Going by the bsky thread posted elsewhere, he's using Kindle Direct Publishing, so he is getting them from his publisher, Amazon. And the books he returned were author copies, sold to him at print cost.
Then why did he lay this trap? Again, this wasn't an accidental discovery, he knew or suspected he could get this publicity by going to war against his "publisher". I'll be honest, everything about this screams "bad faith" to me. Amazon didn't do anything that any other company wouldn't have done. Arguably-slightly-flawed-but-still-fine returned junk goes on the shelves of every store in the world. This is the only guy who planted bombs in it.
What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it?
Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.
Intended result with made up numbers for purpose of illustration.
Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50.
100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author.
Authors balance sheet
-100
+50
+200
Net +150
What actually happened
-100
+50
+190
Net 140
By re-using the royalty free copies which ought to have been destroyed as damaged they directly took money out of authors pocket and put it into their own whilst dishonoring the spirit of the agreement to pay n dollars per unit.
They didn't bitch about damaged product because such fuck ups come out of Amazon's bottom line whereas a form of theft literally every real publisher would recognize as theft comes out of theirs.
That’s exactly it (I’m the author). Now, regarding the “bomb” comment, it certainly was that—I saw someone post about this and wanted to see if I was suffering from the same issue, so I’m glad I planted those bombs to verify. And I see nothing wrong with doing it as an exposé on social media, because that’s how you get Amazon support to freak out and look at your case and solve the problem. It’s not an isolated incident, and I wish I could just say “fuck Amazon,” but being my first time publishing, I have no option here other than use Amazon or I’ll lose 95% of my sales. It’s unfortunate that I have to work with people who do this, but it’s just the reality for 99% of self-published authors.
They're both problems, the initial print and sending it back out. I don't see what's wrong with doing a test for the latter. "metaphorical bomb" sounds ridiculous to me. It's a metaphorical tracking beacon.
Comments
Going by the bsky thread posted elsewhere, he's using Kindle Direct Publishing, so he is getting them from his publisher, Amazon. And the books he returned were author copies, sold to him at print cost.
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G7BBN68RYX5UMDZF
Then why did he lay this trap? Again, this wasn't an accidental discovery, he knew or suspected he could get this publicity by going to war against his "publisher". I'll be honest, everything about this screams "bad faith" to me. Amazon didn't do anything that any other company wouldn't have done. Arguably-slightly-flawed-but-still-fine returned junk goes on the shelves of every store in the world. This is the only guy who planted bombs in it.
What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it?
He clearly didn't think it was "still fine" to be sold as "new".
Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.
Intended result with made up numbers for purpose of illustration.
Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50.
100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author.
Authors balance sheet
-100 +50 +200
Net +150
What actually happened
-100 +50 +190
Net 140
By re-using the royalty free copies which ought to have been destroyed as damaged they directly took money out of authors pocket and put it into their own whilst dishonoring the spirit of the agreement to pay n dollars per unit.
They didn't bitch about damaged product because such fuck ups come out of Amazon's bottom line whereas a form of theft literally every real publisher would recognize as theft comes out of theirs.
That’s exactly it (I’m the author). Now, regarding the “bomb” comment, it certainly was that—I saw someone post about this and wanted to see if I was suffering from the same issue, so I’m glad I planted those bombs to verify. And I see nothing wrong with doing it as an exposé on social media, because that’s how you get Amazon support to freak out and look at your case and solve the problem. It’s not an isolated incident, and I wish I could just say “fuck Amazon,” but being my first time publishing, I have no option here other than use Amazon or I’ll lose 95% of my sales. It’s unfortunate that I have to work with people who do this, but it’s just the reality for 99% of self-published authors.
They're both problems, the initial print and sending it back out. I don't see what's wrong with doing a test for the latter. "metaphorical bomb" sounds ridiculous to me. It's a metaphorical tracking beacon.