Why do I need approval to sell Marvel trade paperbacks
I have boxes of old Marvel trade paperbacks that I bought 15-20 years ago (mostly X-Men related). I now want to sell them and I see on Amazon that many of them sell for £30-40 - so I’d probably do quite nicely out of it.
But I’ve tried to list half a dozen of them and for most of them I get a message saying that I need approval to list the product. And getting approval seems to include showing Amazon an invoice proving that I’ve bought the books from the publisher in the last six months. Which, of course, I haven’t.
What’s going on here? When did Amazon get so picky about what sellers can list? Don’t they want my to sell my books through them?
Should I just sell them on eBay instead?
Cheers,
Dave…
12 replies
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
Are you trying to list them with condition ‘new’? Since what you’re listing are items you bought retail, they can’t be sold in the condition ‘new’.
I would personally recommend ebay instead if you can’t provide the invoices, as I wouldn’t put it past Amazon to eventually place a policy violation against your account for Suspected Intellectual property Violation.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
You cannot list out-of-print Marvel products as ‘new’. ‘New’ titles cannot be listed without authorisation.
A lot of Marvel titles are also barred from being listed in any condition. I had many of my existing listings blocked some while ago.
This is a change that came in just a few months ago, IIRC.
It has probably led to prices for them on Amazon now being artificially high, simply due to the fact that most sellers can’t list the copies they have.
Seller_mxez2L8QjE6WW
If no copy is already listed on Amazon you will get the ‘must be approved’ message. I get a lot of them, for standard publishers such as Macmillan or Methuen, not only for publishers such as Marvel or DC Comics, with franchises to protect. Most of the books have long been out of print, so writing to the publisher to get approval would be a waste of everybody’s time. It just a case of blunt-instrument badly designed bots. E-bay or AbeBooks are a better bet
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
Sell them on eBay at auction. That’s what I do with all my collectables.
