ways selling on amazon

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worldmaker

Hi to everybody who tries! I'm doing lots of research on self publishing for a long time (about two years) but one thing is not clear yet.
So, I would be grateful if anyone would be able to clear this up.
On amazon you can sell by the Advantage, this is the usual way for new books, or on the Marketplace. I downloaded literary hundruds of their small help texts but it wasn't clear yet. Finally I contacted them.
They write:
"[FONT=&quot]Advantage titles will appear online as most of the titles on our [/FONT][FONT=&quot]site do; you will not be able to distinguish an Advantage title from one that is available from our main distributors. To purchase an Advantage title, a customer would only need to click the "Add to Shopping Cart" button. On the other hand, a Marketplace listing can only be accessed by clicking on a "used & new" link on an item's product detail page. If an item has more than one Marketplace listing, you will be competing with other sellers to sell your title.[/FONT]"
And now about the pricing:
[FONT=&quot]"While Amazon.com Advantage requires a 55% discount on ordered [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
titles, Marketplace requires only 15%, which we collect at point of sale. As an example, if you have a new book that sells for $10, you would receive $8.50 on a customer sale, rather than the $4.50 you would receive through Advantage. You will also receive a shipping credit to cover the cost of shipping the order directly to the customer. Marketplace does deduct an additional $0.99 fee per sale, which is waived for Pro Merchant Subscribers." [/FONT]

Well, it seemed to be clear. Financially it's much better to sell on the Marketplace, but then your book wouldn't sell on the site on the usual way, which is bad.

As the next step, I tried to distinguish new books on the amazon site. For example, when I make a search within books, and I search for "paperback thrillers" there are a lot of books coming up. I can't see any difference, but one thing: some books are fully priced, and some are discounted.

The big question:
Is this nowadays the only difference between the Marketplace and the usual way, or it's some other phenomenon? In that case, how it looks like when you sell your book on the Marketplace?

Perhaps I'm mixing up things, but I know that people who sell their new books on the Marketplace has alway full prices.

Let's see if someone knows the answer... ;-)
 

benbradley

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I've sold used books through Marketplace, though my volume has been low enough (less than 40 books per month) that it hasn't been worth being a Pro Mercant (which costs $40 per month, but as that writing says, Pro Merchants don't have to pay the $0.99 per sold book). Another advantage of being a Pro Merchant is you can create your own book listing on Amazon. This is usually done for listing pre-ISBN books (and Amazon will assign it their own "AISN" number), but I would guess you could do this with a new book as well, though it would end up listed with an AISN instead of your ISBN (thus you wouldn't need an ISBN, though there may be problems with that).

Selling through Amazon Marketplace implies you have books that have already gone through the distribution/retail outlet chain, and you are "reselling" them. Listing a book as "new" there implies only "as-new" condition. I suspect many Amazon buyers only want to but NEW books directly FROM AMAZON, and won't dare press that "Used and new from $..." link, so you may miss some buyers that way. I think it's a bit odd that you would sell new books straight from the publisher/printer that way, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with it.

Also, on Marketplace you can change the selling price at any time. I'm not familiar with Advantage or any "standard" new-book selling method on Amazon.
 

worldmaker

Hi benbradley:
It's always good to see someone's opinion who actually was there...
Well, perhaps I'm too greedy, but as said (and I suppose you know anyway)
in my opening letter, marketplace costs only 15%, while the usual amazon takes 55%. I don't fell they earned 55% of a book, which is the creation of many people, not least the writer's... ;-)
On the other hand, I have a feeling you're right about people wanting to buy directly from amazon.
Hard choice, hence the thread.
 

Dustry Joe

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I haven't researched Advantage as much as you have, worldmaker. But the thing is, as I understand it, that Marketplace is an independent seller of existing books, like a used book store on eBay.

Whereas Advantage is actually sales by Amazon. They stock your books, don't they?

Also, I seem to recall that Market books have to be books which already have an ISBN listed on Amazon. You you can't pop up and list your book on marketplace if it's not being sold elsewhere. Wheras Advantage presents your book "original" as if from a conventional publisher.
 

hastingspress

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I offer my own books on marketplace because other people are selling them on there, cheaper than the Amazon price. So I compete against them. I have to drop my price to be competitive, but at least I am soaking up the sales rather than letting others steal my sales!

Something I don't understand is that Amazon has dropped the price of my books. One of them from £30 to £21, without my permission. They buy them from the wholesaler, who pays me £15 per book.

Helena
 

LikesToWrite

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I offer my own books on marketplace because other people are selling them on there, cheaper than the Amazon price. So I compete against them. I have to drop my price to be competitive, but at least I am soaking up the sales rather than letting others steal my sales!


I like that idea. Have you seen a drop in the marketplace problem since you started doing that?
 
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