Received the following email from a Slovakian reader:
Hi Paul.
I am very curious why I haven’t found this already plastered on
frontpages all over the net.I was checking the prices of some Amazon e-books recently and I have
noticed that the prices are without $2 surcharge that Amazon used to
add to the book regardless of how you purchased the book.I am in Slovakia, and even when I log in into Amazon account, the
books seem to be without surcharge in the list price.
Simon Royle in Thailand sees the same thing
http://www.simon-royle.com/2011/04/08/breaking-news-amazon-drops-international-wireless-delivery-charges-on-ebooks/#commentsIs it a glich, or is it just Amazon that displays one price and then
charges more? I am not going to purchase an item at the moment just to
find out.
Am I missing something obvious?
Or, has the price war with Apple began quietly, without anyone noticing?Have a nice day
Stanislav from Slovakia.
They did that earlier for the UK, Canada (and Australia, I think) and may be expanding it. Normally it does, they say, show up with the price of the book.
It doesn’t seem to be universal yet.
Checking [URL=”http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JBHNS4/”]a reasonably large ebook[/URL] and a free ebook at Amazon.com, and changing regions reveals some interesting changes.
There are now three kinds of charging region. One that doesn’t have the extra delivery charge at all. One that only has the delivery charge on non-free ebooks, and one that has the delivery charge on all ebooks.
Regions without any delivery charge:
United States
United Kingdom
Australia
Canada
Europe
Regions with $2 on non-free, but free books are $0:
Asia and Pacific
India
Regions with $2 delivery charge on all ebooks:
Africa
Latin Am. & Caribbean
Middle East
Not sure about this. I live in Spain, and the delivery charge seems to be applied to non-free (cheap)books. Books at US$ 0.99 costs when I am logged US$ 3.44. A book at US$ 1.99 costs me US$ 4.59. I’ve found just a few books over US$ 10 with the same price in Europe and USA, that’s all.
Nevertheless it is valid on free books, which now seems to be also free for us.
Finland reporting: yes, there is a lot more 0.00 now available, just “bought” one to check it out.
Something weird though. On the bestselling list, one John Locke book (Saving Rachel) is 0.99 but another (A Girl Like You) is still at 3.44.
It doesn’t seem to cover all books nor all regions as the poster above points out – however, in Thailand, the charge appears to have been dropped.
For cellular delivery, the cost may hinge on the sorts of agreement Amazon can make with cellular providers in each region or country. Get that price down enough, perhaps by sending data when the system would otherwise be idle, and Amazon can afford free digital delivery. It may also be true that, with WiFi models becoming more common, Amazon can afford to subsidize the cost of cellular delivery with profits from almost costless WiFi deliveries. My ancient Kindle 1 gets books via Sprint. If I had a Kindle 3, it’s be running on my WiFi.
I’ve certainly got my complaints about Amazon, but their business model is a lot like WalMart’s. Both companies are ruthless in their efforts to drive down distribution costs and both pass some of those savings along to customers. They may do that primarily to grab market share, but customers do benefit from those lower prices.
And the loser in both cases are the little, independent, neighborhood stores. The town I grew up in used to have a modest downtown with a lot of little stores, each selling a small range of goods. It now has a huge WalMart on the edge of town. Amazon is the Walmart of the Internet.