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Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

andrewhy.de

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Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#71

Post by res0nat0r »

redditmigrant wrote: post #59
res0nat0r wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting a static file in S3 you have to point people to manually find and download themselves is much cheaper because you don't have the built in captive audience, WhisperNet and everything else which comes with the Kindle ecosystem, so comparing the two only via a flat dollar cost is naive.

You are completely missing the point. They do charge a commission. The problematic part here is that this $2.58 is called "delivery fee". Im sure all the ecosystem costs a lot of money, and they are free to charge whatever they think the ecosystem is worth, but calling it "Delivery fee" seems disingenuous.

I don't believe it is disingenuous at all. It could have been lumped in with the other charges, but they are explicity stating this is how much it costs you as the publisher if you wish to use their infrastructure to publish your content digitally.

I think it is disingenuous to assume that $2.58 is some number pulled out of the air to rip the author off. The current meme right now is to assume all digital content delivery is essentially 'free', but this is untrue.

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#72

Post by zem »

balloot wrote: post #66
Karunamon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$3 to transmit 15 megabytes is fucking absurd, regardless of the delivery medium. Full stop, end of story.

It's not $3 to transmit a file. It's $3 to: Design a great UX Handle Credit Cards safely Give you access to a robust infrastructure that won't crash Market the site Build and research a top quality e-Reader Build data centers all around the world etc etc etc Bottom line is the guy made WAY more selling with Kindle/Amazon than with any other format, even given their large cut. That didn't just happen by magic. He is f…

and what is amazon's percentage cut of the price for?

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#73

Post by mdiep »

teamonkey wrote: post #64
droithomme wrote: post #60

OK, so for a $10 book, Amazon collects 30% for themselves, which is $3. For a 19MB download delivered via 3G to a Kindle, Sprint, the wireless carrier, charges .15/MB, or $2.85/19MB. This is paid to Sprint, not Amazon.com. The article errors by comparing this fee to the cost for server bandwidth using S3 to come up with his markup value, but S3 bandwidth covers the internet only and does not include fees involved wit…

If I were to buy the author's book and download it to my non-3G Kindle over my own wi-fi connection, the author would still be charged $2.85 for it. Surely the 3G Kindle owners should be paying for it - and only then if they use whispernet. Or rather, I always thought they were because the 3G Kindle touch is $50 more expensive. A cellular radio only costs a dollar or two, I always figured that most of the $50 price d…

The article does not say that downloading it over your wi-fi connection will result in $2.58 in delivery fees. It says that the average delivery fee for the book was $2.58.

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#74

Post by gfodor »

The separation of "service fee" and "delivery fee" is disingenuous, you are basically paying amazon 50% for the use of the marketplace. If you think it's an unfair price, don't put your book in the marketplace. If you think it's fair but deceptive, say so, don't pretend like it's deceptive and unfair at the same time.

Complaining about a 50% margin for Amazon when they have basically created the entire ecosystem for ebooks feels a bit like complaining about the large markups on pharmaceuticals to make up for the millions are poured into R&D.

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#75

Post by Karunamon »

balloot wrote: post #66
Karunamon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$3 to transmit 15 megabytes is fucking absurd, regardless of the delivery medium. Full stop, end of story.

It's not $3 to transmit a file. It's $3 to: Design a great UX Handle Credit Cards safely Give you access to a robust infrastructure that won't crash Market the site Build and research a top quality e-Reader Build data centers all around the world etc etc etc Bottom line is the guy made WAY more selling with Kindle/Amazon than with any other format, even given their large cut. That didn't just happen by magic. He is f…

No, it is indeed $3 to transmit a file. They even call it a "delivery fee". Consider that the percentage cut they take should cover all of the above.

I can get a physical pizza delivered for less than Amazon charges to send me an electronic file. That's just messed up.

Hell, I can get physical goods delivered, from Amazon, with 2 day shipping, for less than they charge to send an electronic file! And how much do you want to bet that the infrastructure involved in sending me physical goods is a lot more expensive and finicky than the infrastructure required to blast a file out over 3G?

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#76

Post by [deleted] »

res0nat0r wrote: post #43
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but don't you think It'd be nice if they advertised the price for said fee, or at least provided a chart for fees/mb? It seems like it is a "hidden cost", not outlined in detail, leaving the client in the dark, which appears to be the problem here.

The terms are plainly outlined in this table right here, which I found after 10 seconds of Googling: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#77

Post by xxpor »

pilom wrote: post #7
xxpor wrote: post #5

ctrl+f whispernet 0 results found He's forgetting about the cost of delivering over a cell phone network.

Over a cell phone network a user would pay about $0.27 to download a 18MB file. There is no way an author should have to pay an order of magnitude more.

What if you have a US kindle in say, the deserts of Australia? It's going to cost a LOT more than $.27. I mean a LOT.

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#79

Post by teamonkey »

mdiep wrote: post #73
teamonkey wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to buy the author's book and download it to my non-3G Kindle over my own wi-fi connection, the author would still be charged $2.85 for it. Surely the 3G Kindle owners should be paying for it - and only then if they use whispernet. Or rather, I always thought they were because the 3G Kindle touch is $50 more expensive. A cellular radio only costs a dollar or two, I always figured that most of the $50 price d…

The article does not say that downloading it over your wi-fi connection will result in $2.58 in delivery fees. It says that the average delivery fee for the book was $2.58.

Amazon apply the fee regardless of delivery method. Check out the link posted by kennethcwilbur elsewhere in this thread.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...

Amazon charge $0.15/MB and the book was approximately 18MB in size.

Re: Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

#80

Post by dandelany »

res0nat0r wrote: post #55
mycroftiv wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the blog post? The author specifically was comparing the cost of delivery via the Kindle service to using Amazon S3/EC2 to deliver the content. His specific comparison was that the price that he would pay to host and deliver the content using Amazon's own services, would be orders of magnitude smaller! In other words, the comparison you are making is the exact basis for his entirely justified claim that…

Hosting a static file in S3 you have to point people to manually find and download themselves is much cheaper because you don't have the built in captive audience, WhisperNet and everything else which comes with the Kindle ecosystem, so comparing the two only via a flat dollar cost is naive.

It's ridiculous to include the cost of the entire "Kindle ecosystem" with a fee called "delivery fee" - as other posts have mentioned, this is what commission is for. WhisperNet is another story - this is legitimately a part of the delivery - however, it's just 3G service that they leased from AT&T, and to assume it costs them even close to $2.58 per delivery is just ignorant. If I downloaded an 18MB e-mail attachment over 3g on my phone, essentially the same thing, I would be absolutely livid if I was charged $2.58.

Amazon's "delivery fee" is 15 cents/megabyte. By comparison, AT&T's most expensive pay-as-you-go data plan is $15 for 250MB, or 6 c/MB, less than half the price. Their cheapest plan is 1 cent/MB.

Amazon is known for having very reasonable data storage/transfer fees in their other services, so it's very clear to me that they're just taking a huge margin here.

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