My brother's a book publisher and his business is really suffering because Amazon Marketplace's "A to Z" return policy. Here's the deal.
Amazon.com doesn't accept returns of a long list of items including: computers, open software and grocery products. Books are NOT on that list of exceptions EVEN IF you specifically state in your item description "all sales are final. we do not allow returns on books". I agree with him, that books are no different than "grocery products" or "open software" for that matter, that is, they're presumed having been "consumed", "partially consumed".
In the same way that Amazon does not allow groceries to be returned, it seems only fair that the same principle should apply to books, because, like food, and unlike other items, people generally only consume a book once, after which, for most people, it's "no longer wanted/no longer needed".
So, when a customer writes in requesting a full refund because the book is "no longer wanted/ no longer needed", to us, it's equivalent to going out to a 5-star restaurant, ordering anything you want, loving the food, and then saying, "I'm not longer hungry. My belly's full. I no longer want/no longer need your services." THAT is EXACTLY what Amazon allows in their drop-down list.
We're not saying that "all" buyers do this, but publishers and other resellers suffer significant losses due to this type of consumption-and-return as well as serious exposure to piracy, copyright violations. In fact, KNOWING this a huge potential exposure, it COULD be argued that Amazon is acting recklessly and outright negligently in protecting the interests of the publishers. It's especially outrageous when you consider that Amazon's A to Z policy does NOT apply to Amazon Advantage orders (ie the MAIN LISTING for that item). There, such capricious returns are not allowed. (Why is this double standard by the way?). Further, this Amazon policy is fundamentally unfair to publishers who specifically inform the customer in the item description that all sales are final. This is the opposite of responsible policy that protects publishers.
So, whether you compare books to open software OR to food (consumables), either way, it's clear that BOOKS have to be added to Amazon's "A to Z" return exceptions list.
**********************
THAT SAID, HERE'S A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AVOID PROBLEMS: If "open software" can't be returned, WHY NOT ALLOW BOOKS THE SAME protection for Publishers who shrinkwrap their books?? JUST REVISE LIKE THIS: "Amazon.com doesn't accept returns of a long list of items including: computers, open software **or books whose shrinkwrap has been broken** and grocery products."
**********************
My brother gets RIDICULOUS reasons DAILY on his returns that come thru their A to Z policy, the latest of which was "NO LONGER NEED IT/ WANT IT" (as in they finished reading it). Basically books are NOT included in the exceptions, and so anyone can return any book (after reading/consuming it) and get their full money back. It's just wrong, but all the customers are now finding (and taking advantage of) this loop-hole ("hey if the system will let you, why not?").
We're waiting to get the one that says "I READ THE BOOK BUT DIDN'T LIKE IT"....or, better: "I READ THE BOOK BUT DID NOT AGREE WITH THE PREMISE!!"
char limit reached--read on under "Additional Details", below.
Publishers suffer FURTHER losses from the loss in value when going from "new" to "used" unnecessarily, merely from the usual damages in transit back and forth across the country. The loss in value from new to used is significant. Restocking fees do NOT cover this drop in value, assuming he even sold used product. It's not uncommon for a used book to sell for 10% of what it sells for new.
***BEFORE TRYING TO EFFECTUATE AN ENTIRE POLICY CHANGE AT AMAZON, who has resisted his efforts, do any publishers out there have a good way of fighting this other than thru something like a CLASS ACTION ON BEHALF OF ALL PUBLISHERS? ***
My brother's customers love his books and he's protected when they buy his products through his own site, but, he's left hanging in the wind on Amazon, where he gets macheteed all day long.
Other than a nominal 20% restocking fee that they allow (never an option because he only sells brand new items without bent corners/pages, etc
), there is NO recourse. Even the restocking fee he can't get because Amazon credits the buyer the full amount EVEN BEFORE verifying the returned book has been received by my bro.
Everyone just buys through Amazon Marketplace ("new/used") and ultimately get their items for FREE!!! This is plainly just wrong and bad for the economy/small business. Amazon used to comprise a big part of his paycheck, but that portion of the paycheck has dropped to almost zero with most customers now taking advantage of this ridiculous policy.
