Hi Angela,

My discontinued book is for sale on Ebay for many times the price I listed it for on Amazon. It cannot be a used copy as I know everyone who has bought one. Shouldn’t I be entitled to a royalty at least?

– CS

The people selling those copies on Ebay don’t actually have physical copies of the books. Any firm with an Ingram account (that’s the distributor) can pick up Ingram’s feed, and start selling their books. Ingram sends that automated feed to retailers. It’s the same automated feed that third party sellers on Amazon receive.

Unfortunately, many of these small resellers don’t bother to update their listings when a book becomes unavailable.

You can try ordering a copy from that ebay seller. I suspect they will later contact you to say they can’t obtain a copy.

RELATED

• “How can I stop Amazon’s resellers from listing my book at such a high price?”
• Has Amazon Given Your Book’s “Buy Button” to a Third-party Seller?
• “Amazon has my book priced waaaay too low (or high)! What gives?!”
• “Why do Amazon’s resellers have my book priced too high/too low?”
• Why Ingram (the Distributor) Won’t Tell Authors and Publishers Who Purchased Their Books

Follow Angela: twitter | facebook | linkedin