Amazon to close Book Depository online shop(theguardian.com) |
Amazon to close Book Depository online shop(theguardian.com) |
I'm really pissed off. I live in Europe outside EU and this is the most convenient way to get books in English. Often a translated book does not exist here at all, so Book Depository was a blessing in these situations.
Seems like nothing is sacred to the corporate quarterly reports. If a corporation made a little less profit this year compared to the last one (did not have losses!), it apparently justifies shutting down an online book store that ships a ton of titles at reasonable prices with free shipping to 160 countries in the world!
I had to think on this portion of your comment for a moment. It's obvious in hindsight but the first time I've ever heard it phrased in this way.
That strange site helped me get tons of books for college.
wordery.com (based in the UK) also gives free worldwide delivery.
I had no idea this was coming. I didn't know they were owned by Amazon. This is terrible and it just goes to show that we can't have nice things.
I had been ordering books from there since 2015 :(
> I feel like there are no words for how much this sucks for me personally. It seems to me that if you are in most countries outside the US/EU, potentially excluding strong US/EU-adjacent economies such as Canada, UK, and Switzerland (Switzerland technically not being a part of the European Union), books in english can be hard to find for some people. Book Depository had what I consider to be decent prices with free international shipping to most of the world. Sure, I have to wait around a month and sometimes they have to reship because it got damaged, possibly in transport, but if I would like to have a book at that very moment I can use Library Genesis. Books ordered from Book Depository make up a large part of my personal library, with a few exceptions course.
I tried buying some really obscure books on Amazon - and the interface is pure garbage. When I looked for random items, those often looked like cheap knock-offs?
Generally once per year I try to look at various "best books of 2022" lists [did hacker news have one?] and then try to get the obscure books. Often it feels easier (but not cheaper) to get them through those third party sellers than search on Amazon that offers 10 options of used books, semi-used books, PDFs - I genuinely dont know how to exclude the things that I dont want.
This reminds me how EBAY tried to enter the Polish market and their launch was so damn bad and the website so damn poor, that after 2 years they licked their wounds and simply exited the market.
I wish more people know Allegro, which has its own share of problems, but is so much better (I think most problems came when venture capital came, bought it and now tries to squeeze money out of it).
In Poland you buy something on Allegro and usually in 1-2 days you get it to a parcel locker machine. Which is like a machine that stores the packages for you in a safe way. I never understood why those dont exist in USA. As I understand the delivery drivers throw the packages on your garden, where they can be stolen, damaged by rain or so on.
I think Germany also has parcel lockers + the concept was introduced to UK due to all the Polish diaspora ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parcel_locker ), but when it comes to number of machines per capita Poland probably wins.
By the way, Parcel lockers do exist in the US (at least for Amazon package deliveries) https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=.... The US also has Post Office (PO) boxes that you can rent for a nominal fee a month (these are basically lockers for all types of mail including parcels).
The market here is really ripe for a big seller as if I buy the typical "I'll just buy it from Amazon" products locally they are very overpriced - I joke that it feels like the distributor in Germany (or whatever other European hub it comes from) adds 30%, then the person who brings it here adds another 30%, and then the person who sells it here adds another 30%. For example last week I bought some insect screens from Amazon DE, they were 3 for €16. If I buy locally the cheapest price is 1 for €20.
Amazon DE ships here, but they have a €10 shipping fee so I save up until I have many items in the cart, and then it still takes a week to arrive. AliExpress is a good option now they've started charging VAT (no customs to deal with) but it takes 1 to 2 months for items to arrive from China.
They do exist, and have existed since at least 2010, when I first used one.
There are many thousands of them in cities big and small. Many are run by Amazon, but not all.
I can think of six locations within a few blocks of my home.
PS: Print tech books are dead in the US anyway. They're out of date before they're ever edited, never mind hitting paper.
* Alibris (aggregator like AbeBooks)
* Better World Books (B Corp)
* ThriftBooks
* Bookshop.org (benefits local bookstores)
You can also connect directly to nearby independent booksellers on https://www.indiebound.org/
AbeBooks had told bookshops in countries including Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Russia that it would no longer support them from 30 November, citing migration to a new payment service provider as the reason for the withdrawal. The move prompted almost 600 booksellers in 27 countries to pull more than 3.5m titles from Abebooks’ site, putting them on “vacation” as they cited the motto of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, “Amor librorum nos unit” (love of books unites us).
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/08/amazon-abebook...
Book Depsitory is based in the UK. I have inadvertently ordered from them, to the Netherlands, as they had a “Bookdepository NL” store, which made it seem like they are an EU entity.
However, when the book arrived, I was hit by unexpected customs charges that were half the price of the book. Looking at recent reviews, there was a surge of these complaints from all customers in the Netherlands [1]
Perhaps the timing on these customs surges are accidental, of course. But I can’t imagine that Brexit helped with their EU sales.
