Flashman14 | 24 Mar 2016 3:17 a.m. PST |
Clearly, many publishers choose not to peddle their wargames rules via Amazon. To a consumer, this could appear to be a strikingly wasted opportunity. However, the consumer only sees half of what goes into the deal. What then, prevents even the major publishers from skipping this avenue? Obviously the economics don't work out, but I'm asking you to show your work. Is it simply that you make more selling them in-house, in staid wargamers marketing channels. I'm just thinking about all the books I've passed on because of price, and my guess is you might be wrong to underestimate customers' preference for Amazon's reliability, low prices, speed of shipping, unrivaled reputation, etc, etc. |
Mako11 | 24 Mar 2016 3:42 a.m. PST |
Their low prices probably mean little to no profit margins for the writers and owners. |
Mr Elmo | 24 Mar 2016 4:22 a.m. PST |
I buy my Fantasy Flight items from Amazon: X wing, Armada, etc. Two day shipping is hard to pass up. |
79thPA | 24 Mar 2016 4:26 a.m. PST |
Amazon requires published works to have an ISBN number, which the author has to purchase at their own expense. There is a publisher in our hobby who told me he will not go the Amazon route for that reason. |
Doms Decals | 24 Mar 2016 4:36 a.m. PST |
The ISBN is a minor issue, pricing is the biggie – Amazon is absolutely ruthless about driving the wholesale price it pays down. A profit per item sold of a few pence is fine for a mass-market paperback, but for a set of rules that would be doing well to sell a few thousand copies, not so much…. Additionally, because of the discount, Amazon sucks sales away from othe channels – if you put your book on Amazon, the lower price will draw away customers from buying direct from you (which are your highest margin sales) and from buying from wargames shops (which are still a useful source of exposure to potential new customers), so you're risking losing out on two levels there. |
Doms Decals | 24 Mar 2016 4:45 a.m. PST |
(As an afterthought, short run publishers in other niches do use Amazon, but they typically pad their rrp; higher cover price means more room to discount for Amazon, while still having something left. This means the saving is often illusory though – effectively they price as if the Amazon price is what they expect it to go for, and treat the occasional non-Amazon sale as a bonus.) |
Oh Bugger | 24 Mar 2016 4:49 a.m. PST |
I'd say profit margin is the main issue that said Osprey is already selling rules on Amazon. |
Doms Decals | 24 Mar 2016 4:54 a.m. PST |
Osprey's at the very top end of the hobby in terms of sales though – by mainstream publishing standards it's small fry, but in our little niche it's about as mass-market as you get. I seem to remember seeing Warlord's books on there for a while too (again top end in terms of sales expectations) but even they seem to have decided it doesn't add up, as I can only see their titles at near-rrp from Marketplace sellers now. |
Editor in Chief Bill | 24 Mar 2016 5:03 a.m. PST |
Some of the DBx titles have been on Amazon too. |
Garth in the Park | 24 Mar 2016 5:18 a.m. PST |
If I recall, the "Field of Glory" guys felt pretty badly burned by the fact that Amazon demanded a bigger discount than any other dealer or distributor, and then undercut everybody's price by deeply discounting the book to the customer. Selling via Amazon basically drove everybody else's earnings down. I suspect that it's a matter of scale. For large volume publishing like paperback novels or Sci-Fi / Fantasy, maybe Amazon makes sense. But in a very small niche hobby market, there's probably not enough meat on the bones to afford giving it all away to Amazon. |
zippyfusenet | 24 Mar 2016 5:34 a.m. PST |
How does Amazon's service work, where they search a database of independent booksellers for a title, sometimes something OOP and/or rare, but common titles are also in there? The price is whatever the vendor charges, and they can vary widely from pennies to hundreds of bux for copies of the same title. I have, once in a great while, paid top dollar for something I really, really wanted. How much of a cut does Amazon take on those sales? Is that a viable route for Joe Blow's Wargame Rules to peddle their wares? |
Doms Decals | 24 Mar 2016 5:41 a.m. PST |
Amazon marketplace fees (where people specifically list on Amazon, filling orders themselves) work out at about 17 – 19% including payment processing, in the UK at least. Not sure how the bookfinder business model works. |
