Lots going on in the bookselling world lately. Try this on for size: Two bookstore chains have declared boycotts against Amazon-published books, and Amazon is rumored to be opening brick-and-mortar stores:

Books-a-Million and Canadian bookseller Indigo Books and Music have announced that they joined ranks with Barnes & Noble in refusing to sell Amazon-printed books in their stores.

“In our view Amazon’s actions are not in the long-term interests of the reading public or the publishing and book retailing industry, globally,” Indigo vice president Janet Eger said in an email, according to the Canadian Globe and Mail.

Last Thursday Barnes & Noble made a similar announcement, saying it would not sell Amazon-printed books in its brick-and-mortar stores in an attempt to cut off access for the online books behemoth that it says “undermined the industry” by signing exclusive agreements with publishers, agents, and authors.

But, according to reports from the Good E-Reader blog, Amazon is striking back with a plan to open its own retail stores. That’s right, the store that built its business model as an online retailer and put many bricks-and-mortar booksellers out of business is looking to get into physical retailing.

Read more at: Indigo, Books-a-Million boycott Amazon

I never would have dreamed Amazon would open physical bookstores, but stranger things have happened. Five years ago, who would have thought Apple would have arisen from the dead, becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies–in part, by opening some brick-and-mortar stores to showcase its products?

And, if book chains are going to boycott Amazon, what do they have to lose by opening some stores (at least for an experiment) that stock its books and display the Kindle, which it’s betting the farm on, long term?

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I updated the book this week to include some recent changes regarding the FBA Long Term Storage fees, obtaining IRS Form 1099Ks, and collecting state and local sales taxes through your Marketplace account.

No Kindle device is required to download the book, it will work with the free Kindle Apps for virtually any computer or smartphone.

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Have you ever offered an item cheaper on eBay than Amazon? Did you know that doing so can get you booted from Amazon?

People are discovering this across the pond in the United Kingdom, and lots of people are up in arms. From the Daily Mail:

Online shopping giant Amazon has been accused of artificially inflating prices by banning firms that trade on its website from selling goods more cheaply elsewhere on the internet.

Online shopping giant Amazon has been accused of artificially inflating prices by banning firms that trade on its website from selling goods more cheaply elsewhere on the internet.

Thousands of shops and small businesses, ranging from record stores to perfume suppliers, sell their products on Amazon, which has seen its worldwide sales surge by 44 per cent. 

Under draconian new restrictions introduced by the American corporation, traders who sell products more cheaply on other sites face expulsion from the Amazon catalogue unless they agree to raise their prices.
Amazon has ordered them to ‘maintain parity between the terms on which you offer or sell each item through Amazon’ and the amount they charge for the same product on other sites.

Last night consumer protection lawyers called for an investigation.

Read more: Amazon accused of bullying small firms and inflating prices | Mail Online.

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These guys need to get out of bookselling and into moviemaking:

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In the old days, when I was a writer, we used to call this a “man bites dog” story.

Here it is:

Amazon just did a boneheaded thing, and it deserves all the scorn you want to heap on it. Last week, the company offered people cash in exchange for going into retail stores and scanning items using the company’s Price Check smartphone app. If you scanned a product and then purchased it from Amazon rather than the shop you were standing in, Amazon would give you a 5 percent discount on the sale.

More: Independent bookstores vs. Amazon: Buying books online is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you. – Slate Magazine.

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I’m sure it’s been in several spy flicks, James Bond movies, and numerous “Get Smart” episodes — the “book safe,” a hollowed-out book that conceals a key. It’s a great way to recycle or upcycle a penny book, especially a worthless leatherbound cutie.

If you had the right kind of saw, you could probably transform your penny books into a “hidden book safe” like these on Overstock.

The latest is this listing on Etsy, where someone has transformed yesterday’s bestsellers into iPhone chargers. Considering the markup you get on Apple accessories, it’s probably a great idea:

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Sellers, you can download your 1099K from Amazon. Look on your Seller Account page in the “Reports” section and you’ll see a link for “View your tax document library.”

As you know, the 1099K is new this year. It reports your gross income to the Internal Revenue Service, much like the W2 you receive from an employer. You get a 1099K only if you gross more than $20,000 annually. Not receiving a 1099 won’t relieve you of any tax filing obligations, though.