More than being just obviously wrong, Amazon also likely benefits from retained fees that never come back to the seller. So, as we see it, Amazon is flagrantly throwing publishers under the bus when it comes to their A to Z Returns Policy since they're making money either way...and ...how ELSE is Amazon benefiting by this arrangement? Since Amazon makes a MUCH bigger cut on Advantage (the main listing page) sales, than they do on the new/used (
(Marketplace) orders, it seems that Amazon is ALSO benefiting in this additional way by "coercing" Publishers to sell their books on Advantage instead of "new" under Marketplace (where Amazon's own "Fulfillment Center" ALSO sells your new/used copies, which likely accounts for additional publisher damages).
***ATTN: ALL AMAZON PUBLISHERS MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD***
DEAR "Smells like New Screen Names" (I mean Amazon Evangelist)---
"Amazon cares about their customers"
<<So you're speaking for Amazon. You replied within about 1 second. Can anyone say "crawler"?
Your argument is cr*p. YOU wrote:
"Unlike groceries, there is no expiration date on books. Unlike computers, your book doesn't have a short shelf life. Unlike software, you can't make digital
copies of a book. "
<<RESPONSE: When you order a book, there is no reasonable expectation of "expiration date"? You're not buying milk, duh! You're buying a book and you
KNOW the copyright date (as if that matters), because you've researched the listing. So the book is not going to be spoiled when you get it. Lame try!
"Unlike computers, your book doesn't have a short shelf life."
<<DUH! Books have a SHORTER life than computers. Books typically have new editions annualy and it's vital
... to the book's success or failure to have a
CHANCE to succeed on the free market (not the bound market!)
"Unlike software, you can't make digital copies of a book. "
<< WRONG AGAIN!! It's called Kinkos, DUH! And it's illegal too! Pirates make regular copies and ship back the books since they "no longer need it/ want it",
and SOME go so far as to make digital copies (albeit illegally), even though they'd face huge court fines and even time in jail.
YOU SAID " rip-off artists" TWICE. So, APPARENTLy, since you're SPEAKING FOR Amazon (see above), Amazon sees publishers as " rip-off artists"??? Gee,
that's even better!
And your last response spoke for them BEST:
"Amazon cares more about their customers, than they care about you the vendor. Don't like it, find someone else to sell your crappy self-published book."
Is this America?????
Wow, you literally sound evil the way you write. I me
DEAR (blah)--"Then don't sell through Amazon"
<< ARE YOU KIDDING? Amazon has a monopoly share of the online industry. That's NOT a valid solution but is simply LAZY, insensitive, lacks intelligence, and actually is hardly worth a response.
It's called throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That argument never works. It sidesteps the issue, and is usualy what you see from someone who has NO position to argue.
I was going to write (actually I wrote it twice but removed it before posting) NOT to post such neanderthalisk answers...but 1st 2 answers (you and "him") proved me wrong, lol.
When you get a real argument let me know. In the meantime, now I see where all the monies stolen from my brother are going. Evangelists, "yeah". Jokers.
