4 ms·

Hypothetically, it could run a bit deeper than that. Amazon also runs a Print-on-demand (PoD) operation and offers that as a paid service to booksellers. Sever

by vivegi 4y ago

Hypothetically, it could run a bit deeper than that. Amazon also runs a Print-on-demand (PoD) operation and offers that as a paid service to booksellers. Several years ago they acquired a company called BookSurge which was into PoD. Booksellers can store their virtual book inventory (i.e., print PDFs) on Amazon's servers and Amazon would route a customer order to their PoD service to print the book and ship it on demand. While this is a legitimate service for legitimate publishers/booksellers who own the rights for the book, it is quite easy for unscrupulous sellers to just virtualize their entire illegal print operation with Amazon undermining authors and publishers. I am not sure what kind of controls Amazon has to prevent abuse of their system. Just to be clear, I am not insinuating that this case (or any other case of counterfeiting) has anything to do with Amazon's PoD operation. Just that this is an attack vector for them that potentially impacts legitimate authors/publishers/booksellers.

iamacyborg 4y ago
Worth also saying that Amazon’s PoD books are really, really poor quality. Terrible binding, thin, crappy paper, weird textured covers.
rainbowzootsuit 4y ago
I used their POD service when an elementary school I had connection to couldn't purchase the reading materials for the classes due to back-order. The program happens to distribute their materials under a creative commons license and make available a PDF of the books. I was able to upload the materials from the publisher and print several hundred copies of multiple books, but eventually Amazon shut us down. We already had enough for the term, so we didn't pursue it much more but they ended up refunding all of the money that we'd spent buying the books from ourselves in order to, I guess, avoid being complicit in copyright infringement. They didn't really understand the creative commons license. I'd guess if it's your gig to pirate books you have to play whack-a-mole with getting your books removed, but small orders probably don't get reviewed so the time scale is going to be long.

by vivegi 4y ago

iamacyborg 4y ago

Worth also saying that Amazon’s PoD books are really, really poor quality. Terrible binding, thin, crappy paper, weird textured covers.

rainbowzootsuit 4y ago

I used their POD service when an elementary school I had connection to couldn't purchase the reading materials for the classes due to back-order. The program happens to distribute their materials under a creative commons license and make available a PDF of the books. I was able to upload the materials from the publisher and print several hundred copies of multiple books, but eventually Amazon shut us down. We already had enough for the term, so we didn't pursue it much more but they ended up refunding all of the money that we'd spent buying the books from ourselves in order to, I guess, avoid being complicit in copyright infringement. They didn't really understand the creative commons license. I'd guess if it's your gig to pirate books you have to play whack-a-mole with getting your books removed, but small orders probably don't get reviewed so the time scale is going to be long.