that there are thousands of copies of a title sold that don't come from a publisher, so it is implied. They also mention promotional copies but that is no large quantity.
  - billpollock 9y ago
    at least 1500 copies in our case.
- tolien 9y ago
  Here: http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch.html http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch....
- ricardonunez 9y ago
  The one story I know is this one https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256 https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256. There have been a lot more. There are a few different issues the article doesn't touch.
- billpollock 9y ago
  Yes.
- ilamont 9y ago
  It's been documented, but not at a large scale. Dave Burgess had his book Teach Like a Pirate owned (https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080 https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080) and Bill Pollock says on this HN thread that five of his company's books were pirated. If the experience of other manufacturers/brands are anything to go by (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641), I fear more and more pirates will get into books now that it's possible for them to own the buy box. It might not be a huge problem now, but I predict it's only a matter of time before it becomes one.
sehugg 9y ago
For my recent books, there have been third-party sellers that materialize almost instantly, before any of them could have possibly received a copy. They are probably using merchant-fulfillment, where the merchant holds the inventory and is responsible for shipping. Most of these are probably legit, because they can buy from a distributor on-demand (probably CreateSpace, i.e. Amazon, which is the same company that prints my book) and resell them. But there are dozens of sellers, so I have no idea which are legit. PDFs of my Kindle version have also shown up immediately on download sites. It would not be hard to make bootleg copies on-demand, list them, and ship them to customers. Not all Amazon customers use Prime, and may be willing to wait a week or two. To get Prime status, the sellers would have to use FBA and ship inventory to Amazon. Note that this is how every other product on Amazon works, and there have been plenty of complaints about counterfeit products: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-p...

KevinEldon 9y ago

Do you have any evidence of this kind of copyright violation for books on Amazon? I can imagine it does happen, but if it happens at any sort of significant scale (say more than e-book piracy) the publishers or the author of this publisher-friendly article would have mentioned it.

dilemma 9y ago
I don't, but the article posits that there are thousands of copies of a title sold that don't come from a publisher, so it is implied. They also mention promotional copies but that is no large quantity.
- billpollock 9y ago
  at least 1500 copies in our case.
tolien 9y ago
Here: http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch.html http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch....
ricardonunez 9y ago
The one story I know is this one https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256 https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256. There have been a lot more. There are a few different issues the article doesn't touch.
billpollock 9y ago
Yes.
ilamont 9y ago
It's been documented, but not at a large scale. Dave Burgess had his book Teach Like a Pirate owned (https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080 https://twitter.com/burgessdave/status/849039943561134080) and Bill Pollock says on this HN thread that five of his company's books were pirated. If the experience of other manufacturers/brands are anything to go by (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13927641), I fear more and more pirates will get into books now that it's possible for them to own the buy box. It might not be a huge problem now, but I predict it's only a matter of time before it becomes one.

sehugg 9y ago

For my recent books, there have been third-party sellers that materialize almost instantly, before any of them could have possibly received a copy. They are probably using merchant-fulfillment, where the merchant holds the inventory and is responsible for shipping. Most of these are probably legit, because they can buy from a distributor on-demand (probably CreateSpace, i.e. Amazon, which is the same company that prints my book) and resell them. But there are dozens of sellers, so I have no idea which are legit. PDFs of my Kindle version have also shown up immediately on download sites. It would not be hard to make bootleg copies on-demand, list them, and ship them to customers. Not all Amazon customers use Prime, and may be willing to wait a week or two. To get Prime status, the sellers would have to use FBA and ship inventory to Amazon. Note that this is how every other product on Amazon works, and there have been plenty of complaints about counterfeit products: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-p...