http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html...
"Philip M. Parker seems to have licked that problem. Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it."
Multiple books are created at high but not too high prices. Stolen funds are used to buy them; (through multiple intermediaries, work from home mules being a favorite) and the profits are moved through multiple accounts as well.
The criminals don't care that they are giving a bunch of money to Amazon (it's stolen remember), they do want the funds coming out to be clean, untraceable, and usable.
The unfortunate thing being that Amazon's incentives are, in this case, aligned with those of the criminals. And while I'm sure that Amazon regularly helps law enforcement track down this sort of thing, I wouldn't doubt that there exists a temptation to not notice that sort of misbehaviour.
The sort of people who, according Phineas Taylor Barnum, are born every minute.
Am I missing some context here? Amazon is full of tattooed hipsters?
I see no tattooed hipsters here.
Invent a fake book
Post it for a high price
Watch Bots price it up
Buy one from a bot
Sell the only real one far above the bot price
Profit? (because the bot owner must then buy the book to ship it to the person who already bought it?)
/jk
7.2
"You, the vendor, receive 45% of the List Price. You set the List Price, also known as Suggested Retail Price, of your products, and all payments made to you are calculated based on the List Price. If Amazon.com decides to further reduce the sales price to the customer below the List Price, the customer discount comes out of Amazon.com's percentage."
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.htm...
Meanwhile, Apple takes %30, and you have total control over pricing.
Yet whenever the iBookstore comes up here, people go on and on about the "Apple tax" and how Apple is trying to drive authors out of business? By taking Less?
If their book sales are similar to their Android App Store then as the publisher you get whichever is more between.
"20 percent of list price and 70 percent of sale price"
So Amazon can sell it for whatever it wants but will owe you 20% of what you listed the book at. It gives them a very wide margin to play with.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0956205100?ie=UTF8...
(I got this via a tweet a few hours ago, and it seems like its still broken...)
Again in my experience, Amazon's discounts do not effect the author's take. At least in CreateSpace, the author's royalty is based on the retail price the author sets.
