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He is making an entirely justified complaint that Amazon charges unreasonable fees. The idea that any and all corporate behavior is fine simply because "it says

He is making an entirely justified complaint that Amazon charges unreasonable fees. The idea that any and all corporate behavior is fine simply because "it says so in the contract" is ridiculous. You aren't actually paying attention to what the author wrote - he even specifically talked about how Amazon's Kindle platform provides a good experience for readers and has accounted for the majority of his sales. His post doesn't display any ignorance of the points you are making - instead, he acknowledges them but makes the entirely valid point that charging several dollars for a "delivery fee" of a digital book is OBVIOUS BS! There is a huge disconnect between the attitude of "any price that people will pay is a fair price" and the fact that economic systems require that parties engage in transactions in good faith. To me, it seems blatantly obvious that Amazon is engaging in the bad-faith practice of trying to conceal the true costs of their service by loading a lot of the price into a "delivery charge" that is absurd. This kind of thing is a very old game in business, but that doesn't make it ok. Just because something is common and legal doesn't make it appropriate. A large amount of standard business practices are deliberate, but legal, rip-offs - and calling a rip-off a rip-off is a good thing.

res0nat0r 14y ago
> charging several dollars for a "delivery fee" of a digital book is OBVIOUS BS! Do you think that the largest file sharing service (S3) and the largest public cloud computing infrastructure (EC2) in the world just operate for free? Digital delivery fees help pay for the millions in hardware, software, infrastructure and maintenance costs for these services, which Kindle uses extensively.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  Fair point, but don't you think It'd be nice if they advertised the price for said fee, or at least provided a chart for fees/mb? It seems like it is a "hidden cost", not outlined in detail, leaving the client in the dark, which appears to be the problem here.
  - Arkeus 14y ago
    While I think his claims of high delivery charges are fair, I don't think it's right to call it hidden. When pricing your book in Amazon's self publishing (I am assuming here he went through KDP), it calculates in real time the delivery charge and estimated royalty based on the price you input. There is also a blurb on the right side of the same page explaining the delivery charge, and how it applies to the 70% royalty plan (and now there is no delivery charge for 35% royalty).
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    The terms are plainly outlined in this table right here, which I found after 10 seconds of Googling: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - alanfalcon 14y ago
      It helps to know what you're googling to find. Amazon's documentation is a mess (IMO) with half of it in PDF or other inaccessible format (.mobi) so that it's easy to get confused and lost in the process, especially for a first time author doing this on the side.
      - res0nat0r 14y ago
        "kindle direct publishing calculator" and it was the first hit for me.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Also remember that Amazon either takes a loss or is barely above breakeven for the Kindle hardware including the Fire. It is like the game console model. Go independent and make money on the PC, but if you want access to the millions of willing buyers and predictable hardware requirements, you either charge your customers more or make it up in volume.
  - MBCook 14y ago
    But isn't that factored into the 30% cut they take before the delivery charges? I love my Kindle and I really like Amazon, but this is the first I've heard of the delivery charge part. Considering that it's around 25% of the price of the book... it really does seem like a rip off on their part.
    - Getahobby 14y ago
      Just to clarify, it is only 25% of this particular book. Sounded to me like the delivery charge was fairly independent of the cost of the book.
      - MBCook 14y ago
        I think you're right, and that actually worries me more. Amazon likes to sell books for under $10, many ebooks I've bought are $5 or $7. Maybe it has something to do with the book it's self (i.e. they charge $0.07 per image), but do they mention how this is calculated anywhere? If I sell an ebook for $2, they take $0.60 in general, and then they decide that it costs $0.80 to deliver... that means they're taking 70% of the cost of the book. So if I'm successful and have to pay taxes, I may be making like $0.12 per book. I don't remember every seeing this cost mentioned before in the few articles I've seen about selling Kindle books. I'd love to know how it's calculated.
- mycroftiv 14y ago
  Did you read the blog post? The author specifically was comparing the cost of delivery via the Kindle service to using Amazon S3/EC2 to deliver the content. His specific comparison was that the price that he would pay to host and deliver the content using Amazon's own services, would be orders of magnitude smaller! In other words, the comparison you are making is the exact basis for his entirely justified claim that Amazon's delivery fee is complete ripoff.
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    Hosting a static file in S3 you have to point people to manually find and download themselves is much cheaper because you don't have the built in captive audience, WhisperNet and everything else which comes with the Kindle ecosystem, so comparing the two only via a flat dollar cost is naive.
    - redditmigrant 14y ago
      You are completely missing the point. They do charge a commission. The problematic part here is that this $2.58 is called "delivery fee". Im sure all the ecosystem costs a lot of money, and they are free to charge whatever they think the ecosystem is worth, but calling it "Delivery fee" seems disingenuous.
      - res0nat0r 14y ago
        I don't believe it is disingenuous at all. It could have been lumped in with the other charges, but they are explicity stating this is how much it costs you as the publisher if you wish to use their infrastructure to publish your content digitally. I think it is disingenuous to assume that $2.58 is some number pulled out of the air to rip the author off. The current meme right now is to assume all digital content delivery is essentially 'free', but this is untrue.
        MBCook 14y ago
        Someone else said AT&T is the whispernet provider. AT&T's smallest data plan is $15 per 250MB (overages are the same rate). The author says they are being charged $2.58 per 18.1MB, which is $35.63 for 250MB. So Amazon is charging 237% of the ridiculous rate AT&T uses to try to force people to upgrade to a higher plan. And that's despite the cost that most Kindle users (I'm guessing over 90%) get their books through their computer or WiFi, and don't accrue any cellular charges. Plus... this is Amazon. I'm pretty sure that given the amount of data Kindles may use they would have been able to get a better deal out of AT&T than your average individual consumer. And again, this is all on top of the 30% they take that should already cover all of this.

