Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Can anyone shed light on this phenomenon? If one is looking for a particular book on Amazon, happy to get a second-hand copy, it often happens that multiple sellers are offering it for the price of 1p, plus a reasonably hefty p&p charge of, say (as in the case of the book I'm after, which is Keegan on WW2 as you ask) £2.80.

I'm interested in how that makes sense for the sellers. They're often established operations with thousands upon thousands of overwhelmingly positive customer gradings, so there's no catch I believe. But 1p will obviously not cover the cost of their time and effort (Edit: even assuming they have acquired the book for zero themselves so have no acquisition cost to cover). I'm assuming that the point is that they can arrange despatch for well under the Amazon fixed delivery charge of (in this case) £2.80. But then why do Amazon set an artificially high p&p charge to disguise seller income as delivery costs? Weird!

[WOM]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

It's the same with abebooks.com. I get a lot of books off there for 10 cents, plus s&h. I suspect some of them list a ton of break-even books because it gives them the volume they need to get lower listing fees (per unit) which gives them a greater margin on the stuff they mark up healthily.

That, or the profit is indeed built into the minimum s&h charge and the 1p is the lowest they can list for.

[Gerontophile]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

I have used this before, and I was amazed. And 1 of the books came from (Oh) Canada, and was in great condition. It cost me £3 in total, and I couldn't find it anywhere else.

Of course, I am a little loathe to use Amazon now, or at least tell anyone I am doing so.

[WOM]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Oddly, most of my abebooks purchases come from the same company (The Book Depository) in Guernsey, but shipping from elsewhere in the UK. Tax dodge, innit?

[Incandenza]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Here's an explanation:
http://pacifictrailbooks.com/Blog.aspx#0001

Many of these sellers have books that they didn't even pay for to begin with (excess library stock that they sell-on in a profit sharing arrangement).

[Levin]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

The Book Depository is owned by Amazon fyi

[Gerontophile]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Talking of books (although technically, we weren't directly), I have a copy of Lovejoy on Football waiting for me at the local library.

Can't f**king wait!!!

[Antepli Ejderha]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

So where can you buy cheap books online in the UK if it is not amazon?

[alyxandr]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

10^7 guests wrote: The Book Depository is owned by Amazon fyi

As indeed is AbeBooks.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

My shelves are groaning under the weight of the dirt-cheap paperbacks I've bought from Amazon. Thing is, to me books=old books. I started off as a teenaged Manics fan reading second-hand paperbacks from a second-hand bookshop back home, and it's not as if the authors would have seen a penny off the back of that. So as much as Amazon's monopoly has queered the pitch for writers and publishers today, it has also enabled me to read - or try out and abandon - hundreds of books I wouldn't even have been able to order from a library, let alone buy at all, let alone at full price. And in exotic, period-piece paperback editions. It's nuts - all these things must have been stuck in storage for years - but then publishing has always been nuts.

[Gerontophile]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

The books I bought from Amazon, were ones that I read in my past. And wanted to read again, and couldn't find anywhere.

(Kenneth Bulmer* - On The Symb Socket Circuit, being the main culprit which took me 23 years to find in the UK, and got it within 2 days on Amazon, once I did the research of the title, author, and subject... and it was as I remember it: Not the book I wanted in the first place! I am still looking for a sci-fi book, where one of the characters is called Ale-80 or Ally 80, and everyone has chips in their brain to interact with the rest of the world, and was written in the ... dunno, or by whom. Go figure!

I like Amazon, but I can't honestly use them anymore. I am well pissed off. (I can still watch Jimmy Carr, because I never paid for him in the first place. Gary Barlow can fuck off.)

*Apparently Kenneth Bulmer had some really bad tendencies...

[Lucia Lanigan]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Yeah, I don't like them having my money (though we are talking about very small amounts here). But I don't really know what to do about it either.

That's the internet for you: great for making anything ever made available to all for nowt, but disastrous for cultural production (i.e. rewarding talent with subsistence pay and mainstream recognition).

[NHH]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

The point is that Amazon's 2.80 means that booksellers can make enough money to make it worth their while, and every sale boosts ratings, so when it comes to selling higher margin items, they're better placed. And for Amazon, it means people use the ,marketplace, which means their platform becomes the default bookshop of the world. Job done.

The one I don't get is CD resales. I got rid of all of mine (about 100 CDs) for about 90 quid. I know that mobile resellers work on the basis that there are markets where newer models get released later, so second hand western phones can be better and more feature-laden than the current models in that market. Fine. But CDs of indie floorfillers from the early 90s? Where the fuck does that shit have value enough to be worth buying it from me for 4 quid?

[beak]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: Keegan on WW2 as you ask

"Hitler's gone down in my estimation when he said that, but I'll you.. we're still fighting for this war, and he's got to go to Stalingrad and get something, and... and I tell you honestly, I will love it if we beat them, love it"

[WOM]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

alyxandr wrote:

The Book Depository is owned by Amazon fyi

As indeed is AbeBooks.

Well sonofabitch.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

I made essentially the same Keegan joke on a WW2 books thread on the Books forum a year or two back and got no reaction. But, let me say this, brilliantly funny post! (To be fair, you've produced a more polished version.)

