Tuesday 11 May 2010

Amazon mystery solved!

Good news! I’ve finally worked out how a self-published author (ie me) gets paid by Amazon:

1) Customer buys book through Amazon
2) Amazon notifies a sub-contractor (Bertram Books) of the order
3) Bertram notifies Nielsen (the organisation that issues ISBNs) of the order
4) Nielsen notifies the publisher (ie me) that an order has been received
5) The publisher (ie me) supplies the book to Bertram, who then send it to the purchaser
6) The publisher (ie me) then submits an invoice to Bertram

Simple, isn’t it? Except that it took me several emails to find out about step 6, which is by no means obvious. It seems that the brave new world of self-publishing still has a few kinks that need ironing out.

2 comments:

  1. That explains the slight delay!

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  2. Yes, I’m sorry about that. The really annoying thing about this is that it makes me look bad. When people order the book through my website I email them the same day to tell them I’ve got the order and let them know when I’ll be posting the book. But I can’t give the same level of customer service with Amazon, since I don’t even know the order has come in for a couple of weeks.

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