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Amazon Offers Cut of Ebook Sales To Book Stores Selling Kindle
nk497 writes with this excerpt from PC Pro "Amazon plans to give independent booksellers 10% of the takings from ebooks bought on Kindles they sell, the online giant has revealed. The new Amazon Source program aims to encourage independent bookstores and small retailers to sell Kindle readers by offering commission for the first two years of the device's life. As an alternative to the 10% kickback from book sales, retailers opting into the Amazon Source program can choose instead to receive a larger discount up front when buying the devices for resale."
What's the typical lifespan of a kindle?
That sounds like a good deal if people do change HW every couple years, not sure what the fineprint says (I can't RTFA).
So a commission to cut your own throat? I say this as a kindle fan.
Doesn't this seem like Amazon is handing book sellers a knife and asking them to slit their own throat?
Don't do it. You'll be stuck in the belly of Amazon where it will digest you for the next 1000 years.
I agree that 10% sounds low, but its better than nothing. Why would a store want to sell a product that affects their business model? Now if said store got a kickback from it....
It also keeps bookstores from having to stock as many physical books. I am not sure what the percentage rate a store gets from selling a physical book, but I can certainly see this being an attractive offer for many B&M stores.
The marketing maxim "give away the razor, sell the blades" now seems to be "slit your throat by selling the razor."
Sell this device now and get a cut for immediate gain. Watch as devices sold slowly render your main business dead, and only have residual income after that.
Silence is a state of mime.
"Help us put the final nail in your coffin."
In other news, the local turkey farm has now opened for Christmas.
Turkeys have been offered extra feed if they are prepared to wear bright red hats and suits, and wander around singing christmas carols.
Because if they don't somebody else will.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't understand why the new model for local book stores is not clear to everyone. It is this; local bookstores are essentially places to browse books to see what you want, then thy can earn money either of direct sales from the location (which is very much going to happen in the cases of gifts) or from affiliate revenue.
Gifts alone are not enough revenue to cut it; buying a Kindle from your local affiliate is a whole new stream of revenue that is likely enough to keep a store afloat. All the store has to do is figure out a way to entice people to buy Kindle's from the store and they get two-three years of recurring revenue as the owner buys books even if they never return to the store!
Book stores would also be smart to place QR stickers on each book that provided an affiliate link to purchase the book on Amazon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It may seem harmless at first glance. But this is analogous to the problem we're having with cable TV - where the company which owns the delivery hardware is also the company which is selling you the content.
For this to work properly, the delivery infrastructure has to remain separate from the product being delivered. That's what we do with electricity and gas. For efficiency purposes, one company owns the power lines or the gas pipes. But they're not allowed to discriminate against electricity and gas suppliers, and anyone is allowed to sell those products through their lines/pipes.
Without this separation, there's a huge conflict of interest. A company with an inferior product can force its acceptance through its dominance of the delivery system (e.g. cable companies and their "packages" where you're forced to pay for lots of channels you haven't the slightest interest in watching). Or a company with an inferior delivery system can force its acceptance through dominance in a popular product (e.g. game consoles which sign an exclusive deal for a certain game).
In a nutshell, you shouldn't be allowed to use dominance in one market as leverage to gain dominance in a different, orthogonal market.
...the rope to hang themselves with.
Will no one think of all the disenfranchised hipsters with only popular places to hang out?
We can read and still enjoy the vanilla'esqe smell of a nice old used book store.
Good move Amazon. Go once step further, and let them sell kindle books and keep 10%.
Yes put a QR sticker on the book so you can get 10% of the profit rather than 100%
Your math is wrong; 10% is greater than 0%. People are ALREADY looking at a book in a bookstore, scanning the barcode on Amazons shopping app, and ordering it online.
10% A MONTH for three years is also better than 0% over three years, which is what you may get if a bookstore sells a kindle reader and the purchasers keeps buying books. Wh wouldn't they? I know I buy a book or two every month. That's all money that an affiliate could have a percentage of and I'd be happy to help make that happen.
Your math is even "wronger", in that a book store selling only physical books must purchase a huge stock of books, many of which will not sell. A book store oriented to making money from affiliate revenue need stock only a copy or two of each book, possibly keeping more of some really popular books for those that actually want to purchase. But in any case it mens much less money tied up in inventory and books that don't sell no longer hurt you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
10% isn't enough to pay the electric bill let alone employee wages, rent, taxes etc.
How do you know? You can't possibly know the rent for every small to medium sized bookstore to proclaim that. Also, why do you assume affiliate revenue is 10% compared to a baseline profit the bookstore would have earned from the book, after factoring in stock that didn't sell or was damaged and stolen? All of those factors are greatly reduced by a bookstore that is operating off the model of making money from recurring revenue.
Fundamentally though, you are being really, really stupid on a key aspect that earns the bookstore money - you are totally ignoring the point I made clearly that the store gets a cut of EVERY book bought over years. A person might have bought one book at the store, with a profit of $0.50 for example. But instead the store get lets say $0.25 (or more) a MONTH over three years! Furthermore that doesn't even requiring having stock or help to serve them. Which would you rather have as a business owner???
You also I think are drastically over-estimating how much they make per book sold - and forgetting they also are getting all of the profit from selling a Kindle, how many books do you have to sell to equal that?
You are missing the potentially greatest path to resurgence for the physical book store there ever will be, and ignoring it because you can't seem to understand the profit flow possible or indeed what is really going on.
You represent the worst aspect of Slashdot, the technocrat who knows fuck-all about running a real business with physical goods. What a shame you cannot see this opportunity clearly, but that doesn't mean it is not there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
fuck you.
gimme 20 years of 10% commission.. on not only sales from the device sold, but also sales from the person/account associated with it..... on *every* payment processed by amazon, including ebook sales and rentals, app sales, in-app purchases, media files and rentals, subscriptions, etc.. including amazon.com orders... *EVERYTHING* ..
if you want me to sell out to the devil and peddle his wares (that cut into my own sales), then the devil better pay up big.
You're obviously a troll and someone thats never run a business. How about we take 90% of your income away and see how well you survive? I'm done with you. Can't argue with fucking retards.
I so wish that amazon would let the physical stores sell the books too.
Let me go in and browse books the way that I'm used to and when I decide on a book I enter a (store and book specific) code from the back when purchasing which gives the physical store a decent cut but lets me leave with just another ebook on my kindle.
The sad thing is that for all his grinning boyish glee, Bezos is a ruthless capitalist ideologue no different than any industrialist, and he's bent on domination at all costs, especially those whose livihoods suffer in his wake. It's a very Chinese mindset interestingly, which boils down to "screw you. If I can take it, it's mine." Charming grin tho.