FAQ

Like any retailer of any product (not just books), amazon has the right to sell a product for whatever price they want, higher or lower than the list price, as long as they pay the manufacturer the "correct" list price that was invoiced.

So if I list a book at $12, amazon is free to sell it at $6 or $19, as long as they pay me $12 (minus their stated commission). In the first case they "lose" money, in the second case, they increase their profit.

Why / how do they do this?

First, no human beings are involved; it's all algorithms.

Two, the folks at amazon themselves can't explain it, or prevent it, except by manual tinkering (overriding manually a price) but then the algorithm "fixes" it again later so it's a quixotic battle.

The *theory*  (I insist it's only a theory) is, the algorithm looks at all the Marvel, DC, etc comic books, and the page count, totally ignoring the actual cost of printing in color vs b&w.

So if it sees me sell a 48-page color book and a 136-page b&w book both for $12.95, it decides I'm "wrong". The 48-page book should be sold at $6 and the 136-page  book at $19, based on the hundreds of all the other "similar" comics being for sale, and it "corrects" my prices.

That's the "theory" anyway.

Needless to say, I'm powerless to fix it.