Book sellers and the new low inventory fees
I take issue with the new low inventory fees. The new placement fees are bad enough, but low inventory fees are going to kill my business. I sell used books mostly, and I am a small seller, so I usually only have one of each title, and different conditions if I do happen to have two of the same book. Amazon, are you really going to push away us used book sellers by charging us low inventory fees? How am I supposed to continue using FBA? Amazon started out as a website to buy books, and the irony of this is not lost on me.
Book sellers and the new low inventory fees
I take issue with the new low inventory fees. The new placement fees are bad enough, but low inventory fees are going to kill my business. I sell used books mostly, and I am a small seller, so I usually only have one of each title, and different conditions if I do happen to have two of the same book. Amazon, are you really going to push away us used book sellers by charging us low inventory fees? How am I supposed to continue using FBA? Amazon started out as a website to buy books, and the irony of this is not lost on me.
12 replies
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
My understanding (which is based on vague and mostly unhelpful replies from mods) is that we won't be affected; since we have only one item, there is no sales history until it sales, so no chance of "low inventory" based on sales. Then since it is sold out, no more sales for which the fee could get charged.
This could change if you ship multiple copies of a title to FBA.
There could be other issues, as well; since the mods have not been very forthcoming about answering any specific questions. But I think we'll be okay.
Now just have to figure out if the placement fees are going to make FBA non-viable for booksellers.
Dominic_Amazon
Hi @Seller_3r9vulxAYZaFO,
Dominic from Amazon here, happy to help. @Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw is correct the low inventory fee is based on historical sales information.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
Dominic
Seller_JKIXE95CHdjVT
I am really confused by Amazon's logic.
They give us a sell through metric which, the more we abide by, the more storage space we can get. Thus, we want to have a quick turnaround for our product to increase the sell through ratio.
So now we sell our items fairly quickly. We list new items daily, so some of these listings have a 4 day supply history because Amazon just received them 4 days ago. So those are going to be subject to almost $1 fee per item also?
Why does Amazon want to fee me more because I have been cooperative in increasing my sell through ratio?
Because the 3p FBA sellers that Amazon has been catering to are just trash in Amazon's eyes. So we will be treated as such, with little regard and a very incomplete explanation.
Seller_dkvNFPkFjSVLg
Why in the world would you use FBA for items like this? You have been losing money for years if you do! Media, with the exception of new releases on Black Friday has nearly zero benefit of FBA over MF.
We have run numerous tests with the same title FBA v MF and it made ZERO difference. We now sell all 16K+ titles via MF.
The fees for FBA selling media have not made sense for years. If you have built a used book business selling FBA, you have long past the date of it being the best way to minimize fees.
We have another business that is almost 100% FBA and it is really the only model that works for those products.
You really need to understand the dynamics of the business to make the best decision for each product type.