BCNU--thanks for your one opinion. However, I can't say that your LL Bean or Nordstrom's examples have any relation to my question. In the real world, most people would call them "suckers" for taking such refunds. Those are extreme examples, and we didn't need any *more* extreme examples than the ones I gave you...the every day example, where publishers are getting reamed by Amazon Marketplace. Your comment "The economics of having satisfied customers has apparently resulted in your "question"." was missplaced. First, you *must* have meant the economics of having satisifed THEIR (Amazon's) customers has apparently resulted in your question." Of course they're going to be "satisfied". They're giving away publishers merchandises for FREE!! It's like Obama earning votes thru entitlement programs. By virtue of Amazon's lenient returns policy (not reflecting their virtue or good will or funds!), Amazon customers
... develop a new "ethic", which is "hey, if they'll let me read the book for 30 days and then return it, WHY NOT?!!! Who am I to argue?" lol The problem is Amazon is not giving away their goods, they're giving aways ours/the publishers goods. That's NO good. That's also bad for the economy, bad for competition, and in the end, it's irresponsible and negligent policy on a large scale, mismanaging its own publisher vendors. Your other comment "It's not really "stolen" from your brother if he agreed to the terms of service, right? The fact that your brother has poor business judgement ...". That's just uncalled for. That's also a poor argument. Agreeing to a Terms and Conditions doesn't mean the T&C are ethical (even legal), and in *some* cases, they've actually been show to be illegal. For all the reasons I cite in my post, Amazon's failure to include books among their list of exceptions (groceries, op
open software, etc) is a glaring mistake. Naturally I expected to hear from all the Amazon yahoo's who take advantage of their "give-away" policy. I've heard of publishers just using Amazon as their billboard, but never having any stock available when orders come through. So maybe there are a number of ways to tackle this. However, tens of thousands of Publishers are being injured every day by Amazon's negligent and irresponsible handling of Publishers' books by trying to turn publishers into "free pubic libraries". My brother is not in the business of charity. It's his business to put food on the table for his wife and kids. It's hard to do that with Amazon's over and flagrant disregard for Publishers' books. Amazon doesn't care, because they want to draw the book customers into the larger market of theirs (all products) thru entitlement- I mean giveaway--I mean their A to Z Marketplace returns policy on books. They also don'
They also don't care because they get to keep the FEES from the transaction (that's just wrong). It's also wrong for the 100 other reasons I cited.
Amazon will need to add books to their list of exceptions to their returns policy because "no longer needed"/ "no longer wanted" are NOT valid excuses for returning a book. Anyone who can't see these obvious truths is lying to himself and lying to everyone. You're also contributing to undermining hard-working businesses when you support (and take advantage of) these programs.
***I think, in the end, it will pretty much take legal action in the form of a CLASS ACTION on behalf of all Publishers for Amazon to wake up on this for all the injuries I've cited. Fortunately I'm an attorney. So I have all the connections. It's pretty easy to see Publishers are getting injured every day by Amazon on numerous levels. ***
DEAR "who aren't you?" / sockpuppets--So, you're ACTUALLY making Amazon to look even WORSE by creating (bogus) arguments like
a) your MacDonalds argument (which says that (your assumption) "If the food is crap, you send it back. They redo it, or give you something different."
<< You should be embarassed. First of all, you're EATING at MacDonald's (in your argument), so you should KNOW what you're getting (ton of sugars, fat, grease, calories, artificial flavors and preservatives, etc). THAT'S ON YOU. You can't blame others for your buying decisions. You're using that as an excuse for lack of personal responsibility.
Secondly, you're PROVING my point, ADMITTING (apparently with no insight whatsoever) that it's OK to eat the meal, and if you don't LIKE the book OR, as I provided, you READ the entire book and no longer need or want it OR, lol, disagree with the plot, get your money back. It's people like that
...(or thinking like that) which undermines our economy. You're consuming resources that took tremendous work to create, and then, BECAUSE YOU CAN, you're stealing from the publisher (the author and all the other contributors and their families). It's disgusting.
I'm not sure if you heard about it, but it's called responsibility. When you buy something, you're expected to pay for it. Reminds me of jumbo loans and the cause of the recession. People blamed the banks for giving them no money down 100% mortgage loans, and duh, then they turned around and blamed the SYSTEM for having been irresponsible? Hello. You read the description. You know EVERYTHING you're getting. Don't play the fool, unless it comes easy for you.
The second cr*p argument you were so decent to put forth was that self-publishers like my brother OUTRIGHT DESERVE IT!! Why is that?? Do you have some hostility towards smaller publishers? small to medium? large publishers? Where do you d
...Where do you draw the line? Are you God? Who died and you made you king? Nobody.
Again, on Amazon, you can see everything, from sample pages to the name of the publisher. You can even go online, if you're unsure of yourself or the product and research the book or publisher further. So, you SEE what you're buying, you KNOW you can't do that anywhere else, you CONSUME the resource, and then you say you don't like the book to get your money back too? Wow! Free products! How cool. Publishers aren't charities. They're businesses. They're not the public library. You know that. You know that when you buy the books. You know that when you READ the books. You know that when you copy the books, and you know that when you return the books. When someone knowingly does the wrong thing, and then takes advantage of a system that turns the other cheek, it hurts businesses, it hurts families, it hurts the economy.
