Not if it's a special author's copy with no royalties.
It's not completely clear what's going on, maybe returns cause other issues, but he's claiming no royalties from either sale. If he's not just confused that's a big deal.
Correct, author copies have no royalties, that’s what I was claiming there. So if Amazon resells those after I return them, it won’t register as a new print. Expanded more on it on another reply to this thread.