Interesting, Very Interesting

I was just checking my affiliate stats at a certain large online bookstore -- as one does when one is bored -- and noticed that many Kindle editions show up as having been sold by "Third Party." I find this odd, since they're sold by Amazon, on Amazon.com, for a device that only Amazon sells -- and there's no sign that Amazon is facilitating the sale of "used" copies (and why would they?)

As a matter of fact, once I poked into the data further, it appears that every Kindle edition sold since the beginning of October was sold by a "Third Party" and not by Amazon itself. Now, it's possible that this is just a fluke; my traffic is not huge, so the fact that every single Kindle-edition sale through my affiliate link was to a Third Party could just be a coincidence.

But this is very curious. Who is this mysterious entity that sells so many e-books, across so many publishers, on Amazon's own website?

(I still wish people would buy real, old-fashioned books -- the way God and Gutenberg intended them to be read, on paper -- but that's mostly because I don't get a cent in kickback from Kindle-edition sales, so buying a Kindle-book through my link just lets me know that I have readers who also like Lust in a Stately English Manor and The Erotic Adventures of Arabelle.)