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You assume all of the Amazon traffic was organic. He directed all of his marketing efforts to the book on amazon.com; presumably he could have captured a good n

You assume all of the Amazon traffic was organic. He directed all of his marketing efforts to the book on amazon.com; presumably he could have captured a good number of those purchases elsewhere. I think the real issue is less about costs and more about how Amazon hides big revenues behind "delivery fees." Most platforms (Apple, Google, PayPal, even Amazon in the AWS world) that take a percentage cut + special fees separate the special fees to mirror actual costs (e.g. credit card processing). In this case Amazon just used it as another place to add significant markup, presumably in a way that was not expected. Should he have read the contract more closely? Yeah, no question. But it still strikes me as sleazy on Amazon's part, even though I agree with you that a lot of what he did was only possible because of what Amazon's done.

RobAtticus 14y ago
They charge him $.15/MB to delivery the book[1]. Cell carriers charge you ~$15/200MB = $.075/MB for data. Certainly a markup, and it gets better as more people use WiFi, but not 129000%. [1] https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...
- freerobby 14y ago
  But remember, they're charging that $0.15/MB even for people who don't own a 3G-capable Kindle. In those cases it really is roughly a 120,000% markup over an already profitable service.
  - RobAtticus 14y ago
    And those cell users can download the book multiple times at no additional cost, in perpetuity. So sometimes they may be taking a loss. It's really not all that simple, and I think calling it a 120,000% markup is dubious at best.
jmedefind 14y ago
It seems to be the delivery fee is setup as a way to encourage publishers to keep their books to a reasonable size. Otherwise you could have lazy publishers using high resolution images out of sheer laziness and not caring since it wouldn't cost them anything extra.

RobAtticus 14y ago

They charge him $.15/MB to delivery the book[1]. Cell carriers charge you ~$15/200MB = $.075/MB for data. Certainly a markup, and it gets better as more people use WiFi, but not 129000%. [1] https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...

freerobby 14y ago
But remember, they're charging that $0.15/MB even for people who don't own a 3G-capable Kindle. In those cases it really is roughly a 120,000% markup over an already profitable service.
- RobAtticus 14y ago
  And those cell users can download the book multiple times at no additional cost, in perpetuity. So sometimes they may be taking a loss. It's really not all that simple, and I think calling it a 120,000% markup is dubious at best.

jmedefind 14y ago

It seems to be the delivery fee is setup as a way to encourage publishers to keep their books to a reasonable size. Otherwise you could have lazy publishers using high resolution images out of sheer laziness and not caring since it wouldn't cost them anything extra.