[1] https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1638824647390003206
However, if even 1% or 0.1% of orders gets incorrectly taxed that could lead to negative reviews and put people off.
So it’s the customs handling fee being added that’s contributed to the price increase. Seems like the Netherlands started to enforce it for even small value orders from the UK.
As a customer this sucks. The website was a much better experience than amazon, and the free shipping everywhere was nice.
Shame, it really sucks, never should have allowed Amazon to buy them.
I’ve never once had this experience and I’ve ordered at least 100 books from the book depository, for delivery to the Middle East.
Too bad that I have a pre-order for a June release with them.
1. It was a good place to buy English books in non-English speaking countries.
2. The shipping was free (Actually, folded into the price of the book and location dependent)
3. Delivery could take anywhere between a few weeks to months.
I'm wondering if it would be viable to offer an alternative service out of India and I'm willing to try out an experiment: Post the title of a book you would have bought via Book Depository and I'll try to send it out to you for free. Just let me know when the book arrives and in what condition so as to gauge how reliable the postal network is. I don't have a budget in mind but I'd like to ship at least 5 books to different geographies.
Buy it. Invest nothing major into it. Wait for the economy to take a downturn and shut it down because it isn't profitable.
They will send a confirmation email. After you click the link to confirm, it says "We will provide your information to you as soon as we can. Usually, this should take no more than a month."
EDIT: you can export your book database as CSV (shelves, ratings, reviews, etc) here https://www.goodreads.com/review/import (there's a link towards the top to export...disregard that the URL says "import".
Is that delay strictly a "cooling off" sort of tactic?
edit: typo
(Well, technically Amazon.de has free deliveries too – you just need to buy order at least 99€ worth of them at once)
Or more prosaic "feature": ban the book in your region.
Ebooks used to be in the general VAT category of 24% but I think they've fixed that now.
I think it's run out of Charlotte.
Book Depository is $NZ 21.19 total. Including shipping a NZ Tax (GST). Discounted from $24.77
Amazon is $26.27 for the book, $24 for shipping, $7.50 for tax and $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Total is $NZ 59.27 or almost 3x what Book Depository wanted.
Wow, are you forced to have that if you make that purchase? That's a huge percentage to charge to cover someone's exchange rate risk over that timespan with those currencies. Someone's making out like an absolute bandit there.
Had to order it from a local retailer instead since it releases in June, where it cost me 16.10€ with shipping.
This all happens at the expense of couriers (who are more expensive) and 'regular' post (who is run by the state and sadly was quite unreliable. In fact it was so unreliable, that they bought a private company just to handle the packages. The bought company called POCZTEX is now very reliable, but 'regular' post used to send mail lost a ton of market share).
I wonder if Amazon copied the idea from Allegro, or possibly German post, or perhaps Korea (who also has them I think?).
Now Poland is a place of an interesting battle, where Inpost parcel lockers have most of the market share and locations, but multiple other service providers (Polish post, Allegro, Amazon, Aliexpress) try to build their own networks. There are of course also multiple courier companies. Normal post office is becoming more and more unprofitable - despite good locations. They deal with the low margin letters. The parcel market has much better margins (even despite being cutthroat).
Sending a parcel is similar: you can prepare a shipping label at home and print it out. When you arrive at a locker, you just scan label's barcode, a door opens, and you pop your parcel in there. Or you can prepare the label at the parcel machine, it will print out a sticker for your parcel. Stick it on, scan the code, door opens, put your parcel there.
A standard parcel locker looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/X5Gj4JQ.jpg
Different size doors are for small / medium / large parcels. Center section has touchscreen, payment card reader, barcode scanner and a printer for shipping labels and receipts.
Such parcel lockers have been around for approximately 15 years, but usage exploded somewhat later.
<drops into depression>
The USPS parcel lockers were around long before the internet. Back then when you had a package, the postman would stick a sticky note to your door to let you know to go pick it up.
Today, the USPS will email you a list of all the mail and packages with photos you are getting that day.
It doesn't notify you upon delivery, unless the sender requests it. But once you have the package ID number (which comes with the email), you can put it into any number of free or paid apps that will alert you immediately upon delivery.
A standard parcel locker looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/X5Gj4J
The one you show looks like a bog-standard parcel locker operated by any of dozens of delivery companies, office buildings, apartment buildings and retail stores around the country for years and years.
Nothing special. Here's the USPS version, which has been around since 2011: https://gopost.usps.com/media/images/gp/USPS-gopost-unit.png
They put a key in your personal mailbox that corresponds to a specific locker. You use the key to open the locker. You cannot remove the key once it’s used to open the locker. I’ve personally used these arrangements since the 1990s.
Overall the US seems to be incredibly open to monopsonies, monopolies, and oligopolies, and very hostile to any restraint on such things. Though, the merest hint of success from a non-US entity seems to invoke bipartisan terror and pleadings for sanctions and new regulations. Funny that.
