Amazon and postage costs

Michele37

hiya everyone

I sold a book on amazon (rebus heavyish) Amazon paid me £2.75 for postage, the book sold for £3.99, Amazon Marketplace Fees = £1.78 Vat = 26p
£4.70

Actual costs for postage £4.71

Down 1p

so much for making money LOL

apprentice_tycoon

Ouch, that hurts!

The thing you need to remember is that all the other people selling the same book (you will have used their prices as a guide when you priced your book) haven't checked the weight and actual postage costs either, so it's best weigh and check each time you list and if that means your book is priced higher than the others so be it but at least you won't lose out when you sell - the other sellers will

frivolous_fay

Unlucky...

Trouble is, if you price your book so that you are ultimately able to make money on the sale, the book won't sell

It's usually at this point I put the book in the 'to be ebayed' pile.

And another thing... Greenmetropolis allows you to select a higher weight / postage rate for large and heavy books... but the options available never quite match the book you have - it always seems to restrict you to a lower weight / no. of pages than the true figure would be.

/sulk

me4bargains

IMO don't list heavyish books on Amazon unless they sell for more than a tenner.

Batgirl

This has just happened to us we lost £1 by "Selling" a book. Was really gutted. Now the postage prices have changed Amazon should change their postage amounts.

apprentice_tycoon

Batgirl wrote:

This has just happened to us we lost £1 by "Selling" a book. Was really gutted. Now the postage prices have changed Amazon should change their postage amounts.

I'm afraid that this unlikely to happen, they have kept to the same postage allowance for 3 years now and there have been a number of Royal Mail increases in recent years.

There really wouldn't be a problem if everyone weighed their books and priced sensibly then there wouldn't be heavy books with really low prices that are bound to cost more money to post then they bring in.
As long as there these badly priced books listed there will be someone undercutting and then regretting it.

In an ideal world there would be a little flashing sign showing when a heavy book is being listed saying ' if you sell this book it will cost you £5 to post it, do you really want to sell it for £1? :rotfl: but that's not going to happen is it!