Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
It's not a different arrangement.
Amazon or a physical bookstore buys books from a distributor (Amazon is its own distributor, actually). BooksonBoard also bought ebooks from distributors: Ingram Digital, Overdrive, and Mobipocket.
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Yes, it IS a different arrangement. The fundamental difference is that in the one case Amazon is BUYING the books from the publisher (or wholesaler). They can then legally sell them to whoever they wish.
BoB (or any other eBook store) are NOT "buying books up front" from Ingram, Mobi, etc. - they don't have a "stock" of books which they've paid for and are waiting to sell to you. The transaction is only carried out at the time that the customer buys the book, and it's done directly by Ingram, Mobi, etc, via the BoB (or whatever) server. BoB then pays commission to the distributer for the transaction. ie it's a "direct sale". That is why, for example, you can't buy a Mobi book if Mobi's server is down at the time.