That was the response I got from my mother when I told her that the hundreds of books that we had got from a new source ended up being review copies that were unsellable on Amazon.

To give a brief history,  we recently acquired a new source of books that we had never gotten from before. This was a new source so we didn’t really know what to expect.  When we got to the place, we picked up a massive amount of books which looked promising. They looked new–brand new–which was rare for what we usually get. In short, we were pretty excited about it.

We went back and started going through them, and it turns out that there tons of different copies of the books that were looked brand new!  This was rare for us because typically, the books that we buy in bulk are older books, rare (not the super-valuable kind), ex-library books that we typically get for close to nothing.  At first we were a little skeptical, but after looking them up and scanning them with the barcode scanner with the receiving script I created, we found out  that they were actually very valuable and had a low sales rank.  W00t!

However, this is when the point of the title comes into play.  Not long after we got all excited we started seeing signs of review copies.  Page counts were wrong on some books, some had paper inserts on how to order more copies and a few had notes etched in them to change certain pieces.  There were tell-tale signs of review copies.

If you’re not familiar with a review copy, a review copy is typically a draft of a book that the author makes and sends to the publisher. The publisher prints out a few copies, sends it back to the author, then the author approves  the changes. The author signs off on it and sends it back to the publisher, and the publisher prints the final copy.

Needless to say, selling review copies of books on Amazon is strictly prohibited.  After some further investigation by matching up Amazon’s detail page and searching WorldCat for another authoritative source, we found the huge majority were, in fact, review copies.

There are a few things that you can take away from this experience that I had.

1. Know Amazon’s rules; know what they expect and disallow. Amazon does not allow any review copies to be sold on their site. They explicitly say this in their Terms of Service. If found to be selling review copies, you may have your seller account discontinued.
2. Learn how to distinguish a review copy from a final copy.  Review copies may have notes in them for the author saying “to add this, remove this, change this,etc” with notes on the margins.  Also, they may not have barcode on the back where the ISBN usually is.
3. Look for inserts  from the publisher that may not look like they’re part of the book. Inserts can be anything, such as where to order more copies of the book, who to contact when submitting revisions, etc.  In this instance, I had purchased tons of educational books for students.  These books, although were clearly student textbooks, had an insert in it to order copies of other related textbooks.  This seemed a little off to me that this material would be for the student. These materials were clearly meant for the authors themselves
4. Finally, if you’re not sure, always check the publisher’s website to verify details (if possible) or WorldCat.  Sometimes, the product detail page you’re looking at may not have the correct details.  This can be for different reasons but the first that pops into my head is the page may have been created from another seller and not Amazon.  Because of this possibility, always consult an authoritative source if you’re unsure.

I apologize for the posting time out I’ve had lately.  I’ve been working hard on my newest web application eBizControl and another inventory receiving application for bulk buyers that’s taking up a considerable amount of my time.  However, I hope that the time invested will pay off in the end.  In any case, I’m going to make an attempt to get back to posting on a regular schedule.  Let me know if you want to hear about anything in particular.