You then went on to share something even more specia
...special "Try going through a real publishing company, they will turn the crappy book down." SO, what you're saying, whether you're speaking for Amazon or yourself, is that you HATE self publishers and you don't trust their books. Why? SO, if you HATE them as dearly as you write, THEN WHY BUY THEM in the FIRST PLACE?
Your "arguments" are all bogus, half-baked, and largely unbaked.
You then finished your tour de blah with "If you want your customers to be happy, find a way to post larger exerts of the book, so they can understand the quality of the writer before having to buy the book." So, again, without knowing anything about what or who we're talking about, you ASSUMED that he doesn't have enough (the word is) "excerpts"? That's foolish. To top it off, if you're NOT SURE about the quality of something, then WHY WOULD YOU EVEN frigging BUY IT??? Who is the fool? The fool is the guy who (using your analogy rea
...(using your analogy really) sees the cliff and still jumps.
If, based on the description on Amazon, you're not sure, then why the heck do you buy it? The TRUTH is (BASED ON EVERYTHING YOU admitted), you BUY it because you want to "TRY IT OUT" ...and most likely, in your case, from the way you're writing, you expect to return it after reading and enjoying it, esp if they're self-published lol. It's like test driving a car, buying it, and then taking it to Las Vegas to "give it my own test drive". Then, once you lose all your money because you bet on black, you pretend it's the car's fault "the damn car doesn't work!!" I'm gonna return it and get my money back! what a joke. You need to be responsible for your buying decisions. You act like you're 2 years old. Worse, it's like you're betting with other people's money. Like you're cashing in your wife's 401k or something and then, betting on black,
...betting on black, losing it, not telling her, and then telling her she should have put a pin on her account. It's just SUCH a joke the way you justify your thought process if you can even call it that.
So, no matter how you slice it, all your arguments are bologna, and easily shredded.
Amazon.com doesn't accept returns of a long list of items including: computers, open software and grocery products. Books are NOT on that list of exceptions EVEN IF you specifically state in your item description "all sales are final. we do not allow returns on books". I agree with him, that books are no different than "grocery products" or "open software" for that matter, that is, they're presumed having been "consumed", "partially consumed".
In the same way that Amazon does not allow groceries to be returned, it seems only fair that the same principle should apply to books, because, like food, and unlike other items, people generally only consume a book once, after which, for most people, it's "no longer wanted/no longer needed".
So, when a customer writes in requesting a full refund because the book is "no longer wanted/ no longer needed", to us, it's equivalent to going out to a 5-star restaurant, ordering anything you want, loving the food, and then saying, "I'm not longer hungry. My belly's full. I no longer want/no longer need your services." THAT is EXACTLY what Amazon allows in their drop-down list.
We're not saying that "all" buyers do this, but publishers and other resellers suffer significant losses due to this type of consumption-and-return as well as serious exposure to piracy, copyright violations. In fact, KNOWING this a huge potential exposure, it COULD be argued that Amazon is acting recklessly and outright negligently in protecting the interests of the publishers. It's especially outrageous when you consider that Amazon's A to Z policy does NOT apply to Amazon Advantage orders (ie the MAIN LISTING for that item). There, such capricious returns are not allowed. (Why is this double standard by the way?). Further, this Amazon policy is fundamentally unfair to publishers who specifically inform the customer in the item description that all sales are final. This is the opposite of responsible policy that protects publishers.
So, whether you compare books to open software OR to food (consumables), either way, it's clear that BOOKS have to be added to Amazon's "A to Z" return exceptions list.
**********************
THAT SAID, HERE'S A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AVOID PROBLEMS: If "open software" can't be returned, WHY NOT ALLOW BOOKS THE SAME protection for Publishers who shrinkwrap their books?? JUST REVISE LIKE THIS: "Amazon.com doesn't accept returns of a long list of items including: computers, open software **or books whose shrinkwrap has been broken** and grocery products."
