I dont understand why they are complaining to amazon. The publishers are the ones negotiating the deals with amazon so they should complain to their publisher to renegotiate the deal. Or else they could just open their own amazon seller account and price the books how ever they wanted
As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#22BTW where is a good place to buy books online that isn't Amazon?
Barnes and Nobles isn't bad. Their editorial selection particularly great.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#23BTW where is a good place to buy books online that isn't Amazon?
bookdepository.com is the one I often hear about. Particularly because Amazon isn't available in all countries, and The Book Depository's prices are sometimes pretty comparable. Shipping is still 1-2 weeks though.
Amazon purchased The Book Depository in 2011.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
bookdepository.com is the one I often hear about. Particularly because Amazon isn't available in all countries, and The Book Depository's prices are sometimes pretty comparable. Shipping is still 1-2 weeks though.
Amazon purchased The Book Depository in 2011.
... goes to show how long ago I ordered something from them.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#25By "as competition wanes," the headline means "Amazon has a 29% market share." By "cuts back discounts", the headline means "Amazon is selling books for slightly more, which is still less than brick and mortar stores."
I'm always looking for the catch with Amazon (from a consumer standpoint, not from a labor conditions standpoint), but there's nothing at all. They're the cheapest and the ones with the easiest return policies. They even replaced some stuff that was missing from a ripped-and-patched-up parcel that I accidentally signed off as being complete.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#26What keeps publishers and authors from starting a non-profit that sells books at exactly the price they determine? I realise that selling books from their own websites is difficult, especially for individual authors, and it gives them less visibility than Amazon provides. Banding together would solve that problem.
you might find that the accumulated cost (admin/server/people etc) might end up making that sort of service on par with amazon, not cheaper, and thus find that it is either unsustainable (can't sell at a loss), or is at amazon's price level (and so no real benefit?).
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#27"It is difficult to comprehensively track the movement of prices on Amazon, so the evidence is anecdotal and fragmentary." [data upon which entire thesis of article rests] -> stopped reading
It isn't actually all that hard. There is an API call to get the prices for each seller on an item. Not sure if that also works for Amazon as the only seller listings but you can definitely track the marketplace with it.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#28By "as competition wanes," the headline means "Amazon has a 29% market share." By "cuts back discounts", the headline means "Amazon is selling books for slightly more, which is still less than brick and mortar stores."
I'm always looking for the catch with Amazon (from a consumer standpoint, not from a labor conditions standpoint), but there's nothing at all. They're the cheapest and the ones with the easiest return policies. They even replaced some stuff that was missing from a ripped-and-patched-up parcel that I accidentally signed off as being complete.
and as much as I hate the fact there is no Australian Amazon store.. often ordering from there is fast and still much cheaper (even with shipping) than ordering stuff here in Aus.
Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#29By "as competition wanes," the headline means "Amazon has a 29% market share." By "cuts back discounts", the headline means "Amazon is selling books for slightly more, which is still less than brick and mortar stores."
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Re: As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts
#30Amazon is intensely interested in finding the right price for everything. If you pay attention you can see small adjustments in the prices of a lot of products; they're most likely doing the equivalent of A/B testing to discover their most profitable point for every product. A product without competition will be less price sensitive, so they'll end up pricing it higher. An interesting question is whether Amazon could…
I think there is a lot less black magic than you think. The overwhelming majority of the time the small price fluctuations are in response to changes in the price by 3rd party sellers (the ones selling the same item in "new" condition).
just check for yourself at http://camelcamelcamel.com/
They virtually always undercut the 3rd party - which always begged the question: why do the 3rd parties even bother trying to sell on amazon?
Actually if you think about the kind of testing you're talking about, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a human psychology perspective. You don't look for a camera and think: "This should cost $123.76" and anything less will be huge turn off. There are probably more drastic things at play, like if the price ends in .99 or if it's more than a hundred dollars, or maybe people don't like certain price numbers for some completely random reason.
They probably have some internal database of the average (across all inventory) of the rate-of-sales vs. the listed-price and the algo just looks for a local maximum around the price that is a bit lower than the 3rd parties.