Re:Amazon has made a change to the way it sells books, which...
by yellowapple on Saturday May 20, 2017 @11:44PM
(#14385609)
This only seems to hurt publishers (and maybe consumers, depending on how the Buy Box algorithm is implemented/designed). This also happens to be a boon for third-party resellers.
My grandpa is actually one such possible beneficiary of this (though I don't think he would normally be the default for various reasons). In his retirement, he volunteers with a fundraising organization that supports his county's library by reselling donated books; cheaper books are usually sold by the bag in "book sales" (held adjacent to the library itself), but my grandpa's specialty is actually the Amazon storefront, through which the more expensive books are sold. Since there's no acquisition cost (they're donated), each book can be sold at prices way lower than they could be by for-profit sellers while still pulling in the same or similar net income.
It sounds like the Buy Box algorithm factors in whether a book is consistently in stock, however, which is problematic for him (since nearly all his sales are one-off), and it probably doesn't include non-new products. It's still potentially beneficial if he gets, say, a pallet of new college textbooks or something (which hasn't happened yet AFAIK, but hey, one can dream, right?).
My grandpa is actually one such possible beneficiary of this (though I don't think he would normally be the default for various reasons). In his retirement, he volunteers with a fundraising organization that supports his county's library by reselling donated books; cheaper books are usually sold by the bag in "book sales" (held adjacent to the library itself), but my grandpa's specialty is actually the Amazon storefront, through which the more expensive books are sold. Since there's no acquisition cost (they're donated), each book can be sold at prices way lower than they could be by for-profit sellers while still pulling in the same or similar net income.
It sounds like the Buy Box algorithm factors in whether a book is consistently in stock, however, which is problematic for him (since nearly all his sales are one-off), and it probably doesn't include non-new products. It's still potentially beneficial if he gets, say, a pallet of new college textbooks or something (which hasn't happened yet AFAIK, but hey, one can dream, right?).