From lojbab@lojban.org Fri Oct 19 11:56:51 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:56:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao101.cox.net ([68.230.240.7]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Iix1b-0000LI-5I for llg-members@lojban.org; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:56:50 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by eastrmmtao101.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20071019185640.UICU7124.eastrmmtao101.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:56:40 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id 2Jwc1Y00J3y5FKc0000000; Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:56:38 -0400 Message-ID: <4718FE43.6050406@lojban.org> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:58:11 -0400 From: Bob LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: llg-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] Re: New Business - used CLL book sales References: <4718D542.4070103@lojban.org> <4718DEF6.9030305@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 462 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members Matt Arnold wrote: > I could drive down to Philadelphia one of these days and drive back > with the car full-to-bursting with CLLs. Washington DC BTW > Do you know Amazon charges a 55% commission on sales? That is what they charge if they are doing the warehousing, selling, and order fulfillment, and is pretty standard for the book industry for any large distributor. A smaller distributor might charge only 35%-45% but generate far less sales. IIRC, in addition to that 55% commission, the seller pays shipping and the distributor does not pay immediately and reserve the right to ship unsold copies back to you at your expense. This again is standard, and most publishers therefore have them only ship back the cover, leading to the occassional coverless book which is supposed to be discarded but sometimes ends up in the used book market. With all those charges, when amazon changed to this policy, we decided that we could not make sufficient profit on CLL to bother For the marketplace, where you fill the orders yourself, and amazon processes the payment, the fee is much less - it looks like 99c plus 15%, which is more or less what we were paying them when they sold our books for $48 while paying us $39 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3485871 Note that the shipping costs for books are LARGE, unless sent within the US by media mail. Anyone who attempts to start doing this needs to have some idea how to estimate shipping charges. BTW, if And (or someone else in Europe) wanted to do this, I would suggest that he first try to contact Colin in case he still has some of his box of books left, because it would be a lot cheaper to get books to sell from Colin than from here - we're currently paying more than $20 to ship one book to Europe (though I think we could get a break on a large package, it would still be extremely expensive). http://www.fine.me.uk/ is his website and he says that he is selling them for 28 pounds plus shipping. lojbab