Amazon FBA seller here. I came to look for the Amazon comment. Their returns are pretty messed up and hurt the sellers. Customer can return for any reason and the seller has to eat it. Often times it is very hard to track returns down if people return the wrong stuff. If it's broken or damaged, amazon will side with the customer 100% of the time. On top of all that, if you dispose of a damaged, non-sell-able item, they will list it in amazon warehouse, we agree to that in the TOS by having an FBA account.If someone knows how to work with their system better regarding returns, let me know.
meed2000|5 years ago
They skim the seller for the sale (because they do the marketing for you). They skim on payment processing (it costs them less than they charge) They skim for exposure (ads are almost a must have to ever appear in search results). They then skim on delivery via FBA (they charge more than it costs them). And they skim on warehousing via FBA (the pricing was already unbelievable back then).
Fast forward 10 years, they have started to skim sellers off their business analysis and risk taking effort (They have the data, and will compete with 3rd party sellers on products that sell decently enough, and even place their product before yours).
I've recently taken the time to edited and publish a book that is in the public domain, on their KDP platform, a few days later I see that Amazon is selling that same book and even redirect customer clicks from my page description and book cover to their line item to buy.
Amazon has no limit.
mthoms|5 years ago
Can you expand on this? I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Is Amazon redirecting direct links to your free book to a non-free version?