If Manny does answer, I can tell you what he is going to say. He will not answer the question directly. He will quote the party line.
He will tell you that you have to buy 10+ copies in the past year and you must have an invoice to prove that you did so.
He will not address the underlying issues.
The real issue here - and the underlying issue in many decisions that Amazon makes - is liability. As I have opined in other related subjects, Amazon considers liability their number one problem.
Amazon is so big now that making money is no longer their top priority. They have so much money that they are a target for all kinds of freeloaders and thieves: from street-level gunslingers to ambulance chasers to congressional subcomittees. Everyone wants a piece of Amazon.
So Amazon’s top priority is protecting what they have got. This means avoiding liability. If liability can’t be ducked completely, it must be transferrred to someone else.
That is why they want to see invoices from the seller. It is a method of transferring liability.
Amazon never wants to be seen as confirming the authenticity or safety of their products.
They want to be seen as merely the owner of the marketplace. If something goes wrong, it was the seller’s fault. They can’t verify the authenticity or suitability or safety of all of their products, so they want to only have sellers who will absorb the liability for their products.
There are no bad products on Amazon, there are only bad sellers. And Amazon is working as hard as they can to get rid of bad sellers.
Books are one of the last subjects that Amazon is worried about. They are one of the safest products that can be sold online. They are not ingested. They have no sharp edges. They can’t explode. They don’t have an expiration date. And with the exception of a few textbooks with artificially high prices, there is little profit in counterfeiting them.
When Manny says that “we are implementing selling qualifications for some products that might have a higher risk of authenticity issues, which include[s] books.” he is lying.
I know that he is lying; you know he is lying; Amazon knows that he is lying. If Manny had the brains of a muskrat, even he would know that he is lying. Books are one of the lowest-liability items that can be sold.
Books are the last thing that Amazon should be worried about.
Unfortunately for us booksellers, Amazon has restricted almost everything else. They have come to nearly the end of the line, and books are next. We booksellers are therefore the next victims: absorb the liability or leave.
It is very hard to absorb the liability for a used book, so we are probably going to have to leave.
As we go, Manny and his ilk will still be dishonestly conflating used and new, and still asking for invoices for used books.
