There is a whole industry emerging of agencies that exclusively help third parties sell on Amazon. Navigating their reporting and metrics as well as winning the buy box and ad spend is easier if you are a former employee who has contacts inside.

Michael:

No, not Latin America. Try Huntsville, Alabama right here in the good old USA.

I was a bit surprised at the manager's refusal to negotiate, especially considering the number of books I was offering to buy and the fact that I've been in their store [buying] at least once a week for the past month. I figure the manager was under strict orders from his bosses to reject such inquiries out of hand. I suppose the thinking at B&N headquarters is that they do not want to encourage their routine customers to start demanding discounts as word of mouth would surely spread and it would be no time until all their customers were demanding a similar discount. The thing I wonder is: How many of your "good" customers walk in your store offering to buy ten books [simultaneously] in a single combined purchase? I've sent an email copy of my OP to Amazon.com customer service along with a request that we negotiate a deal. It will be interesting to see how Amazon responds.

All these comments have prompted me to do a bit of research on Barnes & Noble. It turns out that Barnes & Noble is apparently being pressured by an activist investor hedge fund to sell the company and take it private.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...elf/507766001/

Buying B&N shares might be a shrewd speculative investment ... Jeff Bezos might be thinking about acquiring Barnes & Noble in the same way he decided to acquire Whole Foods. Those 600+ brick and mortar book stores might be good "mini distribution" warehouses where customers could pick up their online orders at their leisure rather than paying FedEx/UPS to deliver small packages to individual households.

amazon would really kill them if you could buy it online and it'd get instantly sent to an electronic device you could read from.

Grunching but this is Best In Show so far:

This is the correct answer though:

What people don't realize is that in a couple of years Amazon will overtake Facebook and catch up to Google, as far as being an advertising platform. Data is king, and Amazon has the best data.

Amazon's effective tax rate is actually over 90% somehow:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...es-than-amazon

I think they are referencing Amazon's failure to pay state sales tax, which is a problem that was solved like a decade ago.

Here's a hoot ... I received a Barnes & Noble email with the following subject line earlier this morning:

Your Extra 30% Off Coupon is Here - Holiday Savings in Stores and on BN.com

Maybe that store manager took a look at my purchasing record after I left Saturday night. Who knows?

No he definitely did not.

Maybe try going to a small indie bookstore if you want to develop a reputation as a valued regular customer?

Response From Amazon.com

<begin>

Hello,

This is <name deleted> with Amazon.

I am following up on your recent email regarding a discount on books. While I do think it is a great idea, we are not running a promotion like that at this time.

I want you to know we appreciate you as a customer. With this in mind, I've issued a $25.00 promotional certificate to your Amazon.com account, which will automatically apply the next time you order an eligible item sold and shipped by Amazon.com. The promotional certificate doesn't apply to items offered by other sellers on the Amazon.com website and won't cover the purchase of gift cards, sales tax, gift wrap, or additional shipping costs. Your promotional balance doesn't appear in Your Account, but will always display at checkout when you place an order through the Shopping Cart for an eligible item shipped and sold by Amazon.

<end>

So, while it's not the 25 percent discount I was hoping for, it's definitely better than what B&N was willing to offer - which was nothing. Since this "promotional certificate" will only amount to a 12.5 percent discount - on a $200.00 purchase - I may limit my order to five of the ten books I'm currently interested in buying. Also, when I'm browsing Amazon's web site, they prominently note that "all orders over $25.00 receive free shipping" while this promotional certificate appears to indicate otherwise. (I wonder if they're planning to make up the $25.00 discount by attempting to sock me with an "additional shipping charge" and/or a tax levy?)

Amazon.com is very clever ... I've noticed that one of the items I recently queried, (i.e. a DVD compilation of a popular 1970's television show), is currently priced [online] at $99.96. The last time I queried this item, a few months ago, it was being offered at $38.83 and [now] it is suddenly up to a hundred bucks. Hmmm ...

Alan Discovers Algorithms

I gotta think this thread was brought to us by way of a Compuserve server

The best part of this is finding out that Alan thinks he's some big book market-mover, he thinks his $40 of revenue is enough for Diamond Elite status including free blowjob upgrade certificates.

I think the best part is that we spent the whole thread mocking him while he scored a $25 gift card from Amazon based solely on cluelessness and shoe leather.

Who's laughing now?

This just shows how and why amazon has put the likes of Bones and Nibble out of business.

Olds are amazing. Through sheer belligerence and cluelessness, a free $25!

You should see my mom in action. Misunderstand situation or how the modern world works...bit*h, gripe, and complain...get there.

Whenever she threatens to sue I remind her of the website for small claims court and/or tell her I'd need a $10,000 retainer to "look into the issue."

LOL...I get coupons like that every week from B&N, even though I haven't bought anything from them in close to a year.

I am ...

The funny thing about us clueless "olds" is that if we hadn't been fumbling around in the dark - laughing and giggling while trying to figure out how life works - most of you "youngs" wouldn't be here ...

I'm interpreting that as Alan accidentally knocked a chick up because they didn't do sex ed back in his day.

I'm a bookstore fan and don't mind paying a small premium. There's something special about wandering around and finding books you didn't even know you were interested in.

Probably a quarter of the books I bought in the last year I never would have knew about had I been searching on Amazon.