[ChrisRachael]

Does anyone know if Amazon uses expanded distribution to buy copies they will sell internally?

I thought expanded distribution was for sales to libraries and third party bookstores.

However, I just recieved an order that is larger than my total Q4 sales last year. I don't think any external bookstores or libraries love me that much.

They paid the very tiny expanded distribution price instead of the regular purchase price. The difference is over $10,000.

A few years ago I had a book do very well. The next year Amazon made a bulk purchse like that and paid regular full price for it. I had expanded distribution enabled at the time. Have they changed policies on expanded distribution so they can print a bunch of units for internal holiday season sales?

 

[ShayneRutherford]

What’s your genre? Could it be for a school?

 

[鬼]

I don't believe so.

If I were you, I'd get it up on Ingramspark asap in case it happens again. You never know. Why settle for the low royalty when you could have gotten the full?

 

[ChrisRachael]

The genre is nerdy cookbooks with full color photography. I've sold a few to third party bookstores over the years, but those are usually 3-7 sales at a time.

The total of this bulk order is slightly more than the combined total of all my Q4 sales for last year. No bookstore or library loves me that much.

 

[Sleeping Cat Books]

In these pandemic days, KDP facilities have been having trouble meeting demand, so Amazon has been occasionally outsourcing printing through its third-party print network. This has been known to happen around the holidays. If that's the case here, it could be an error that they were reported as ED sales, which also happens around the holidays, although KDP usually corrects it on their own. You may want to politely question customer support about it.

 

[ChrisRachael]

Would email work better than a phone call? I called customer support as soon as I saw the sales spike. That put me on the phone to India. I talked to a couple of people there who informed me that it doesn't say Amazon *can't* buy coipies for internal sales using Expanded Distribution, so if I don't like them buying it at the cheaper rate then I need to disable Expanded Distribution.

I've had Expanded Distribution enabled in the past when I had sales spikes. The sales always went through as normal sales. So either this is a policy change or a glitch. If anyone knows a better way to contact KDP about it than the customer service phone number I would be very grateful.