Amazon has been handling Borders’ online operation for five years, but now Borders wants out.
Will Borders launch its own third-party bookselling site? Let’s hope so.
In my humble opinion, one of the reasons Amazon has made things so unfavorable to its Marketplace sellers in the past few months is it has no real competition for online used book sales. Amazon has a virtual monopoly, and in that unhealthy atmosphere, it has the freedom to squeeze its third-party sellers.
However, we should all remember that things change fast on the Internet.
My thinking is, Amazon has forgotten that its two main sources of profits are:
1. Book sales
2. Pro-Merchant sellers
Right now, it seems bookselling and Marketplace (the only things it’s gotten right yet) are Amazon’s last priority. Amazon should be trying to enhance what works, rather than kill the goose that laid its golden egg.
Anyway, here’s to competition!
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3 Comments
I would love to see Amazon get a little competition. Half is nearly non-existent. So a major launch to challenge to these “tired, comfortable” sellers would be a welcome challenge. Borders has name recognition too, so it should be a pretty quick start-up if they decide to go that way. I’d sign up.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Judging from B&N; attempt at 3P marketplace, which can only be described as uninspired, bookstores have a great capacity to botch things up.
Other interesting point is that just as big customers like ToysRUs and Borders are bailing out what is essentially FBA, Amazon is pushing it on 3P sellers. I guess warehouse space just became a little more available
Hmmm, we use to do Barnes and Nobles through ABE and it was the first program we decided to bail out from… it took too long to process orders with the required pdf packing list, and the Customer Inquiries were many times more (and inappropriate) than other sites. If Borders doesn’t do it better than that, it will fail, I would expect. Oh, and the bite out of the profit margin by B&N; was larger than any of the others too.