Amazon Digital Markup: 129,000%

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 3:57 AM UTC

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…

Post by cynicalkane » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 3:58 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #75

balloot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by lostsock » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 4:04 AM UTC

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…

Post by res0nat0r » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 4:06 AM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #81

res0nat0r wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It helps to know what you're googling to find. Amazon's documentation is a mess (IMO) with half of it in PDF or other inaccessible format (.mobi) so that it's easy to get confused and lost in the process, especially for a first time author doing this on the side.

Post by 3am » Tue, Jun 12, 2012, 4:10 AM UTC

andrewhyde wrote: post #21

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

This is confusing. Here is someone with a FANTASTIC first outing of a book and he's whinging about it? The author raises $8K on Kickstarter, sells his book for $10, and is complaining that the 'gorilla' is taking a bigger percentage of the take? Using his numbers: of 73%/11%/12%/1% his money was $1117/$231/$333/$20 respectively. So he made three times as much money selling through Amazon as he did on the next closest…

Having a great time with the book, sorry if I came off as whining. A few notes. A high % of the KS money went into rewards (books printed averaged $20 shipped). I did make 3x though Amazon, but if I had gone through gumroad, I would have done double the revenue. Biggest tl;dr complaint is that as an avid reader of about a book a week I had no idea that authors paid both 30% of the total price plus the delivery fee. T…