This is pretty bold and dark. Amazon has created what it calls its “Advantage” program. The cost? An additional 2% on each title sold. The advantage? Getting paid in a timely manner. So in essence, you need to give up more of your already deeply cut profit in order to see any money at all before 60 days. I know 90 days is common, but this thing just reeks of a cash grab.

Amazon.co.uk is offering publishers who participate in its Advantage scheme an “early payment” option of 15 days, in exchange for an extra 2% on top of the current discount given by publishers. But publishers have claimed that Amazon is trying to pinch an extra month.

Those publishers who do not offer the extra discount will see their payments made on Amazon’s “standard terms”—effectively 60 days. This means a publisher who sells a book through Amazon in April would not be paid until the end of June. Under the revised terms, a publisher would be paid on 15th May—a full 45 days earlier.

Publishers have hit out at the new terms. One said this early payment, which becomes effective from 1st April, is “more or less what they pay us on now”. The publisher added: “At the moment, if you sell in February, you get the report at the start of March and payment at the end—which is in effect what they are saying will happen here. If you don’t give the extra discount, payment would be sometime in April.” He continued: “[Amazon is] trying to take an extra month . . . In these tough times, it’s absolutely outrageous picking on small guys.”

“Advantage” narrowly won out at the meeting that formed the program over other suggested program names, including: “Pretty Extortion”, “Fuck You, Peons”, and “Once More, This Time Without Lube”.