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Amazon still charges ebook publishers the same “delivery fee” for each sold digital copy (US$0.15/megabyte) as it did in the mid 2000s when Kindles came with 3g

by ilamont 7mo ago

Amazon still charges ebook publishers the same “delivery fee” for each sold digital copy (US$0.15/megabyte) as it did in the mid 2000s when Kindles came with 3g chips. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500 https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500

klysm 7mo ago
Maybe the technical requirements at the time were a good excuse but as soon as you demonstrate the market will tolerate that why on earth would you remove it?
- PaulRobinson 7mo ago
  To turn around the famous quote: "Amazon's margin is someone else's opportunity". :) The Amazon flywheel is all about reducing costs to consumers. The moment that stops happening, consumers can get caught by offers elsewhere, and the flywheel can start to go backwards.
  - morelandjs 7mo ago
    I physically twitch every time I hear a flywheel mentioned. Intended to be evocative of certain physics without actually substantiating any of it.
    - knollimar 7mo ago
      What does it mean, really? I see it used more like catalyst or enablar than momentum storage. I'm still unsure.
scns 7mo ago
Are record companies still charging artists for vinyl breakage on mp3 downloads?
cma 7mo ago
AWS egress prices have been the same for a decade despite massive networking advancements. In two decades, since 2006, they've only come down by about 50%.
- hnav 7mo ago
  That's not exactly true, they expanded the free tier from 1 to 100GB/mo (1TB/mo out of CloudFront) and dropped egress from ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB. This was due to pressure from the Bandwidth Alliance formed by all the other Clouds and spearheaded by Cloudflare.
  - cma 7mo ago
    ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB was the 2006-2026 halving I mentioned. Two decades to drop by half.
    - hnav 7mo ago
      Accounting for inflation that's more like dropped by 75%. As AWS position as market leader erodes we'll likely see further drops.
  - MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
    And it costs them nothing, because they have free peering agreements with every network.

by ilamont 7mo ago

klysm 7mo ago

Maybe the technical requirements at the time were a good excuse but as soon as you demonstrate the market will tolerate that why on earth would you remove it?

PaulRobinson 7mo ago
To turn around the famous quote: "Amazon's margin is someone else's opportunity". :) The Amazon flywheel is all about reducing costs to consumers. The moment that stops happening, consumers can get caught by offers elsewhere, and the flywheel can start to go backwards.
- morelandjs 7mo ago
  I physically twitch every time I hear a flywheel mentioned. Intended to be evocative of certain physics without actually substantiating any of it.
  - knollimar 7mo ago
    What does it mean, really? I see it used more like catalyst or enablar than momentum storage. I'm still unsure.

scns 7mo ago

Are record companies still charging artists for vinyl breakage on mp3 downloads?

cma 7mo ago

AWS egress prices have been the same for a decade despite massive networking advancements. In two decades, since 2006, they've only come down by about 50%.

hnav 7mo ago
That's not exactly true, they expanded the free tier from 1 to 100GB/mo (1TB/mo out of CloudFront) and dropped egress from ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB. This was due to pressure from the Bandwidth Alliance formed by all the other Clouds and spearheaded by Cloudflare.
- cma 7mo ago
  ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB was the 2006-2026 halving I mentioned. Two decades to drop by half.
  - hnav 7mo ago
    Accounting for inflation that's more like dropped by 75%. As AWS position as market leader erodes we'll likely see further drops.
- MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
  And it costs them nothing, because they have free peering agreements with every network.