The Amazon Monopoly
Warning: This is a rant!
There are millions of books on Amazon.com and hundreds of thousands of authors who earn their living—theoretically—from this market-dominant company. The mechanics of how this works for an author may not be obvious to the general public. Here is an insider’s view.
Many people buy Amazon Prime paying $119 for free shipping, so Amazon is cash-positive from the get-go. How does Amazon ship for free? Answer: authors pay for the shipping. Here’s the math:
My book, “The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch”, has a cover price of $24.95. Amazon arbitrarily decides to sell the book on their website for $14.00, making them look like a discount hero. Amazon—arbitrarily again—decides that they will discount the list price by 55%, so they pay me $6.30. The responsibility for shipping the book to Amazon is mine, so I pay $3 for an envelope, $13 for postage, and perhaps another $5 for creating an invoice, financing the accounts receivable and the cost of auto and gas getting to the post office. Gross income to me: $6.30; total cost to me of $21; so I lose $14.70 on every sale of a $24.95 book (and we sell hundreds of books each year!).
I have 22 books in print, an equal number of CDs and Videos, and similar losses occur on every item because of Amazon’s rapacious price-gouging and offloading of costs to authors and other vendors. To add insult to injury, if Amazon cannot locate a confirmation that I sent confirming that I have shipped the book within a window of 48 hours, they cancel the order altogether and don’t pay me anything, even though I’ve already shipped the book(s).
Last year Amazon increased—arbitrarily, again—the price of my $24.95 book to $50—for months. Since Amazon obscures the finding of phone numbers, emails or contact points for vendors who wish to reach them, I struggled to contact the company for 4 months during which time sales nosedived because hardly anyone purchased at these inflated prices. Eventually, I succeeded in getting an email response letting me know that “they were working on it”. However, no change occurred until—arbitrarily again, and after many months of lost sales—Amazon decided to restore the price to the correct one.
So, I’m seriously thinking of withdrawing all of my books and other products from Amazon because it’s an unsustainable business model for me, and I think it’s time for all authors to take a stand. Of course, Amazon has a lot of power—to lose the Amazon sales channel will be painful for me, but I’d rather sell less books through a profitable channel than tons of books on which I lose money on every single sale. What do you think? If you are an author like me, what would you do? Is it time to start a movement? @boycottamazon
If you wish to support my work, all my books and other products and services are available here: www.secretan.com/estore.
_______________________________________________________________________________
I sent an early draft of the post above in an email to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, and this is the reply I received the next day, in which they don’t address my concerns, but try to get me to publish through their own publishing house!!
My name is Albert Rosberg with Amazon Author Central – Executive Customer Relations, Jeff Bezos received your email and I’m reaching on his behalf. If you’re a Seller with Amazon please visit https://sellercentral.amazon.com/ for better assistance with your Seller Account. Also consider publishing your paperback books by using KDP, for more information visit KDP Jumpstart guide, check: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202187740.
Best regards,
Albert Rosberg.
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon Author Central
______________________________________________________________________________
The Responsibility to Use our Voices
For better or worse, as a result of the career I have chosen, I am blessed to have a voice, a platform, and an audience. All of us, whether we have a voice and a platform or not, have a responsibility to speak up in these pivotal times, because we have a chance to...
Good Timber – from Inspiration in the Cloud
During our "Inspiration in the Cloud" Zoom video call today, I shared this poem with all of the participants who joined our weekly 30-minute inspiring conversation. The poem is starkly gender-insensitive, but, remember, he died before I was born! (Honestly, I...
The Calf-Path – Lessons for Life!
This is a lovely poem which I read this morning during our "Inspiration in the Cloud" public Zoom call. It speaks so well to the notion that we are all connected and we are all ONE! Please join us again next Thursday at 1100 EST - you can register here:...
How Will You Choose to Be During Your COVID Quarantining?
COVID-19 – The Best Wake-up Call Humanity Has Ever Experienced?
Yes, we are probably going to have a recession. Yes, it is going to be very painful. As a leading physician has written, we are in for "some long and dark days ahead ". BUT........ Supposing this was the best wake-up call humanity has ever experienced in the last 100...
How to Be Inspired (and Inspiring) in a COVID-19 Era
You don’t need any message from me about what to do (social distancing, hand-washing, etc.). So let's look at this a little differently..... We have all been given the gift of time – what will you do with your gift? We have a golden opportunity to use this gift...
Leadership Models
In my day-to-day work with leaders globally, my conviction that leadership is broken becomes stronger with each new business model that I see. There is no laboratory better than the C-suite for observing the dizzying array of leadership models, and all their...
The Myth of Stress
A Buddhist parable tells the story of a monk confronted by a fierce tiger while on a quiet walk. The monk becomes motionless. He knows that just beyond him is a cliff and just below that cliff is the rocky shoreline and the turbulent sea. The monk is caught between...
Why Performance Management Programs Fail
Every Performance Management system I have ever seen over the years has typically focused on one thing: employee productivity (aka performance). In one case, I saw a program developed by a large international consulting firm for...
Thank you!
A global survey of 22,000 corporate leaders just voted me the 4th ranked Leadership Coach in the world, and also the 21st ranked Leadership Authority and Speaker. It is a privilege to be counted among 30 brilliant peers and souls from across the globe. While I accept...
Are You Part of the Problem? Or Part of the Solution?
I don’t know about you, but I have noticed myself complaining more than usual lately—about polarized politics, climate change inactivity, religious intolerance, and most of all, about the inability of so many people to “hear” others and their views, with respect and...
Right Intention; Wrong Solution!
In my most recent book, The Bellwether Effect, I list the eight things that we tend to do in modern organizations that turn off (demotivate) employees so thoroughly that 80% of the population would give up their day jobs if they had a free choice. (I also describe the...