[Central Rain]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

You don't have to be a bulk seller for this to work. Amazon give you a post credit for each book you sell (not as much as they charge the customer as they deduct their commission). If you are selling a fairly light paperback, the credit will easily cover the cost of sending it 2nd class within the UK. You just make sure that you don't price any particularly heavy items as low as this and also ensure that you are only making them available for UK delivery.

[Incandenza]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Lucia Lanigan wrote: Yeah, I don't like them having my money (though we are talking about very small amounts here). But I don't really know what to do about it either.

That's the internet for you: great for making anything ever made available to all for nowt, but disastrous for cultural production (i.e. rewarding talent with subsistence pay and mainstream recognition).

Not just disastrous for cultural production...the people who work to ship orders out work in terrible conditions (admittedly, not all warehouse facilities are operated by Amazon--some are done by contractors--but it's all feeding the Amazon beast).

but now, via the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, there's more confirmation that products are often shipped from the internets to your house by very demoralized workers operating in very depressing conditions because they have no other job options. Specifically, at the Amazon warehouse in the story, an employee got in touch with OSHA when the heat inside hit 102 degrees. Fifteen workers collapsed, and those that went home to beat the heat got negative marks put on their records.

The Ohio warehouse I visited in June was the same kind of benefitless sweat-box. (It also sounds a lot like the sweltering warehouse described to my colleague Josh Harkinson here.) The Pennsylvania warehouse mentioned in the Morning Call article was not actually run by Amazon, just like the warehouse I was in wasn't run by the retailers whose product they shipped; both are staffed by temporary workers from a contract agency. Amazon responded by saying, "The safety and well-being of our associates is our number one priority." Hmm, no statement yet on whether they're going to make their contractors treat their employees like human beings.

The author of that post had a long first-person account of what it was like to work in an Amazon "fulfillment center." It's worth reading:

Inside Amalgamated, an employee's first day is training day. Though we're not paid to be here until 6, we have been informed that we need to arrive at 5. If we don't show up in time to stand around while they sort out who we are and where they've put our ID badges, we could miss the beginning of training, which would mean termination. "I was up half the night because I was so afraid I was going to be late," a woman in her 60s tells me. I was, too. A minute's tardiness after the first week earns us 0.5 penalty points, an hour's tardiness is worth 1 point, and an absence 1.5; 6 is the number that equals "release." But during the first week even a minute's tardiness gets us fired. When we get lined up so we can be counted a third or fourth time, the woman conducting the roll call recognizes the last name of a young trainee. "Does your dad work here? Or uncle?" she asks. "Grandpa," he says, as another supervisor snaps at the same time, sounding not mean but very stressed out, "We gotta get goin' here."

The culture is intense, an Amalgamated higher-up acknowledges at the beginning of our training. He's speaking to us from a video, one of several videos—about company policies, sexual harassment, etc.—that we watch while we try to keep our eyes open. We don't want to be so intense, the higher-up says. But our customers demand it. We are surrounded by signs that state our productivity goals. Other signs proclaim that a good customer experience, to which our goal-meeting is essential, is the key to growth, and growth is the key to lower prices, which leads to a better customer experience. There is no room for inefficiencies. The gal conducting our training reminds us again that we cannot miss any days our first week. There are NO exceptions to this policy. She says to take Brian, for example, who's here with us in training today. Brian already went through this training, but then during his first week his lady had a baby, so he missed a day and he had to be fired. Having to start the application process over could cost a brand-new dad like Brian a couple of weeks' worth of work and pay. Okay? Everybody turn around and look at Brian. Welcome back, Brian. Don't end up like Brian.

Soon, we move on to practical training. Like all workplaces with automated and heavy machinery, this one contains plenty of ways to get hurt, and they are enumerated. There are transition points in the warehouse floor where the footing is uneven, and people trip and sprain ankles. Give forklifts that are raised up several stories to access products a wide berth: "If a pallet falls on you, you won't be working with us anymore." Watch your fingers around the conveyor belts that run waist-high throughout the entire facility. People lose fingers. Or parts of fingers. And about once a year, they tell us, someone in an Amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn't just take your hair with it. It rips out a piece of scalp as well.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Tricky to know how to get back at monopoly operations like Amazon as a consumer, though, isn't it. Who else are you going to buy obscure old paperbacks from? If they're a decent enough operation Amazon will have bought them out. If you call for a boycott, you'll do so on a website hosted by Amazon.

Industrial action I'm all for, and awareness can't hurt that. But what action can consumers take against shapeshifting operations like Amazon? As the articles above point out, there's some serious responsibility laundering going on: contractors working for Operation 1, selling via Operation 2, bought out by Operation 3, hosted by Operation 4, and so on.

[Nefertiti2]

Used books for 1p plus p&p on Amazon

Working for Amazon (UK)

The comments are interesting too.

[Levin]

"Most Prime members no longer comparison shop."

" One study found that, after a retailer becomes a seller on Amazon, it's only a matter of weeks before Amazon brings the merchant's most popular items into its own inventory."

There isn't much new in this article, but it's always a little shocking when you remember how much of a grip on selling on the internet Amazon has

[caja-dglh]

I guess this should go here if this thread is re-emerging from a four year sleep

[ursus arctos]

And this