Hacker News Reader

Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon can advertise for free though on their own platform, unlike other publishers. Since Amazon is basically the only place anyone buys books anymore, that's huge.

Barnes & Noble just closed here. There's no dedicated book store within 50 miles of me now. I suspect many who don't live in major cities are in a similar situation and probably have been for some time now.

View on HN

Is it really free for them if such displaces promotions by others?

It's not free, but it's much cheaper than the cost a normal publisher would spend to get the same exposure.

How is it cheaper? If Amazon has to decide to promote item A instead of the next Kindle reader or some other product, there’s certainly an opportunity cost. To blanketly state it absolutely costs less is too naive and merely an assumption.

How? If a publisher was ready to pay X amount of dollars to gain that level of exposure on amazon.com, and Amazon chose to forfeit that revenue, the “cost” to them was exactly X dollars.

Since Amazon is basically the only place anyone buys books anymore, that's huge.

I don't know where you get that incorrect notion from: https://whyy.org/articles/independent-bookstores-are-coming-...

Is that relevant by volume? You can often make money as a small player even when there is a monopoly player in your space. You just can’t make money as another large player.

Which is the point here: we’re talking about what other large, conglomerate players, who own both publishing houses and bookstore chains, could do. But there aren’t any.

I have not bought a book from Amazon in years... I go elsewhere for books nowadays. I'm one data point, but I have a close friend who works for an online book marketplace and they're doing extremely well.

May I ask which marketplace do you buy your books from?

Alibris

Such closures have also been happening in many major U.S. cities for over a decade. And while I've yet to see any numbers, it looks like over 3/4 of used bookstores have folded based on where I live. Very sad development.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com