Ruminations regarding Amazon's excessive fees, catalogue mismanagement and the downturn in book sales.
I have just sold a second-hand book on Amazon. The buyer paid £2.78 plus £2.80 postage, a total of £5.58.
Second-class postage bought through Amazon cost £1.55 (unusually the book weighed just under 100 grams, it would otherwise have been £1.90). Amazon's fees on the transaction were £3.12, leaving me with 91p to cover what I paid for the book, labour, packaging materials etc. Not so long ago I had this book priced at 49p, and would still have made a similar amount if it sold. Of course since then Royal Mail have considerably increased their postage charges, but it is the very high fees now levied by Amazon that have made it necessary to put up my prices. There has been a significant fall in the number of books I am selling (probably because of the higher prices, but also because I think book buyers are turning away from Amazon ) meaning that it is no longer tenable for me to pay £28 a month for Professional seller status, which in its turn means yet higher fees on each individual sale.
Adding to this the appaling state of Amazon's book catalogue with its millions of bogus listings, plus Amazon's failure to root out dishonest sellers, it comes as no surprise to me that book sales are falling. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
