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I dont understand why other online bookshops can't compete on price with Amazon. How hard can it be? Does Amazon have a huge cost advantage in deliveries now? I
by x87678r 6y ago
I dont understand why other online bookshops can't compete on price with Amazon. How hard can it be? Does Amazon have a huge cost advantage in deliveries now? I looked at bookshop.org but most books were not available or were $10-20 more expensive.
I dont need to support local bookshop because I never go to browse - way too many people there are sitting and reading full books.
- wfleming 6y agoAmazon does not need to make a profit off of books, for a variety of reasons. It can therefore sell them at a much narrower margin, or no margin, or even a loss. Other booksellers generally don't have the many additional sources of funds that Amazon does. So if they compete with Amazon on price, they lose money and go out of business. And if they don't compete with Amazon on price, customers go to Amazon and the bookseller still goes out of business. Bit of a rock and a hard place for the booksellers.
- sithlord 6y agoI dont know the cost bookstores pay for books, but if bookshop.org is charging 30% of msrp i can't imagige the physical bookstore can make anywhere close to enough to warrant using that service.
- jonplackett 6y agoLots of good answers already - I would add that Amazon has people already signed up to prime, so they can ship the book ‘free’ unlike other bookshops. That’s a big advantage on price for a low cost item like a book.