The picture on the left is what mine looks like after I’ve deleted the numbers. Click on the picture to zoom in. At first glance, the monthly totals in each box matched up fairly closely with the monthly totals from my seller performance summary from last year– the only difference, I guess, is fees and refunds. The monthly boxes didn’t match up exactly with my payment disbursements for each month, either (sometimes I carry a balance into the first few days of a month), but I’m assuming the annual total will match up with my 2011 disbursements to the penny.

For more details here is the IRS instructions, and the Amazon help page.

For eBay, Etsy, and other sales venues paying through PayPal, instructions are here.

PS: Received this email last night:

Hello from Amazon,

For the 2011 tax year, if you had at least $20,000 in unadjusted gross sales and 200 or more transactions, a Form 1099-K is now available for download in the new Tax Document Library in your seller account. If you did not meet both of these thresholds, a Form 1099-K will not be available for download.

If you did not consent to electronic delivery, the form will be postmarked on or before January 31, 2012, and mailed to the address provided by you in the tax interview. If you did consent to electronic delivery, you can download the form. From the “Reports” section of your seller account, select “View your tax document library,” then 2011, and then Form 1099-K.

For information on Form 1099 filing instructions, please visit the IRS web site:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1099gi.pdf

For additional information about the 1099-K regulations and Amazon policy, and to see answers to frequently asked questions, search on “1099″ in seller Help.

Important Notice: Information in this document does not constitute tax, legal, or other professional advice. To find out how this new legislation will affect your business, or if you have other questions, please contact your tax, legal, or other professional advisor.

Best regards,

Amazon Services

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If you’re a seller, Amazon will nail you for posting product reviews of the stuff you’re selling.

One seller, VIP Deals, who was offering rebates in exchange for five-star product reviews, was apparently suspended by Amazon after the New York Times ran a story about them. Not only did Amazon take down VIP’s listings, they wiped out the product page, too.

Just to be clear, we’re talking about product reviews, not merchant feedback.

This is one thing that escapes the attention of many sellers: Amazon’s “prohibited seller activities” includes writing product reviews of items you’re selling. The logic is, if you have a financial interest in the product, it’s too tempting to post an undeservedly glowing review of it (in other words, a “fake” endorsement). Here’s Amazon’s wording:

Creating reviews for items in which you have a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (for example posting a review of a product you offer for sale on Amazon, or posting a negative review of a competing product) is prohibited. You may not solicit or pay anyone to create a review or offer gifts or refunds for the removal of product reviews.

So, was VIP Deals in the wrong for offering a rebate to buyers in exchange for reviews? No debate in this case. Where they went over the line was in hinting they expected 5-star reviews in exchange for refunds–according to what I’ve read. As the Times recounts, thousands of Amazon customers discovered VIP’s Kindle Fire leather cases priced at $10, marked down from $59.99. The packages arrived with a letter asking buyers “to write a product review for the Amazon community.”

“In return for writing the review, we will refund your order so you will have received the product for free,” the letter said. Here’s a picture of the letter:

There’s nothing inherently wrong about providing free products solely for review consideration. Amazon has a giant program called Amazon Vine, which serves as a pipeline between publishers, product manufacturers, and Amazon’s amateur reviewers. Vine reviewers get a newsletter once a month offering review copies of new books and other products.

You can’t directly sign up for Amazon Vine. It’s one of those “don’t call us, we’ll call you” situations. If you frequently post product reviews on Amazon and get a sufficiently high percentage of “helpful” votes, you’ll get the invitation.

Check out most of the Amazon Vine reviews, and you’ll see that most (but not all) of the reviewers consistently post five-star product reviews. Perhaps they post upbeat reviews because they can expect to receive even more freebies from manufacturers who want reviews of new items.

I’ve heard that it costs publishers more than $5,000 to get a single book included in the Vine program. And so publishers are frustrated when, every once in a while, a Vine reviewer pans a book, according to Publishers Weekly.

One of the most notorious Amazon reviewers is Harriet Klausner, who often posts dozens of glowing book reviews each day of the week.

I’ve been a member of Vine myself for three or four years, and one thing I’ve noticed is that the offered products closely follow your recent purchases. If I’ve recently bought a kitchen gadget on Amazon, the next Vine newsletter will offer kitchen gadgets, in addition to books. Last month I bought a license plate frame on Amazon, and sure enough, today’s newsletter offered auto accessories. So Amazon definitely tries to match up books and products with reviewers who are interested in that category.

