5 ms·

Last week I needed a copy of Atlas Obscura to gift to someone. I checked my local Barnes and Nobles website, they had a a copy on a shelf so I went and bought i

Last week I needed a copy of Atlas Obscura to gift to someone. I checked my local Barnes and Nobles website, they had a a copy on a shelf so I went and bought it. No way I would ever risk buying such books from Amazon. I am concerned about the condition it would arrive in, scams and delays. I bought a second book based on a librarian's recommendation. There was only 5 or 6 books of the kind I was interested in. It made choosing one easier. Amazon is tainted brand.

hgsgm 4y ago
What is the risk when buying a book from Amazon? It might catch fire?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  There was a post here, a few weeks ago, by an author, complaining that Every. Single. Copy of his book on Amazon was a fake. Books are ridiculously easy to counterfeit, and can bring in quite a bit of cash. Amazon has made the conscious business decision to be a counterfeit souk. I guess they make lots of money from it, and I suspect they don’t really care about their retail brand anymore. From what I hear, it’s actually a loss leader.
  - birdymcbird 4y ago
    i thought amazon would dominate and conquer books market but they never got beyond just super basic concept of selling a book online. Finding interesting books is awful, everything is an ad. reading on kindle is ok. i have prime and once or twice a year read a free book on it. i assume the problem is complacency. I don’t think buying real solid books has really changed on Amazon at all in past 5 years. kindle digital reader is same as it was 5 years ago. i wonder how many people work in kindle and what they actually do.
    - lynx23 4y ago
      Well, Amazon used to be ahead. I vividly remember using their "Find me this out-of-print book" service once and being very positively surprised that it actually worked. Signed up for the out-of-print book, got a message about 3 months later, and BANG, there it was, in my mailbox. That was one of the moment when I thought "well, they are really doing a great job" That has changed since, especially since the website design has been fucked up with ads everywhere.
      - birdymcbird 4y ago
        amazon a product manager focused organization in many parts of their business. Person A comes to america to study for masters or mba. A gets hired by amazon. A is under pressure to release features to increase sales or show how their feature is attributed some top or bottom line metric increase. A fears losing job under amazon cut throat culture and will optimize for exactly that. No amazon job means bye bye visa you go home. if you have family, sell everything and move back. so as you could guess customer benefit is not primary or even second third focus. company leadership create culture of one incentive. workers output optimizing for that incentive.
        lynx23 4y ago
        You aren't trying to say that foreign workers are responsible for all the problems at Amazon, not the American management? Come on. I dont believe these "the management is innocent" memes.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    To add to that, if I'm getting cheap knockoffs (non-books in this example), I might as well get them from Shopee/Lazada etc since they almost invariably cheaper than Amazon.
  - saberience 4y ago
    Potentially silly question, but how can a book be a fake? Do you mean someone copied the title and put their own text? If I order a book, let's say Infinite Jest, I care that the book contains the words that correspond to the novel written by David Foster Wallace. If that is the case, I got what I wanted. I don't really care who printed it or what the cover looks like.
    - iamacyborg 4y ago
      Do you care about the quality of the typesetting? How well bound the book is? What paper was used? Etc.
    - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      No, you mean you don't care that the author gets paid. It's not only about you. (And I know DFW is dead, but he has an estate. And living authors have bills to pay.)
    - HelloNurse 4y ago
