Haven’t had a chance to actually read it yet because their servers are beyond capacity but this looks like an interesting blog – Against Amazon, written by an American bookseller. From what I can glean, I think you could probably substitute the names of the big supermarkets in the UK for Amazon in parts of this too. The wonderful world I try to earn a living in…
14 thoughts on “The joys of Amazon”
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It’s interesting, but so one-sided (as you would expect from an anti-blog, of course), that the end result is very simplistic and misleading.
So not so different from all the pro-discounting blogs…? sigh, that doesn’t help the debate so much them.
Exactly the same problem, yes.
My take is this: everybody wants a monopoly. Everybody wants to squeeze money out of the customer while pointing fingers (justly) at everyone else.
People see ebooks costing up to £5 *more* than a paperback and suddenly amazon’s claims sound very reasonable — even though they too (amazon) are angling for a monopoly and nearly have it.
Yeah, but I’m not seeing a lot of these mysterious books that cost so much more than the paperback. A few do cost more than a paperback at 40% standard discount granted, but i think some Amazon users don’t understand the concept of discounting really.
In other words, you’ve already forgotten the last conversation we had about this very subject complete with specific examples that happened to me personally. OK. Perhaps an example closer to home will convince you that this is no isolated phenomenon, but is so common that every single ebook reader has experienced it.
For homework, look up a book you may have heard of called The Grave Thief on waterstones.co.uk. Compare the paperback price with the ebook price.
There’s not a huge difference in this case, but there shouldn’t be any difference at all…
Ok, Grave Thief might not be a great example because there’s clearly a problem with the editions, it not being available on Amazon etc, but the ebook price is £6.99 and the RRP of the pb edition is £8.99 and the discounted price is £6.79. Looks like it’s a case for the other books though.
I should probably now go actually get that blog to work so I can see what they’re saying on it!
Enjoy!
It’s interesting, but so one-sided (as you would expect from an anti-blog, of course), that the end result is very simplistic and misleading.
So not so different from all the pro-discounting blogs…? sigh, that doesn’t help the debate so much them.
Exactly the same problem, yes.
My take is this: everybody wants a monopoly. Everybody wants to squeeze money out of the customer while pointing fingers (justly) at everyone else.
People see ebooks costing up to £5 *more* than a paperback and suddenly amazon’s claims sound very reasonable — even though they too (amazon) are angling for a monopoly and nearly have it.
Yeah, but I’m not seeing a lot of these mysterious books that cost so much more than the paperback. A few do cost more than a paperback at 40% standard discount granted, but i think some Amazon users don’t understand the concept of discounting really.
In other words, you’ve already forgotten the last conversation we had about this very subject complete with specific examples that happened to me personally. OK. Perhaps an example closer to home will convince you that this is no isolated phenomenon, but is so common that every single ebook reader has experienced it.
For homework, look up a book you may have heard of called The Grave Thief on waterstones.co.uk. Compare the paperback price with the ebook price.
There’s not a huge difference in this case, but there shouldn’t be any difference at all…
Ok, Grave Thief might not be a great example because there’s clearly a problem with the editions, it not being available on Amazon etc, but the ebook price is £6.99 and the RRP of the pb edition is £8.99 and the discounted price is £6.79. Looks like it’s a case for the other books though.
I should probably now go actually get that blog to work so I can see what they’re saying on it!
Enjoy!