Amazon Listing Changes  What You Need to Know

If you’ve received recent emails from Amazon about changes to their listing format, you’re not alone. Amazon is phasing out its older flat-file book templates and transitioning to a new, JSON-based system. This update affects how inventory is submitted to Amazon through third-party tools  including BookRouter.

Timeline

Amazon began rolling out these changes in early 2024, with plans to fully retire the old flat-file templates by July 31, 2025. From that point on, all listings must be submitted using the new format.

What’s Changed

• Unique identifiers are now required. All Amazon offers must be tied to an existing product listing using either an ISBN or an ASIN.
• New listings must be created manually in Seller Central. BookRouter does not support the creation of new product listings. While some non-ISBN items may have been matched or added by Amazon under the old system, that behavior was part of Amazon’s internal logic and never formally supported by BookRouter.
• We’ve downloaded your ASINs. To ensure continuity, we’ve automatically retrieved ASINs for any of your items that were already listed on Amazon. This ensures that your existing listings remain active and synced without interruption.

Offers vs. Listings  A Quick Refresher

Amazon distinguishes between:

• Listings: the product pages that include titles, descriptions, images, and metadata.
• Offers: your specific price, quantity, and condition for a product listed on Amazon.

BookRouter submits offers only. To do this, it must link your product to an existing Amazon listing using an ISBN or ASIN.

What If a Book Has No ISBN?

If your item does not have an ISBN, you’ll need to:

1. Assign an ASIN to the product in BookRouter if an appropriate listing already exists on Amazon. More info on how to accomplish this here:   https://help.bibliopolis.com/a/1970330-how-do-i-find-an-asin-amazon-standard-identification-number-and-assign-it-to-a-item-in-bookrouter
2. Create a new listing manually in Seller Central if one does not exist. After that, you can copy the ASIN into BookRouter to sync your offer.

What’s Better Now?

• Your current Amazon listings remain intact  no action is needed for existing listed inventory.
• We’ll eventually be able to introduce reporting tools to help you identify which items failed to list on Amazon  something we were not able to detect under the old system.

Summary

Overall, you likely won’t notice much of a change, especially if the bulk of your inventory includes ISBNs. For non-ISBN items, assigning ASINs will now be essential. Going forward, any listings that are new to Amazon must be created in Seller Central before they can be routed through BookRouter.