Whose responsibility is it to prevent counterfeit books from being available on Amazon? Is there any way for other booksellers to benefit from selling “real” books?
Interactive Edge’s CEO, Zel Bianco comments, featured on RetailWire’s Braintrust :
This is a serious issue for book lovers everywhere. The fact that this is happening with medical books is even more troubling. Amazon needs to step up to the plate on this and all the other areas where manufacturers are getting squeezed, to use a more polite term. This is happening in almost all categories where third-party sellers are buying goods and then re-selling them on Amazon in a different pack size, price, etc. There has been evidence of food items that are past their expiration date and not up to the quality the consumer expects from a national brand. The consumer then tends to go back to the manufacturer who needs to eat the cost to make it right. Why should the CPG company or anyone else that makes a good product or a publisher that puts out the original book be left holding the bag? Amazon should be the one to take responsibility for their third-party sellers or the Amazon-maintained supply chain that allows this to happen. It’s great that they are trying to work with a few publishers but much more needs to be done. It is unfair to the industry!
Read the entire article from RetailWire: