UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
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Why are people selling the paperback second hand for more than the new copy!
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They buy it then sell it at a profit?Although, you'd have to be pretty stupid to order a more expensive copy.
Can you report the seller? Or leave feedback or something?
Ummmm.Could you please change the thread title so we know what this thread is actually about?
I had someone selling copies of my hardbacks for £100 on .com and I queried Amazon, not wanting people to think I was part of a scam. They said it was a perfectly legitimate practice (which is true I guess).If you're concerned, get someone 'unconnected' to you to leave a review saying that it's cheaper elsewhere on Amazon.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Ummmm.Could you please change the thread title so we know what this thread is actually about?"
I think that should do it Patti
It happens all the time. The thing that amazes me is that it seems to be the same few sellers and that they have feedback scores in the 95% bracket. I could understand it with rare and out of print books, but not new ones. I just think some people have much more money than common sense.
I've seen copies of my books on eBay from US sellers...which is interesting because one of them has only sold one copy in paperback overseas and that was to a friend in Scotland.
I guess that it costs nothing to advertise a book for an inflated price - all they need to do is to sell one to some unsuspecting punter and they have made a tidy profit.I had a similar experience about a bit of building work that we need doing to our house. We arranged for four builders to give us quotes. They ranged from a few hundreds pounds to more than £13,000.
How can a firm stay in business by quoting £13,000 for work that someone else will do for £500? Because some people only get one quote and just assume that is the going rate.
If you look at the motoring magazines there are firms offering to sell unusual and rare number plates. In many cases they don't own the number plates that they are offering. If you do express an interest these firms will go to DVLA and buy the number plate for much less than they will charge you.
I had a rather startling version of this when a short novella I had written, and which was only published on Kindle (for £2.99) was offered by someone for £189 (a very weird price at the best of times) in a PRINTED version. If I was very rich I might have paid up just to see what transpired, and, if necessary, to sue the bastards.Amazon were completely and utterly unhelpful. They kept asking whether I wanted to make a complaint over copyright and never seemed to get the fact that THERE WAS NO PRINTED VERSION (sorry for the screaming, but that was how I felt at the time...) and that, therefore, it must be a scam. I finally gave up to protect my sanity.
That one is weird or are people printing other writers kindle only books on print on demand?
Surely that would mean that you'd have to buy the Kindle book, then laboriously scan/save every page as a Screenshot Jpeg, print it out, scan in again in order to run a optical recognition programme, import into Word or Scrivener, et., etc...?On the other hand, if someone is idiot enough to pay £189, maybe it would be worth it... Still sounds like a scam to me...
There is bound to be some software or programme somewhere that will take a kindle doc and convert it to a word document at the click of a button.
I am assured by friends who Know Things About Computers, that it is fairly straightforward to convert Kindle docs if you know what you're doing. I gather it's pretty easy to convert them into PDFs, and then even someone as thick as me could manage to get them into Word format, etc.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Doesn't calibre do that?"I know mobi files - which are the ones a Kindle reads - are more or less just html files & I presume the azw ones are similar, so it should be reasonably straightforward to convert them to other types of files.
Calibre probably does do it, yes.
BUT! £189 for a book. A fool and his money are soon parted and there's the proof.
I feel somehow second class, they were only charging a couple of quid more for mineTo be worth charging a £180+ for, you're obviously a very special author!
Mostly all these people do is offer the item at an outrageous price. Then if someone actually orders it, they buy the book at the regular price, get it shipped direct to the purchaser and pocket the difference. Yes it's a rip off, but there's not much you can do about it, and you still get the sale.
Sadly, no, Jim, not at all a special author. This was a one-off. I've found my other books for about a third above price for the printed version. For those I thought it was just a chancer selling them quite legitimately, hoping to catch an idiot who couldn't read the very obvious lower price on the page. But this one was weird as there WAS no printed version. I also have to add that this was about five years ago, when self-publishing was quite young. I'm still p'd off with Amazon for not taking it seriously.I wasn't aware that it was so possible to pirate a mobi file. Scary...
Many years ago I had a friend who was a software designer. He was writing a computer game which was meant to be an improved version of the classic game Elite. While it was being developed it went by the working title of EPT, which stood for Elite ... ahem ... mickey take.The game was never finished or sold although they did show a part of it to a magazine who published a glowing review.
Shortly afterwards several of the mailing companies started including EPT as one of the titles they were offering to sell you ... even though it wasn't finished yet. They even set a price for it.
I suppose that if you had tried to order it they would have cheerfully taken your money and then kept you hanging on until the game was ready. Which, in this case, was never.
Selling is an odd business sometimes.
You're probably right, Mandy, but it WAS an Amazon-approved site with a high rating, which was why I reported it to Amazon, but they just didn't care....
They don't care, unless it looks like they could end up getting caught up in a prosecution it's probably not worth their while spending money on staff time to find out what you're complaining about :-(
Jim wrote: "I feel somehow second class, they were only charging a couple of quid more for mineTo be worth charging a £180+ for, you're obviously a very special author!"
Nah - 180 quid is nothing. There are some real heavy hitters out there, like
http://www.amazon.com/Thats-Part-Prob...
and
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1KY9VC
Good reviews, too.
I chanced to notice that there's now second hand ones available for more than new!
From the same vendor!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-list...
They even say that it's print on demand. Sorry but none of this computes