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Here's why:
A couple of years ago I was selling Body Flight directly. This was very inconvenient because I was getting only one or two orders per month. I would have to make a special trip to town
to mail one copy. There was always the decision about how to mail it...normal, priority, registered, certified, or return receipt. Mailing one copy is expensive and the time it took was worth more than the profit.
When Amazon started selling obscure titles it was a blessing. They could worry about shipping and I could send several copies to them at a time. Then the problems started.
At first, they ordered several
copies at a time. Then they started ordering only one at a time. I would send them one copy and a few days later get another order for one copy. They would not allow orders to be combined and were very picky about
how the packages were labeled. Amazon gets a large portion of the money and so the price had to be much higher than when I sold directly. They sell it for $19.95, and give me 8.98 per tape. The tapes cost me about
$6 to produce, and $2 to mail. Now I was only making a couple of dollars per tape, and that was being absorbed by the mailing cost.
Then in 2004, they came up with a few new rules. For one, they will now only
send a check when they owe me $100. This means I would only get paid about once a year. And now, in addition to the percentage of sales they get, they want another $8 for each check they write to me. Add to this a
$29.95 annual membership fee and you can see why I feel like I am throwing away money when I send a tape to Amazon.
And they don't respond to inquiries very well. Their responses take a long time and don't answer
the right questions, as if a computer is responding. Big Business=Bad Business.
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