At the time, ads weren't very prominent, and they were profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, I made money.
Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a sale or not.
To some extent, they've given up on matching customers to the best or most suitable products. Why should they work that hard if ads are more profitable?
They've also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, "Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to stay in business?"
She said, "We vet every product on our shelves. We know who makes it and where, whether it's legit, and whether it contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find that info on Amazon."
The reporter didn't seem too impressed at the time, but the Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon's merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice.
I'm not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat.
Amazon is currently recommending me shower heads and bathroom hardware from when I remodeled a month ago because I bought that stuff then. Pointless.
For now, you can look for books based on Wikipedia topic (I analyze them using NLP/ML to find connections), or via another favorite book or author. At the heart of everything is 5,000+ authors who recommend their favorite books around a topic, theme, or mood.
Sure, it's definitely possible for counterfeits to sneak into their supply chain, but that is only possible via employees or suppliers defrauding Walmart. Walmart also loses on this, so they are incentivised to audit and prevent this, since they actually hold and own the inventory. Whereas Amazon has zero incentive (or ability) to audit their supply chain, since the inventory they hold is actually owned by someone else. [aside-yes, I know that frito lay, nestle, etc actually own their inventory in Walmart and just merchandise the space]. Target definitely has moved upmarket, but even their low cost competitor has far tighter controls than Amazon.
I would even speculate that Walmart has less likelihood of counterfeits in the supply chain than target, having been tangentially involved with a vendor getting into each retailer. Walmart is incredibly mercenary with their suppliers, and due to their size they can get away with very onerous terms. I tend to dislike them for this, but I will admit I'm impressed with their supply chain management and they certainly don't leave opportunities for fraud available to their suppliers.
Id argue that the marketplace is still a strategic misstep, but I understand why they did it. Managers want to show they are keeping up with Amazon, and the only way to offer the selection they do is to allow 3rd party sellers.
However, for physical inventory in a Walmart, that is a different thing entirely. Plus, who shops at Walmart online? I have family who are enamored with their online ordering (physical store pickup) and they all have complained about the 3rd party sellers. To a person, they have all said 'if I want to have stuff shipped to me, why wouldn't I use Amazon?'
Amazon is currently banking on their generous return policy and favorable customer service. Most of what they sell is available on AliExpress, but good luck returning something ordered direct from Ali. I don't want to speculate on Amazon's downfall, since they have a dominant enough position to coast for decades, but it seems to me they are making fundamental business mistakes. Most of my peers treat them as a place to order cheap crap, I get the feeling that consumer sentiment is that stuff ordered fron Amazon is even lower quality than Walmart. But direct to door is convenient, and they have enough inertia to last a long time before failing.
You cannot get good independent advice from someone who wants to make money off you.
I also just found this except in the opposite direction. I wanted an ebook version of a paperback book. The publisher has paper and electronic versions of all of their books, but somehow clicking Kindle version of Book A is linked to a Kindle version of Book B... and apparently a Kindle version of Book A just isn't available on Amazon.
I ended up buying the ebook from the publisher's site directly, which came in mobi, epub, and pdf formats. I thought "oh, I'll just drop this into the Kindle app so my notes and highlights will sync across devices". I was shocked to discover that's not even really possible with a third party purchased ebook. Eventually I gave up on that and just used the PDF edition and made notes in highlights in Preview after the Kindle macOS app and Kindle iOS apps lost all of my notes and highlights trying to sync twice.
Having worked on it, I get that sizing packaging is a tremendously complex optimization problem that even other experienced programmers underestimate the complexity. The options for different package size grow factorially with different product selections, and it isn't possible to have every size box available in a packing station. However, it isn't an unsolvable problem to pack better. Optimizing split shipments to increase effeciency is tremendously complex, but calculating the box size needed for an order is actually pretty trivial (ignoring packing density, which is oddly often a reasonable assumption for shipping goods to the consumer). Amazon can certainly improve here, just by using routing packages to a packing station with a closer box size and having differing box sizes in each station.
I have always assumed that, given their scale, Amazon doesn't necessarily face the same price hit that a normal shopper faces when sending an oversize package. I have gotten multiple shipments from Amazon that were so oversize that, at my company's shipping pricing, would likely result in a net loss due to shipping cost. However, I suspect that Amazon has negotiated rates that insulate them from this, and the shipping companies take a loss on individual packages to gain the volume.
At some point its about the amount of damages and if they can make a statement. Things move slow so it could be coming...
No matter where you go and what you do, Amazon wins, lol.
There's https://www.indiebound.org/ at least, which lets you search the inventory of local bookstores.
I've also had good luck ordering used books from https://www.thriftbooks.com/ instead of Amazon.
I remember getting obviously burned DVDs run through terrible label makers back in the day. Now they're copying all the the art and packaging for box sets.
I'm both impressed at the work they put in, and also confused why they occasionally leave obvious errors like typos on the box after all that work.
Have I received items that were crap? Sure, because I chose to go with the noname item from the random seller for cost reasons. If it’s unusable I just return it.
That said, I don’t think I have even a 1% return rate. Buy items with a few reviews and read the top reviews instead of only trusting the star system and you’ll get exactly what you paid for 99% of the time (and will get your money back the remaining 1% of the time).