      Do you care about the value of your purchase? If you spend, say, $150 on a scientific textbook, and then you cannot show it in public because you would look like a pirate, you should care. And that is the best case of a readable, complete book. Maybe you get only the first 500 pages, or the figures are cut off, or it is a degraded scan of a printed book. The problem is of course much worse for collectible books for which even getting an official reprint or a different edition instead of the real thing would be a problem.
    - Tams80 4y ago
      Not silly, morally vacant.
    - zrobotics 4y ago
      Aside from the issue of the original author not receiving payment, counterfeit books can actually have textual errors as well. A few years ago when the 3rd edition of The Art Of Electronics was published, I saw quite a few warnings posted online not to buy from Amazon. These counterfeits were poorly printed and had many typographical errors, many of which made the information factually incorrect and caused that specific copy to be untrustworthy. So especially for a reference text like that, a counterfeit can actually cause harm if the information isn't correct.
- d3nj4l 4y ago
  Fakes, bad paper quality and shipping damage (esp. for hardcover books which lose a lot of their value when damaged)
- eloisius 4y ago
  I ordered a paperback a couple years ago. Kundera, not a completely obscure book. The page on Amazon showed a Harper Perennial paperback with the squiggly line drawing cover art like I was expecting. What I received looked like the cover head been designed in Word. Solid red, some generic oil painting print, and black text. The contents of the book was even worse. It looked like it was printed on a dot matrix or something. Needless to say I returned it and have not bought a book from Amazon since.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  I bought a $200 control theory textbook from Amazon. The cover was correct. The inside was a veterinary medicine textbook by a different publisher.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    That sounds like a printers error that could happen in any store.
- vishnugupta 4y ago
  Pirated copies have become a thing.
- barrkel 4y ago
  Splotchy hard to read type, low quality paper and binding, poorly aligned text, rough edges from blunt cutting, weird cover possibly in a different language, and the knowledge that the authors aren't getting money from your purchase.
kibwen 4y ago
Agreed, at this point if I want to buy a copy of a specific book I go to the local bookseller down the way and ask them to order it for me.
fragmede 4y ago
I bought makeup as a present for someone and while they were appreciative of the thought and time that went into my gift, they had to ask me if I got it off Amazon because they couldn't actually use it if I did. Counterfeit makeup gives her skij condition a skin rash and she's been burned more than once on that so she has to be extra cautious.
HelloNurse 4y ago
A few days ago, someone asked on a forum suggestions for spending a large Amazon gift coupon on books and games. I started looking for rare, expensive and/or old books that I know about, and at the first result page I realized how futile it was, between unknown quality, unknown marketplace sellers, unreliable listings, the chance of scammers, and the ridiculously inaccurate mass of irrelevant search results that drown out relevant ones. Other people actually recommended, in harsh terms, to buy electronics etc. on Amazon and get books and games from proper sources. It is quite obvious to the mass public, not a special insight, that Amazon doesn't love to sell stuff: not only books and media, but anything except maybe Prime subscriptions.
- fma 4y ago
  I don't even buy electronics from Amazon much anymore. Walmart and Bestbuy will price match, good return policy and most importantly not fear of knockoffs due to how Amazon comingles. I use Amazon as a primary source for stuff that I know are generic, don't care about knockoffs and want variety. i.e iPad cases, simple furniture
hiram112 4y ago
Amazing just how far Amazon has fallen due to counterfeit products and scammy sellers. It is unfortunate but understandable if you get scammed buying a pair of "certified" Apple earbuds or lightening cables from a Chinese seller at a price 70% less than you'd pay at Apple, Fair enough and buyer beware. But if you can't even buy a BOOK that's sold by Amazon itself without getting scammed, then it seems we have a serious problem, and it is not surprising that Amazon stock is down over 50%.

