Competing with Yourself...Amazon Marketplace

Today's post is a quick little trick to earn yourself a bit of extra income. If you've read my post on CreateSpace Vs LightningSource you'll remember that one of the advantages about Lightning Source is you can set your discount rate low (20% which is 20% better than the 40% you get from CreateSpace). Now doing so will mean a few things:

• Amazon probably won't discount your books (something to consider in your decision making)
• Most resellers won't carry your books (as there is not enough margin)

But this presents an interesting opportunity for you in that you can offer a discount (and even provide a means by which people can receive signed copies...Amazon Marketplace.



Amazon Marketplace is a free program by which anyone (even you the author/publisher) can offer books for sale. They show up on the Amazon page as shown here:



When you offer deep discounts to the distribution chain, many sellers will beat you in price as they will be willing to offer the books at a pretty tight margin. But since you are only offering 20% discount most will list theirs higher than you can offer yours.



For Full Share I put my books in Amazon Maketplace for sale for $11.95. I make four listings:

• New with signature
• New without author signature
• Used with signature
• Used without author signature

They have an "individual plan" with no monthly fees which I recommend if you are not selling a ton each month. The fees under this plan are:

• $0.99 closing fee
  
  
• 15% referral fee
• #1.35 variable closing fee

(If you sell more than 40 items a month you can opt for the Professional plan which has a $39.99 monthly fee and eliminates the $0.99 closing fee).



So for those that don't want to pay the $13.95 full list price for Full Share, they'll look under the "new and used" links and find the following:

• $11.95 from Ridan Publishing
• $14.32 from pbshops
• $16.99 from BooKnackrh
• $17.00 from bargainbookstores
• $17.04 from Quick and Easy Marketplace
• $17.65 from super_star_seller
• $18.86 from Buye: Buy to Give
• $19.21 from invise
• $20.40 from any_book
• $20.58 from brookebooks

So who do you think they'll choose? Yep - you and a nice perk is that Amazon charges $3.99 for shipping but if you use Media mail it will only cost you $3.01 for shipping (includes $0.19 for tracking) so you'll make $0.98 off of that.



So...let's break it down. If they buy the book from Amazon or one of the other resellers you'll receive:

• $13.95 - 20% - Lightning Source print fee = 13.95 - $2.79 - (302 * .013 + .90) = $6.37

For any sold through the marketplace you'll receive

• 11.95 + shipping - $0.99 - $1.35 - 15% - Create Space print fee - shipping cost = $11.95 + $3.99 - $2.34 - $1.79 - (302 * .012 + .85) - $3.01 = $4.33

Which is less - but it allows you to offer a discount for the books (many people won't buy without a discount) and they'll be attracted to the option of getting it signed. Plus, $4.33 a book is nothing to sneeze about - most authors make $0.60 - $1.20 on paperback books so you are still coming out in the plus column.



Of course you'll make the most when they buy direct - and you'll have the advantage of getting their email addresses. But that is for another time - so stay tuned.