Do you think that the largest file sharing service (S3) and the largest public cloud computing infrastructure (EC2) in the world just operate for free? Digital delivery fees help pay for the millions in hardware, software, infrastructure and maintenance costs for these services, which Kindle uses extensively.
Amazon's "delivery fee" is 15 cents/megabyte. By comparison, AT&T's most expensive pay-as-you-go data plan is $15 for 250MB, or 6 c/MB, less than half the price. Their cheapest plan is 1 cent/MB.
Amazon is known for having very reasonable data storage/transfer fees in their other services, so it's very clear to me that they're just taking a huge margin here.
It's also worth noting that his book is large compared to your average novel. He clocks in around 17.6 megabytes, whereas even a giant novel like Game Of Thrones is only 3.3 megabytes. Hunger Games is a paltry 0.5 megabytes.
Then be very careful you never accidentally do that when on international roaming (which 3G Kindles do have). You could easily end up being charged $250. And no, that is not an exaggeration (there have been much worse cases).
Amazon also has a pretty good track record at lowering costs when their costs go down (at least when looking at AWS), so it wouldn't surprise me to see the delivery fees dropping over time as they negotiate better deals with AT&T or if they start working directly with other mobile operators in other countries.
Exactly. They are trying to run a for-profit business. The T&C for data charges is clearly laid out in a simple table I found within 30 seconds of Googling. I'm not sure where the expectation of charity comes from that they shouldn't be making a profit, you don't have to use Amazon or Kindle if you don't want to. Do you think the new Macbook Pro costs Apple $2200 to make?
So... are we morally barred from complaining, or is it merely to be considered gauche?
(This reminds me of the people whose entire conception of "Free Speech" is "I can say anything and if you criticize that's an infringement of my rights.")
If you are willing to pay, saying they are charging too much is just wishful thinking.
In a more competitive, transparent market, I would think others could exploit such dissatisfaction.
If I downloaded an 18MB email attachment over 3g on my phone, while in the US, it will cost me $315.
I think it is disingenuous to assume that $2.58 is some number pulled out of the air to rip the author off. The current meme right now is to assume all digital content delivery is essentially 'free', but this is untrue.
So Amazon is charging 237% of the ridiculous rate AT&T uses to try to force people to upgrade to a higher plan.
And that's despite the cost that most Kindle users (I'm guessing over 90%) get their books through their computer or WiFi, and don't accrue any cellular charges.
Plus... this is Amazon. I'm pretty sure that given the amount of data Kindles may use they would have been able to get a better deal out of AT&T than your average individual consumer.
And again, this is all on top of the 30% they take that should already cover all of this.
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...
I love my Kindle and I really like Amazon, but this is the first I've heard of the delivery charge part. Considering that it's around 25% of the price of the book... it really does seem like a rip off on their part.
Maybe it has something to do with the book it's self (i.e. they charge $0.07 per image), but do they mention how this is calculated anywhere?
If I sell an ebook for $2, they take $0.60 in general, and then they decide that it costs $0.80 to deliver... that means they're taking 70% of the cost of the book. So if I'm successful and have to pay taxes, I may be making like $0.12 per book.
I don't remember every seeing this cost mentioned before in the few articles I've seen about selling Kindle books. I'd love to know how it's calculated.