5 ms·

It's astonishing to me how Amazon, which is more of a monopoly in many respects than Apple has ever been or Microsoft currently is, is essentially walmarting en

It's astonishing to me how Amazon, which is more of a monopoly in many respects than Apple has ever been or Microsoft currently is, is essentially walmarting entire industries and gets almost no negative press over it. (It's even getting help from friendly congresspersons to strengthen its ebook monopoly.) I've been forced to withdraw my $20 ebook from Amazon because I simply cannot afford to price it at $20 in the kindle store (Amazon pays the same royalty for books priced at $10-20 as books priced at $10, and it pays lower royalties than BN or iBooks). I'm not allowed to price my ebook so that I effectively get paid the same (which entails selling the book at $40 for Kindle and $20 for everything else) because that violates Amazon's "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rules. Similarly, Amazon sells book readers that are incompatible with rival book formats, including ePub. No-one complains.

javajosh 14y ago
Well, I for one was unaware of this state of affairs. It takes people like you to bring these observations into light, and to do so repeatedly, because it's important. Indeed, I would request that you write up this analysis in a blog post so that it can hit the front page of HN. [Edit: I just realized how incredibly generic this sounds, haha. But I am a fan of investigative journalism in general, and investigations of abuses by power in particular, and Amazon is a juicy target here.]
Dylan16807 14y ago
Upon reading your comment I went to look up Amazon royalty information. Let me know if I got this right. A book that is 3-10 dollars, sold in the first world, gets you 70% royalties minus a few cents for delivery. If you want to set a price over $10, then you only get 35% royalties. So it's not that Amazon flat-out gives much lower royalties, it's that they give much lower royalties for books that cost more than ten dollars. They don't want to give you more than seven dollars per sale.
- alanfalcon 14y ago
  That's basically all true, except it's not always just "a few cents" for delivery, especially if you have full color photos or illustrations as a part of your eBook. On other platforms there is no delivery fee and no price range required to receive the 70% royalty rate. So there is a window for certain books where the Amazon rates are competitive, and of course they have the largest marketplace for eBooks so it's usually advantageous to play within those bounds.
- podperson 14y ago
  It's ridiculous that to make more money than $7 - download charges from a book you need to go from $10 to $21. This is what Amazon wants -- it wants a bunch of books for less than $10, and it claims that it offers competitive royalties when in fact it doesn't.
jseliger 14y ago
>gets almost no negative press over it They've gotten a lot of negative press—the Seattle Times ran a long, mostly negative, series of articles: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017901782_amazonwarehouse04.html http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017901782_a... , for instance. The publishing industry has also been harping on Amazon for a long time. But I think part of the reason fewer people complain about Amazon is that Amazon is providing alternatives to industries that are even worse—like publishing or music. From the consumer's side, they're also insanely convenient.
rossjudson 14y ago
Feels like we need an anti-trust law that automatically cancels "you cannot sell for less elsewhere". Does eliminating that solve the problem?
- krichman 14y ago
  I think it would. Then Amazon would need to be competitive about ebook delivery fees to encourage authors to lower their ebook prices.
Leszek 14y ago
The thing is, you're paying a premium to Amazon because Amazon is so popular and the Kindle makes it so convenient to buy ebooks, that you can hope for greater profit by simply selling more copies on Amazon, even if the per-sale profit is lower. The "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rule is bullshit though.
- gizzlon 14y ago
  The "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rule is bullshit though. My first thought is to have the same price, but give not-so-selective "selective" discounts to people elsewhere, giving them an incentive to not buy it from Amazon. Would that be possible?

javajosh 14y ago

Well, I for one was unaware of this state of affairs. It takes people like you to bring these observations into light, and to do so repeatedly, because it's important. Indeed, I would request that you write up this analysis in a blog post so that it can hit the front page of HN. [Edit: I just realized how incredibly generic this sounds, haha. But I am a fan of investigative journalism in general, and investigations of abuses by power in particular, and Amazon is a juicy target here.]

Dylan16807 14y ago

Upon reading your comment I went to look up Amazon royalty information. Let me know if I got this right. A book that is 3-10 dollars, sold in the first world, gets you 70% royalties minus a few cents for delivery. If you want to set a price over $10, then you only get 35% royalties. So it's not that Amazon flat-out gives much lower royalties, it's that they give much lower royalties for books that cost more than ten dollars. They don't want to give you more than seven dollars per sale.

alanfalcon 14y ago
That's basically all true, except it's not always just "a few cents" for delivery, especially if you have full color photos or illustrations as a part of your eBook. On other platforms there is no delivery fee and no price range required to receive the 70% royalty rate. So there is a window for certain books where the Amazon rates are competitive, and of course they have the largest marketplace for eBooks so it's usually advantageous to play within those bounds.
podperson 14y ago
It's ridiculous that to make more money than $7 - download charges from a book you need to go from $10 to $21. This is what Amazon wants -- it wants a bunch of books for less than $10, and it claims that it offers competitive royalties when in fact it doesn't.

jseliger 14y ago

>gets almost no negative press over it They've gotten a lot of negative press—the Seattle Times ran a long, mostly negative, series of articles: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017901782_amazonwarehouse04.html http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017901782_a... , for instance. The publishing industry has also been harping on Amazon for a long time. But I think part of the reason fewer people complain about Amazon is that Amazon is providing alternatives to industries that are even worse—like publishing or music. From the consumer's side, they're also insanely convenient.

rossjudson 14y ago

Feels like we need an anti-trust law that automatically cancels "you cannot sell for less elsewhere". Does eliminating that solve the problem?

krichman 14y ago
I think it would. Then Amazon would need to be competitive about ebook delivery fees to encourage authors to lower their ebook prices.

Leszek 14y ago

The thing is, you're paying a premium to Amazon because Amazon is so popular and the Kindle makes it so convenient to buy ebooks, that you can hope for greater profit by simply selling more copies on Amazon, even if the per-sale profit is lower. The "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rule is bullshit though.

gizzlon 14y ago
The "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rule is bullshit though. My first thought is to have the same price, but give not-so-selective "selective" discounts to people elsewhere, giving them an incentive to not buy it from Amazon. Would that be possible?