Open letter to Gurr and Bezos
I have sent the following ketter to Doug Gurr and Jeff Bezos. I am not hopeful of a reply!
Dear Mr Gurr cc Jeff Bezos
I am writing in the hope that you can help small Amazon booksellers.
I am going to post a copy of this letter to the Amazon sellers forum and I have no doubt I will get a lot of people telling me I am wasting my time and that you will have no interest in helping. Nevertheless I will give it a go.
I am a small (approximately 2000 listings) second-hand bookseller. I first started selling on Amazon about 15 years ago. Back then it was easy to list books on Amazon. Sales were decent. I thought it would be a good way of supplementing my pension when I retired.
Over the last 15 years I have spent many thousands of hours adding to my inventory. I have religiously taken decent photos of my books , added proper “condition” notes and generally done everything I can to have a decent collection of saleable books.
Gradually over the last 15 years things have changed very much for the worse
Amongst the problems for booksellers that have arisen are:-
1 The amazon book catalogue is quite simply a complete mess. There are many of my books which I cannot find when searching Amazon so I have no idea how a potential customer can find them! I have experimented many many times by asking friends to search for some of my books. I have given them the exact title and author but still they cannot be found.
Amazon have allowed their catalogue be invaded by fraudsters and scammers. Many of my books are completely hidden away. (please note I am quite happy to provide examples)
2 Customer feedback and customer returns are now completely out of hand. I realise that Amazon want to be the most customer friendly company in the world but I think it is going too far when they allow a buyer to openly slander a seller in their feedback.
3 I am quite happy to have a fair pricing policy but it must be properly monitored (at the moment I believe there is no human involvement in monitoring) I recently had a book suppressed because I was selling it at a price just above the lowest price. If I lowered to match the lowest price I would make an overall loss.
If “fair pricing” prevents sellers from charging too much why does it not prevent it from charging too little. It seems to be ok for the “mega sellers” to completely cut corners – list hundreds of thousands of books without doing any checks on them , no photos no proper descriptions. (these are all the sort of things that have helped ruin the catalogue). These sellers have so many books listed that they are quite happy to sell books for a few pence profit. You may argue that it is “survival of the fittest” but it is people like me (and I am quite certain there are many of us) who help keep Amazon going. I have made hundreds of corrections over the years to catalogue entries that were put on by sellers taking short cut. I think I am entitled to some consideration.
I could go on with many other problems but this is enough for now.
Please let us have some fair play for “ordinary” booksellers
Thank you
Open letter to Gurr and Bezos
I have sent the following ketter to Doug Gurr and Jeff Bezos. I am not hopeful of a reply!
Dear Mr Gurr cc Jeff Bezos
I am writing in the hope that you can help small Amazon booksellers.
I am going to post a copy of this letter to the Amazon sellers forum and I have no doubt I will get a lot of people telling me I am wasting my time and that you will have no interest in helping. Nevertheless I will give it a go.
I am a small (approximately 2000 listings) second-hand bookseller. I first started selling on Amazon about 15 years ago. Back then it was easy to list books on Amazon. Sales were decent. I thought it would be a good way of supplementing my pension when I retired.
Over the last 15 years I have spent many thousands of hours adding to my inventory. I have religiously taken decent photos of my books , added proper “condition” notes and generally done everything I can to have a decent collection of saleable books.
Gradually over the last 15 years things have changed very much for the worse
Amongst the problems for booksellers that have arisen are:-
1 The amazon book catalogue is quite simply a complete mess. There are many of my books which I cannot find when searching Amazon so I have no idea how a potential customer can find them! I have experimented many many times by asking friends to search for some of my books. I have given them the exact title and author but still they cannot be found.
Amazon have allowed their catalogue be invaded by fraudsters and scammers. Many of my books are completely hidden away. (please note I am quite happy to provide examples)
2 Customer feedback and customer returns are now completely out of hand. I realise that Amazon want to be the most customer friendly company in the world but I think it is going too far when they allow a buyer to openly slander a seller in their feedback.
3 I am quite happy to have a fair pricing policy but it must be properly monitored (at the moment I believe there is no human involvement in monitoring) I recently had a book suppressed because I was selling it at a price just above the lowest price. If I lowered to match the lowest price I would make an overall loss.
If “fair pricing” prevents sellers from charging too much why does it not prevent it from charging too little. It seems to be ok for the “mega sellers” to completely cut corners – list hundreds of thousands of books without doing any checks on them , no photos no proper descriptions. (these are all the sort of things that have helped ruin the catalogue). These sellers have so many books listed that they are quite happy to sell books for a few pence profit. You may argue that it is “survival of the fittest” but it is people like me (and I am quite certain there are many of us) who help keep Amazon going. I have made hundreds of corrections over the years to catalogue entries that were put on by sellers taking short cut. I think I am entitled to some consideration.
I could go on with many other problems but this is enough for now.
Please let us have some fair play for “ordinary” booksellers
Thank you
0 replies
Seller_R48nAmhNC7nVx
Nice letter, good luck with a reply though.
Seller_drLRJgrBPnFBI
Yes, agreed - very well explained. Let us know if you get a response
Seller_x1xMSBwZsJrTE
There’s also a petition to Jeff on the US forum regarding FBA issues…
It seems there is currently a hotbed of seller discontent.
I personally sent a letter to Doug Gurr last week over a couple of issues. (It’s only the second time I’ve ever done that). Other sellers have also reported sending emails/letters.
If Amazon keep going the way they are I see a lot of trouble ahead for them.
Seller_RiVN2dcWY6xy9
Well done but you only really touch on the number of problems with selling books on Amazon. The recent removal of the advanced search facility on the books page is probably the kiss of death to the selling of collectable books.
You will no doubt get a reply which completely ignores your points and then goes on to ask for invoices and authorisation from the publishers for you to sell your stock of second hand books, failure to do so resulting in the suspension of your account.
Unfortunately Amazon do not give a toss anymore for the sellers of books who ironically helped Bezos establish amazon in the first place. Amazon are now big enough to survive on their own and it is clear that corporate policy is gearing for the removal of third party sellers from their platform. I am only listing new stock on Amazon when and IF the edition I am selling clearly appears on the search results pages by author and title. As there is no advanced search facility now it is pointless me wasting my time listing anything that needs time and effort to find.
Seller_3TuKPsB3ieWKC
The amazon book catalogue is quite simply a complete mess
Replace “book” with “clothing” and the same applies for the categories that we sell in.
Seller_MKi6wqe68YZuu
You forgot to mention the broken search function. In twenty years, Amazon has gone fron paying our rent to buying our coffee. With the commission hikes coming next month and in January, they should just about pay for the milk.
Seller_5BZRxCMfR6Orj
hi
i send a email to jeff regarding sellers customer service. and i got a reply from his asst . and my problem was handled great. the asst asked if jeff still needed to reply personally. i said no as i can imagine all the emails he must get. but i was happy. as a seller i am happy with selling on amazon. and getting a chance to promote my business. so you may be surprised .have you tried a copy rights.
