Wired News delivered to your inbox or hand-held device. If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon's customers, this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers. The Guild claims 8,000 working authors among its members. The publishers group represents 278 companies. Authors earn royalties from new book sales but get nothing when used copies of the same books are resold.
Publishers often advance famous writers millions of dollars against future royalties for new books.
Used book sales are also not counted in creating the bestsellers lists or the publishers' sales records. Both of those add to a writer's reputation, which can earn them bigger advances and easier sales to publishers the next time around. The crux of the complaint is that Amazon is making used books available within weeks of a new release. While the practice does nothing for the authors and publishers, it does net a significant amount of money to Amazon. The online retailer deducts a flat fee of 99 cents, plus 15 percent of the sale price for processing the orders and credit card payments.