**********************
My brother gets RIDICULOUS reasons DAILY on his returns that come thru their A to Z policy, the latest of which was "NO LONGER NEED IT/ WANT IT" (as in they finished reading it). Basically books are NOT included in the exceptions, and so anyone can return any book (after reading/consuming it) and get their full money back. It's just wrong, but all the customers are now finding (and taking advantage of) this loop-hole ("hey if the system will let you, why not?").
We're waiting to get the one that says "I READ THE BOOK BUT DIDN'T LIKE IT"....or, better: "I READ THE BOOK BUT DID NOT AGREE WITH THE PREMISE!!"
char limit reached--read on under "Additional Details", below.
Publishers suffer FURTHER losses from the loss in value when going from "new" to "used" unnecessarily, merely from the usual damages in transit back and forth across the country. The loss in value from new to used is significant. Restocking fees do NOT cover this drop in value, assuming he even sold used product. It's not uncommon for a used book to sell for 10% of what it sells for new.
***BEFORE TRYING TO EFFECTUATE AN ENTIRE POLICY CHANGE AT AMAZON, who has resisted his efforts, do any publishers out there have a good way of fighting this other than thru something like a CLASS ACTION ON BEHALF OF ALL PUBLISHERS? ***
My brother's customers love his books and he's protected when they buy his products through his own site, but, he's left hanging in the wind on Amazon, where he gets macheteed all day long.
Other than a nominal 20% restocking fee that they allow (never an option because he only sells brand new items without bent corners/pages, etc
), there is NO recourse. Even the restocking fee he can't get because Amazon credits the buyer the full amount EVEN BEFORE verifying the returned book has been received by my bro.
Everyone just buys through Amazon Marketplace ("new/used") and ultimately get their items for FREE!!! This is plainly just wrong and bad for the economy/small business. Amazon used to comprise a big part of his paycheck, but that portion of the paycheck has dropped to almost zero with most customers now taking advantage of this ridiculous policy.
More than being just obviously wrong, Amazon also likely benefits from retained fees that never come back to the seller. So, as we see it, Amazon is flagrantly throwing publishers under the bus when it comes to their A to Z Returns Policy since they're making money either way...and ...how ELSE is Amazon benefiting by this arrangement? Since Amazon makes a MUCH bigger cut on Advantage (the main listing page) sales, than they do on the new/used (
(Marketplace) orders, it seems that Amazon is ALSO benefiting in this additional way by "coercing" Publishers to sell their books on Advantage instead of "new" under Marketplace (where Amazon's own "Fulfillment Center" ALSO sells your new/used copies, which likely accounts for additional publisher damages).
***ATTN: ALL AMAZON PUBLISHERS MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD***
DEAR "Smells like New Screen Names" (I mean Amazon Evangelist)---
"Amazon cares about their customers"
<<So you're speaking for Amazon. You replied within about 1 second. Can anyone say "crawler"?
Your argument is cr*p. YOU wrote:
"Unlike groceries, there is no expiration date on books. Unlike computers, your book doesn't have a short shelf life. Unlike software, you can't make digital
copies of a book. "
<<RESPONSE: When you order a book, there is no reasonable expectation of "expiration date"? You're not buying milk, duh! You're buying a book and you
KNOW the copyright date (as if that matters), because you've researched the listing. So the book is not going to be spoiled when you get it. Lame try!
"Unlike computers, your book doesn't have a short shelf life."
<<DUH! Books have a SHORTER life than computers. Books typically have new editions annualy and it's vital
... to the book's success or failure to have a
CHANCE to succeed on the free market (not the bound market!)
"Unlike software, you can't make digital copies of a book. "
<< WRONG AGAIN!! It's called Kinkos, DUH! And it's illegal too! Pirates make regular copies and ship back the books since they "no longer need it/ want it",
and SOME go so far as to make digital copies (albeit illegally), even though they'd face huge court fines and even time in jail.
YOU SAID " rip-off artists" TWICE. So, APPARENTLy, since you're SPEAKING FOR Amazon (see above), Amazon sees publishers as " rip-off artists"??? Gee,
that's even better!
And your last response spoke for them BEST:
"Amazon cares more about their customers, than they care about you the vendor. Don't like it, find someone else to sell your crappy self-published book."
Is this America?????
Wow, you literally sound evil the way you write. I me
DEAR (blah)--"Then don't sell through Amazon"
<< ARE YOU KIDDING? Amazon has a monopoly share of the online industry. That's NOT a valid solution but is simply LAZY, insensitive, lacks intelligence, and actually is hardly worth a response.
It's called throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That argument never works. It sidesteps the issue, and is usualy what you see from someone who has NO position to argue.
I was going to write (actually I wrote it twice but removed it before posting) NOT to post such neanderthalisk answers...but 1st 2 answers (you and "him") proved me wrong, lol.
When you get a real argument let me know. In the meantime, now I see where all the monies stolen from my brother are going. Evangelists, "yeah". Jokers.
BCNU--thanks for your one opinion. However, I can't say that your LL Bean or Nordstrom's examples have any relation to my question. In the real world, most people would call them "suckers" for taking such refunds. Those are extreme examples, and we didn't need any *more* extreme examples than the ones I gave you...the every day example, where publishers are getting reamed by Amazon Marketplace. Your comment "The economics of having satisfied customers has apparently resulted in your "question"." was missplaced. First, you *must* have meant the economics of having satisifed THEIR (Amazon's) customers has apparently resulted in your question." Of course they're going to be "satisfied". They're giving away publishers merchandises for FREE!! It's like Obama earning votes thru entitlement programs. By virtue of Amazon's lenient returns policy (not reflecting their virtue or good will or funds!), Amazon customers
... develop a new "ethic", which is "hey, if they'll let me read the book for 30 days and then return it, WHY NOT?!!! Who am I to argue?" lol The problem is Amazon is not giving away their goods, they're giving aways ours/the publishers goods. That's NO good. That's also bad for the economy, bad for competition, and in the end, it's irresponsible and negligent policy on a large scale, mismanaging its own publisher vendors. Your other comment "It's not really "stolen" from your brother if he agreed to the terms of service, right? The fact that your brother has poor business judgement ...". That's just uncalled for. That's also a poor argument. Agreeing to a Terms and Conditions doesn't mean the T&C are ethical (even legal), and in *some* cases, they've actually been show to be illegal. For all the reasons I cite in my post, Amazon's failure to include books among their list of exceptions (groceries, op
open software, etc) is a glaring mistake. Naturally I expected to hear from all the Amazon yahoo's who take advantage of their "give-away" policy. I've heard of publishers just using Amazon as their billboard, but never having any stock available when orders come through. So maybe there are a number of ways to tackle this. However, tens of thousands of Publishers are being injured every day by Amazon's negligent and irresponsible handling of Publishers' books by trying to turn publishers into "free pubic libraries". My brother is not in the business of charity. It's his business to put food on the table for his wife and kids. It's hard to do that with Amazon's over and flagrant disregard for Publishers' books. Amazon doesn't care, because they want to draw the book customers into the larger market of theirs (all products) thru entitlement- I mean giveaway--I mean their A to Z Marketplace returns policy on books. They also don'
They also don't care because they get to keep the FEES from the transaction (that's just wrong). It's also wrong for the 100 other reasons I cited.
Amazon will need to add books to their list of exceptions to their returns policy because "no longer needed"/ "no longer wanted" are NOT valid excuses for returning a book. Anyone who can't see these obvious truths is lying to himself and lying to everyone. You're also contributing to undermining hard-working businesses when you support (and take advantage of) these programs.
***I think, in the end, it will pretty much take legal action in the form of a CLASS ACTION on behalf of all Publishers for Amazon to wake up on this for all the injuries I've cited. Fortunately I'm an attorney. So I have all the connections. It's pretty easy to see Publishers are getting injured every day by Amazon on numerous levels. ***
DEAR "who aren't you?" / sockpuppets--So, you're ACTUALLY making Amazon to look even WORSE by creating (bogus) arguments like
a) your MacDonalds argument (which says that (your assumption) "If the food is crap, you send it back. They redo it, or give you something different."