Extra Crispy | 24 Mar 2016 5:43 a.m. PST |
If the Field of Glory guys were surprised by that, they weren't paying attention. |
Steve at The Vault | 24 Mar 2016 6:42 a.m. PST |
I'd say it's low margin for the author and little control of your own product. You can take a low margin and let Amazon set your price at what they want, or go thru other POD channels and get higher margin and set your own price. |
Yesthatphil | 24 Mar 2016 7:27 a.m. PST |
Northampton Battlefields Society have created and published the new book on the 1460 battle through Amazon. Northampton 1460 It has enabled us to put out a great product at a competitive price … there is a decent return in it for us and this all goes into the campaign to protect the battlefield. Please buy a copy. The service works very well and I have no doubt we will publish and sell via Amazon again. If it goes sour I'll let you know, of course Phil |
Flashman14 | 24 Mar 2016 8:04 a.m. PST |
Is it obvious that the seller won't make up the small margins in volume? Is that a hunch or a calculation? Further, what prevents a vendor from doing both? Apparently, price and service aren't the only factors in deciding to purchase a rule set. |
civildisobedience | 24 Mar 2016 8:18 a.m. PST |
I think there is more ignorance at play on the part of game publishers if they don't at least set themselves up as marketplace sellers. The earlier comparison to paperbacks is a good one. I'd wager the gross margins on books (half of which are bought back and scrapped) are far lower than that on games. And most books don't sell hundreds of thousand of copies…many are in the ballpark of a lot of gaming products. You can't ignore where customers are. |
Grunt1861 | 24 Mar 2016 8:35 a.m. PST |
Dom you had it right from the beginning: "Amazon is absolutely ruthless" |
Weasel | 24 Mar 2016 10:41 a.m. PST |
Reasons I've avoided Amazon: *You have to publish in Kindle or print format. I haaaate the kindle format. It's awful. Your book will look like trash. *The way royalties work, if you charge more than 9.99 for an ebook, you get 30% royalty. Wargaming books generally sit between 10 and 20 dollars. *They do not pay out to paypal, unless this changed. *Lastly, on the wargamevault, you can be a big fish in a small pond. Every person that clicks on that site, is there to look at wargaming books. On amazon, you'll be a microscopic fish in the underground oceans on Titan. 99.99% of people visiting the site have no interest in toy soldiers. Now, this is all from the perspective of PDF pricing. I have little experience with print. |
Rudysnelson | 24 Mar 2016 3:25 p.m. PST |
I am just not a fan of Amazon. I will not throw any stones. |
IanKHemm | 24 Mar 2016 4:35 p.m. PST |
I use Amazon as a bit of a testing ground. If a set of rules I'm interested in are available for Kindle I'll get them and give them a read through. Kindle versions are cheap but the format isn't great for use in an actual game where you may need to flick through the pages. But, if I like the rules I'll then go on to purchase a printed copy (not from Amazon). For me this is a better way of doing things because I don't need to fork out a hefty price for a set of rules only to find that I don't like them. |
basileus66 | 24 Mar 2016 4:44 p.m. PST |
Amazon offered us to work with them. The deal implied that 15% of each sale (shipping costs included to calculate that percentage) would go to Amazon for selling through them. Given the small margins that we have in our business (around 30% usually, but sometimes as low as 20% in 1/6 scale figures), we declined. We don't sell enough to compesate for the cost. |
Garth in the Park | 24 Mar 2016 6:05 p.m. PST |
Is it obvious that the seller won't make up the small margins in volume? Is that a hunch or a calculation? "Volume" in wargaming is laughable compared to real publishing. A war-game is successful if it sells a thousand copies. If most book publishers only sold 1000 copies, they'd go under! There just aren't enough wargamers. Putting the product on Amazon doesn't change that. Further, what prevents a vendor from doing both? The fact that Amazon will get a bigger discount and then undercut your own sales and all other dealers. |
KSmyth | 24 Mar 2016 6:47 p.m. PST |
I often buy a set of Osprey rules from Amazon and give them a looksee, and then a second copy at my local brick and mortar store when they come in. I am in Seattle and Amazon is a major employer here, so it's kind of an ethical trap for me. |