hgsgm 4y ago

What is the risk when buying a book from Amazon? It might catch fire?

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
There was a post here, a few weeks ago, by an author, complaining that Every. Single. Copy of his book on Amazon was a fake. Books are ridiculously easy to counterfeit, and can bring in quite a bit of cash. Amazon has made the conscious business decision to be a counterfeit souk. I guess they make lots of money from it, and I suspect they don’t really care about their retail brand anymore. From what I hear, it’s actually a loss leader.
- birdymcbird 4y ago
  i thought amazon would dominate and conquer books market but they never got beyond just super basic concept of selling a book online. Finding interesting books is awful, everything is an ad. reading on kindle is ok. i have prime and once or twice a year read a free book on it. i assume the problem is complacency. I don’t think buying real solid books has really changed on Amazon at all in past 5 years. kindle digital reader is same as it was 5 years ago. i wonder how many people work in kindle and what they actually do.
  - lynx23 4y ago
    Well, Amazon used to be ahead. I vividly remember using their "Find me this out-of-print book" service once and being very positively surprised that it actually worked. Signed up for the out-of-print book, got a message about 3 months later, and BANG, there it was, in my mailbox. That was one of the moment when I thought "well, they are really doing a great job" That has changed since, especially since the website design has been fucked up with ads everywhere.
    - birdymcbird 4y ago
      amazon a product manager focused organization in many parts of their business. Person A comes to america to study for masters or mba. A gets hired by amazon. A is under pressure to release features to increase sales or show how their feature is attributed some top or bottom line metric increase. A fears losing job under amazon cut throat culture and will optimize for exactly that. No amazon job means bye bye visa you go home. if you have family, sell everything and move back. so as you could guess customer benefit is not primary or even second third focus. company leadership create culture of one incentive. workers output optimizing for that incentive.
      - lynx23 4y ago
        You aren't trying to say that foreign workers are responsible for all the problems at Amazon, not the American management? Come on. I dont believe these "the management is innocent" memes.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  To add to that, if I'm getting cheap knockoffs (non-books in this example), I might as well get them from Shopee/Lazada etc since they almost invariably cheaper than Amazon.
- saberience 4y ago
  Potentially silly question, but how can a book be a fake? Do you mean someone copied the title and put their own text? If I order a book, let's say Infinite Jest, I care that the book contains the words that correspond to the novel written by David Foster Wallace. If that is the case, I got what I wanted. I don't really care who printed it or what the cover looks like.
  - iamacyborg 4y ago
    Do you care about the quality of the typesetting? How well bound the book is? What paper was used? Etc.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    No, you mean you don't care that the author gets paid. It's not only about you. (And I know DFW is dead, but he has an estate. And living authors have bills to pay.)
  - HelloNurse 4y ago
    Do you care about the value of your purchase? If you spend, say, $150 on a scientific textbook, and then you cannot show it in public because you would look like a pirate, you should care. And that is the best case of a readable, complete book. Maybe you get only the first 500 pages, or the figures are cut off, or it is a degraded scan of a printed book. The problem is of course much worse for collectible books for which even getting an official reprint or a different edition instead of the real thing would be a problem.
  - Tams80 4y ago
    Not silly, morally vacant.
  - zrobotics 4y ago
    Aside from the issue of the original author not receiving payment, counterfeit books can actually have textual errors as well. A few years ago when the 3rd edition of The Art Of Electronics was published, I saw quite a few warnings posted online not to buy from Amazon. These counterfeits were poorly printed and had many typographical errors, many of which made the information factually incorrect and caused that specific copy to be untrustworthy. So especially for a reference text like that, a counterfeit can actually cause harm if the information isn't correct.
d3nj4l 4y ago
Fakes, bad paper quality and shipping damage (esp. for hardcover books which lose a lot of their value when damaged)
eloisius 4y ago
I ordered a paperback a couple years ago. Kundera, not a completely obscure book. The page on Amazon showed a Harper Perennial paperback with the squiggly line drawing cover art like I was expecting. What I received looked like the cover head been designed in Word. Solid red, some generic oil painting print, and black text. The contents of the book was even worse. It looked like it was printed on a dot matrix or something. Needless to say I returned it and have not bought a book from Amazon since.
mitthrowaway2 4y ago
I bought a $200 control theory textbook from Amazon. The cover was correct. The inside was a veterinary medicine textbook by a different publisher.
- TylerE 4y ago
  That sounds like a printers error that could happen in any store.
vishnugupta 4y ago
Pirated copies have become a thing.
barrkel 4y ago
Splotchy hard to read type, low quality paper and binding, poorly aligned text, rough edges from blunt cutting, weird cover possibly in a different language, and the knowledge that the authors aren't getting money from your purchase.

kibwen 4y ago

Agreed, at this point if I want to buy a copy of a specific book I go to the local bookseller down the way and ask them to order it for me.

fragmede 4y ago

I bought makeup as a present for someone and while they were appreciative of the thought and time that went into my gift, they had to ask me if I got it off Amazon because they couldn't actually use it if I did. Counterfeit makeup gives her skij condition a skin rash and she's been burned more than once on that so she has to be extra cautious.

HelloNurse 4y ago

A few days ago, someone asked on a forum suggestions for spending a large Amazon gift coupon on books and games. I started looking for rare, expensive and/or old books that I know about, and at the first result page I realized how futile it was, between unknown quality, unknown marketplace sellers, unreliable listings, the chance of scammers, and the ridiculously inaccurate mass of irrelevant search results that drown out relevant ones. Other people actually recommended, in harsh terms, to buy electronics etc. on Amazon and get books and games from proper sources. It is quite obvious to the mass public, not a special insight, that Amazon doesn't love to sell stuff: not only books and media, but anything except maybe Prime subscriptions.

fma 4y ago
I don't even buy electronics from Amazon much anymore. Walmart and Bestbuy will price match, good return policy and most importantly not fear of knockoffs due to how Amazon comingles. I use Amazon as a primary source for stuff that I know are generic, don't care about knockoffs and want variety. i.e iPad cases, simple furniture

hiram112 4y ago

Amazing just how far Amazon has fallen due to counterfeit products and scammy sellers. It is unfortunate but understandable if you get scammed buying a pair of "certified" Apple earbuds or lightening cables from a Chinese seller at a price 70% less than you'd pay at Apple, Fair enough and buyer beware. But if you can't even buy a BOOK that's sold by Amazon itself without getting scammed, then it seems we have a serious problem, and it is not surprising that Amazon stock is down over 50%.