The Authors Guild, a trade group for writers, sent an e-mail last week to 5,000 of its 8,200 members calling on those who have Web sites to remove links to Amazon.com's affiliate program.

This is the latest development in a 16-month effort by the guild to persuade the online bookseller to stop offering used books for sale by other customers on the same Web pages as new ones.

"Amazon practice does damage to the publishing industry, decreasing royalty payments to authors and profits to publishers," said an e-mail from executive director Paul Aiken to members of the New York-based organization.

Amazon.com is a pioneer of affiliate programs, where Web sites linked to a merchant get a cut of resulting sales. Its affiliates number in the hundreds of thousands.

According to The Authors Guild, Amazon has been pushing its "notorious" used book service more aggressively than ever.

The guild is also not demanding that Amazon stop selling used books, he said. It is simply asking Amazon to sell used books on a separate section of the site.

So far, the request has fallen on deaf ears, Aiken said. Amazon recently began more aggressively pitching its used book service by telling returning book buyers what they could earn by selling their used purchases to other Amazon customers. Amazon takes a cut of used book transactions.

Used books reportedly accounted for 15 percent of Amazon's sales last year.

Amazon began offering the used book service in November 2000. The guild and the Association of American Publishers sent Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos a letter in December 2000 protesting the service.

"If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon's customers, this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers," the letter said. "Without talented authors producing a large number of new titles every year, Amazon's sales will certainly suffer. If book authors and publishers aren't adequately compensated for their work, however, then more and more writers will be compelled to pursue other creative outlets and professions."

Marketing News, April 15, 2002

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