How effective is Vine? That’s open to debate. One thing is obvious, though, it’s a cash cow for Amazon — they’ve got manufacturers lining up by the thousands paying big bucks for the privilege of giving away their merchandise, on the theory that they’ll eventually sell more of it.

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QUESTION: Are books with high Amazon sales ranks — say, more than 200,000 — still a good bet for Fulfillment by Amazon?

ANSWER: Yes. If you want to sell for the best price you’ve got to ignore the lowballers and use FBA as your edge.

So, I’ll send a book with virtually any sales rank — up to 1 million — to FBA and wait for the sale, even if it’s a valuable book worth $100 to $200 (in those cases I wrap the book within my UPS box to prevent any bumped corners or torn dust jackets at the Amazon fulfillment center).

However, I’ve gotten a lot more conservative about sending bulk inventory to FBA since they implemented the long-term storage fee for items stored longer than 365 days. When they started that policy last year, I had to have more than 1,000 books destroyed I had already shipped to the warehouse or else get socked with a penalty of more than $1,000. Now that hurts — having to destroy inventory you’ve bought and paid for, then paid to ship to Amazon.

Of course the long-term storage storage fee wouldn’t apply to long-tail books you’ve hand-picked at library sales, etc., since the first unit of any ASIN is exempted from the 365-day rule. Yes, my standard practice before they implemented the long-term fee was to send them all as soon as I got them. Now I’ve got to be virtually 100% sure they’ll sell within a year before sending.

You can’t blame Amazon for trying to maximize the turnover at its warehouses, but they should have grandfathered-in those of us who were blindsided with the long-term storage fee last year.

Speaking of the long-term storage fee, it will be decreased effective February 15, 2012, from $45.00 per cubic foot to $22.50 per cubic foot, but will now be charged twice a year instead of once, as previously. More details:

Dear FBA Seller,

Fulfillment by Amazon’s (FBA’s) next inventory cleanup will take place on February 15, 2012. As communicated previously, on that date, and each six months thereafter, FBA will assess an upfront, Long-Term Storage Fee on inventory that has been in our fulfillment centers for 365 days or more.

Please note the following changes to the Long-Term Storage Fee. The fee will be decreased effective February 15, 2012, from $45.00 per cubic foot to $22.50 per cubic foot, but will now be charged twice a year. However, Units that were charged a Long-Term Storage Fee on August 15, 2011, will not be charged a Long-Term Storage Fee on February 15, 2012.

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QUESTION: I’m trying to grow my business slowly (I have a day job, thank heavens), and I’m considering getting a refurbished Zebra thermal label printer to save ink, paper and time. I see some good deals on Amazon.

Can these printers be used with USPS Shipping Assistant, or would I have to use Endicia or Stamps.com? Is a Zebra printer worth the investment?

ANSWER: I use Endicia with a Zebra printer for 4 x 6 shipping labels. I’ve bought several of them over the years at eBay — new, used, refurbished. They are pretty expensive if brand new — something like $350 or $450 retail. But I’ve never had to pay more than half retail, even for a brand new one. I’ve bought reconditioned 2844s for as low as $40 on eBay.

The one you mentioned on Amazon looks like a decent deal, but you should ask the seller what kind of cable it has. The newer ones have USB cables, which are a heck of a lot easier to plug into your computer and get working — compared to the older cables, which might not be recognized by you computer.

Also, ask the seller if he’s providing the CD that has the printer drivers, just in case your computer doesn’t automatically recognize the label printer. You can download them online after registering with Zebra, but it’s a lot easier if you have the CD with the drivers, and you know they’re the right ones.

Is a Zebra printer worth $200 or $300? Absolutely, as long as you’re printing a dozen labels a day, it’s going to save you a lot of time. I don’t print as many 4 x 6 labels now that I use FBA, but my Zebra printer is still on 24/7. I can’t stand printing 4 x 6 labels through my Dell laser printer.

Using a Zebra printer with USPS Shipping Assistant might give you some trouble, though. I don’t think it would work if you’re printing out just one label, because Shipping Assistant wants to print out mailing instructions along with the label, and it usually takes an 8.5 by 11 sheet. I think it’s the same deal with the USPS Web service, Click n’ Ship. If you’re printing more than one label, I think you can decline to print the instructions. If someone knows more about this, perhaps they’ll chime in.

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