res0nat0r 14y ago

> charging several dollars for a "delivery fee" of a digital book is OBVIOUS BS! Do you think that the largest file sharing service (S3) and the largest public cloud computing infrastructure (EC2) in the world just operate for free? Digital delivery fees help pay for the millions in hardware, software, infrastructure and maintenance costs for these services, which Kindle uses extensively.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Fair point, but don't you think It'd be nice if they advertised the price for said fee, or at least provided a chart for fees/mb? It seems like it is a "hidden cost", not outlined in detail, leaving the client in the dark, which appears to be the problem here.
- Arkeus 14y ago
  While I think his claims of high delivery charges are fair, I don't think it's right to call it hidden. When pricing your book in Amazon's self publishing (I am assuming here he went through KDP), it calculates in real time the delivery charge and estimated royalty based on the price you input. There is also a blurb on the right side of the same page explaining the delivery charge, and how it applies to the 70% royalty plan (and now there is no delivery charge for 35% royalty).
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  The terms are plainly outlined in this table right here, which I found after 10 seconds of Googling: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - alanfalcon 14y ago
    It helps to know what you're googling to find. Amazon's documentation is a mess (IMO) with half of it in PDF or other inaccessible format (.mobi) so that it's easy to get confused and lost in the process, especially for a first time author doing this on the side.
    - res0nat0r 14y ago
      "kindle direct publishing calculator" and it was the first hit for me.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
Also remember that Amazon either takes a loss or is barely above breakeven for the Kindle hardware including the Fire. It is like the game console model. Go independent and make money on the PC, but if you want access to the millions of willing buyers and predictable hardware requirements, you either charge your customers more or make it up in volume.
- MBCook 14y ago
  But isn't that factored into the 30% cut they take before the delivery charges? I love my Kindle and I really like Amazon, but this is the first I've heard of the delivery charge part. Considering that it's around 25% of the price of the book... it really does seem like a rip off on their part.
  - Getahobby 14y ago
    Just to clarify, it is only 25% of this particular book. Sounded to me like the delivery charge was fairly independent of the cost of the book.
    - MBCook 14y ago
      I think you're right, and that actually worries me more. Amazon likes to sell books for under $10, many ebooks I've bought are $5 or $7. Maybe it has something to do with the book it's self (i.e. they charge $0.07 per image), but do they mention how this is calculated anywhere? If I sell an ebook for $2, they take $0.60 in general, and then they decide that it costs $0.80 to deliver... that means they're taking 70% of the cost of the book. So if I'm successful and have to pay taxes, I may be making like $0.12 per book. I don't remember every seeing this cost mentioned before in the few articles I've seen about selling Kindle books. I'd love to know how it's calculated.
mycroftiv 14y ago
Did you read the blog post? The author specifically was comparing the cost of delivery via the Kindle service to using Amazon S3/EC2 to deliver the content. His specific comparison was that the price that he would pay to host and deliver the content using Amazon's own services, would be orders of magnitude smaller! In other words, the comparison you are making is the exact basis for his entirely justified claim that Amazon's delivery fee is complete ripoff.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  Hosting a static file in S3 you have to point people to manually find and download themselves is much cheaper because you don't have the built in captive audience, WhisperNet and everything else which comes with the Kindle ecosystem, so comparing the two only via a flat dollar cost is naive.
  - redditmigrant 14y ago
    You are completely missing the point. They do charge a commission. The problematic part here is that this $2.58 is called "delivery fee". Im sure all the ecosystem costs a lot of money, and they are free to charge whatever they think the ecosystem is worth, but calling it "Delivery fee" seems disingenuous.
    - res0nat0r 14y ago
      I don't believe it is disingenuous at all. It could have been lumped in with the other charges, but they are explicity stating this is how much it costs you as the publisher if you wish to use their infrastructure to publish your content digitally. I think it is disingenuous to assume that $2.58 is some number pulled out of the air to rip the author off. The current meme right now is to assume all digital content delivery is essentially 'free', but this is untrue.
      - MBCook 14y ago
        Someone else said AT&T is the whispernet provider. AT&T's smallest data plan is $15 per 250MB (overages are the same rate). The author says they are being charged $2.58 per 18.1MB, which is $35.63 for 250MB. So Amazon is charging 237% of the ridiculous rate AT&T uses to try to force people to upgrade to a higher plan. And that's despite the cost that most Kindle users (I'm guessing over 90%) get their books through their computer or WiFi, and don't accrue any cellular charges. Plus... this is Amazon. I'm pretty sure that given the amount of data Kindles may use they would have been able to get a better deal out of AT&T than your average individual consumer. And again, this is all on top of the 30% they take that should already cover all of this.