<< You should be embarassed. First of all, you're EATING at MacDonald's (in your argument), so you should KNOW what you're getting (ton of sugars, fat, grease, calories, artificial flavors and preservatives, etc). THAT'S ON YOU. You can't blame others for your buying decisions. You're using that as an excuse for lack of personal responsibility.
Secondly, you're PROVING my point, ADMITTING (apparently with no insight whatsoever) that it's OK to eat the meal, and if you don't LIKE the book OR, as I provided, you READ the entire book and no longer need or want it OR, lol, disagree with the plot, get your money back. It's people like that
...(or thinking like that) which undermines our economy. You're consuming resources that took tremendous work to create, and then, BECAUSE YOU CAN, you're stealing from the publisher (the author and all the other contributors and their families). It's disgusting.
I'm not sure if you heard about it, but it's called responsibility. When you buy something, you're expected to pay for it. Reminds me of jumbo loans and the cause of the recession. People blamed the banks for giving them no money down 100% mortgage loans, and duh, then they turned around and blamed the SYSTEM for having been irresponsible? Hello. You read the description. You know EVERYTHING you're getting. Don't play the fool, unless it comes easy for you.
The second cr*p argument you were so decent to put forth was that self-publishers like my brother OUTRIGHT DESERVE IT!! Why is that?? Do you have some hostility towards smaller publishers? small to medium? large publishers? Where do you d
...Where do you draw the line? Are you God? Who died and you made you king? Nobody.
Again, on Amazon, you can see everything, from sample pages to the name of the publisher. You can even go online, if you're unsure of yourself or the product and research the book or publisher further. So, you SEE what you're buying, you KNOW you can't do that anywhere else, you CONSUME the resource, and then you say you don't like the book to get your money back too? Wow! Free products! How cool. Publishers aren't charities. They're businesses. They're not the public library. You know that. You know that when you buy the books. You know that when you READ the books. You know that when you copy the books, and you know that when you return the books. When someone knowingly does the wrong thing, and then takes advantage of a system that turns the other cheek, it hurts businesses, it hurts families, it hurts the economy.
You then went on to share something even more specia
...special "Try going through a real publishing company, they will turn the crappy book down." SO, what you're saying, whether you're speaking for Amazon or yourself, is that you HATE self publishers and you don't trust their books. Why? SO, if you HATE them as dearly as you write, THEN WHY BUY THEM in the FIRST PLACE?
Your "arguments" are all bogus, half-baked, and largely unbaked.
You then finished your tour de blah with "If you want your customers to be happy, find a way to post larger exerts of the book, so they can understand the quality of the writer before having to buy the book." So, again, without knowing anything about what or who we're talking about, you ASSUMED that he doesn't have enough (the word is) "excerpts"? That's foolish. To top it off, if you're NOT SURE about the quality of something, then WHY WOULD YOU EVEN frigging BUY IT??? Who is the fool? The fool is the guy who (using your analogy rea
...(using your analogy really) sees the cliff and still jumps.
If, based on the description on Amazon, you're not sure, then why the heck do you buy it? The TRUTH is (BASED ON EVERYTHING YOU admitted), you BUY it because you want to "TRY IT OUT" ...and most likely, in your case, from the way you're writing, you expect to return it after reading and enjoying it, esp if they're self-published lol. It's like test driving a car, buying it, and then taking it to Las Vegas to "give it my own test drive". Then, once you lose all your money because you bet on black, you pretend it's the car's fault "the damn car doesn't work!!" I'm gonna return it and get my money back! what a joke. You need to be responsible for your buying decisions. You act like you're 2 years old. Worse, it's like you're betting with other people's money. Like you're cashing in your wife's 401k or something and then, betting on black,
...betting on black, losing it, not telling her, and then telling her she should have put a pin on her account. It's just SUCH a joke the way you justify your thought process if you can even call it that.
So, no matter how you slice it, all your arguments are bologna, and easily shredded.