Book Depository ceasing ebook sales!!!

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

At the risk of my head being piled up beneath a truckload of calumny ..... is this the first time Amazon have simply bought out a competitor and blatently asset-stripped it like this ?

With a main difference to the "normal" practice - that of not selling off a part of the operation, but just shutting it down to reduce competition ?

Yep, that's what it looks like Carpetmojo doesn't it, asset stripping in the ebook arena.

Whilst it can be said that Book Dep didn't have a large ebook section (yet) that was probably due to a number of factors, which must include that for some time period prior to Amazon's take over the management must have been waiting and watching and not creating business opportunities.

Amazon leave me cold ..... they don't have a dedicated Aus site - instead Australians are expected to buy their Amazon products in USD unaware of the exchange rate that will be used because the amount is advertised, calculated and paid for in USD on the screen and at some later time that is invisible to the consumer the amount is converted by an undisplayed exchange rate into Aus $.

It is the Aus $ rate that then shows on your credit card bill.

As a business practice that sucks.

And of course with that kind of sales ethos they don't get my custom.

[charlesatan]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

At the risk of my head being piled up beneath a truckload of calumny ..... is this the first time Amazon have simply bought out a competitor and blatently asset-stripped it like this ?

With a main difference to the "normal" practice - that of not selling off a part of the operation, but just shutting it down to reduce competition ?

To be fair, it hasn't be asset-stripped. It's just that one feature of Book Depository has been removed (selling of eBooks).

Amazon hasn't really been in the business of buying competition only to shut it down. It usually is its own competition, such as owning ABE Books. Or owning companies you normally wouldn't associate with Amazon per se, such as IMDB.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by andreabc

I was never able to purchase any ebooks from them (I always got the "Not available for you" message, so I'm wondering which countries they officially covered besides the UK... does anyone know?

Same here. I did have about three ebooks bought from them, but that was before all UK-based shops stopped selling ebooks to international customers. I guess they kept some of the English-language international market but cut off non-English-speaking Europe?

Anyway, I wasn't able to buy ebooks from them since the same time Waterstones, WHSmiths et al sent out notices that they won't be able to serve international customers any longer.

[ElyseDraper]

CommonReader:

I feared that this would happen when I heard that they were purchased by Amazon. Amazon has just successfully destroyed one of the last competitive retailers for English language ebooks for those who are living on the Continent. Kobo is the last one that remains and they do not offer many of the books that are available at Amazon.
I suppose I should go and start to look for some good pirate sites now?

I may be repeating another post ... but I wonder, have you heard of Smashwords.com? It's not pirated; it's a site for independent publications. With that being said, you won't find mainstream (big 6) releases there ... but you will find some gems in the rough.

[Valkrider]

I live in Spain and last bought several books from them in January this year, this was well after Waterstones declined to sell me anything which happened early 2011 IIRC. The books I wanted weren't available at Smashwords and BD was the only place that I could find them that was willing to sell to me here. I expect Amazon shut them down because they sold ePub and that doesn't fit with Amazon's corporate model.

[carpetmojo]

The epub bit is extremely interesting - if not worrying ?

To a degree at least.

[BearMountainBooks]

I"m guessing that it has to do with Amazon not wanting to compete with itself by selling ebooks on that venture when they sell the Kindle-ized version into a whole bunch of other countries. Of course this doesn't do ePub readers any favors and THAT is a shame. I hope Amazon readers eventually support ePUB.

Authors are going to have to start selling ePUB from their websites to help that audience. Otherwise it's really hard to figure out the venues that work.