I like shopping in book stores. There’s something about wandering the aisles and waiting for a book to jump out at you that I can’t get shopping online. Unfortunately, whenever I compare the price of a book Amazon has every in-person store beat, often pricing their offerings 30%-50% lower (or around $10/book in my experience) even when I go to a large chain like Barnes and Noble.
How is it that Amazon is able to afford to offer the books so much cheaper and also support all of the infrastructure involved in shipping it to my doorstep compared with in-person stores?
I don’t know the full details, but part of it:
They can also afford to just sell at a loss if they want, similar to how Wal-Mart briefly sold games at $50 new instead of $60 as an incentive for people to buy from them instead of competitors.
it used to be a rule of thumb in business that every time you double in size your costs go down about 20%.
don’t forget taxes evasions
Biggest cost factor is the people working in a book store per book sold as well as their pay is mich higher for a book store. As an upside you get people who can actually recommend you great books based on your interests. The insane book love and knowledge those people often have is astonishing to me. That’s what I very much am fine with paying a bit extra for.
Also there are times Amazon prints on demand. They don’t keep anything in stock taking up space, instead printing it as soon as it’s ordered allowing them to save space
Doesn’t bookbinding actually take a long time? Atleast, for well bound books it does. Can’t speak for the cheap glued on paperbacks.
Not sure about cost. I know when I’ve bought books on amazon they were the glued on paperbacks showing they were printed the day I ordered it.