<story><title>Amazon has a book piracy problem</title><url>https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1545477267932864512</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>diamondap</author><text>Amazon kind of gave up on discovery, at least for books, when they realized they could make more money running ads. I sell books on Amazon. Years ago, their book pages had two carousels of &amp;quot;similar titles&amp;quot; on each book detail page. Similar titles were selected by some pretty helpful algorithms based on what purchasers of the current title had also purchased, as well as some other secret sauce.&lt;p&gt;At the time, ads weren&amp;#x27;t very prominent, and they were profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, I made money.&lt;p&gt;Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a sale or not.&lt;p&gt;To some extent, they&amp;#x27;ve given up on matching customers to the best or most suitable products. Why should they work that hard if ads are more profitable?&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, &amp;quot;Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to stay in business?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;She said, &amp;quot;We vet every product on our shelves. We know who makes it and where, whether it&amp;#x27;s legit, and whether it contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find that info on Amazon.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The reporter didn&amp;#x27;t seem too impressed at the time, but the Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon&amp;#x27;s merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat.</text></item><item><author>elcapitan</author><text>With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the right titles, to enter them 1:1 into Amazon search to get to the books. Context based discovery has become next to impossible (which I used it before a lot for). Something must have changed in their indexing algorithm a while ago. Also many results are flooded with garbage, like some ridiculous &amp;quot;notebooks&amp;quot; with similar titles to the searched book or product name.</text></item><item><author>codeslave13</author><text>Amazon has a piracy&amp;#x2F;counterfeit problem. And has for a very long time. I have basically stopped buying there as much as possible.
 My current trend is to use them as a search engine then got to the companies site. At this point you might as well shop alibaba as thats where half the crap is from anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iends</author><text>Amazon used to have a great recommendation page that had a tab for new releases and coming soon. This was incredible for book discovery and they got so much money from me with these pages.&lt;p&gt;Amazon is currently recommending me shower heads and bathroom hardware from when I remodeled a month ago because I bought that stuff then. Pointless.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon has a book piracy problem</title><url>https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1545477267932864512</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>diamondap</author><text>Amazon kind of gave up on discovery, at least for books, when they realized they could make more money running ads. I sell books on Amazon. Years ago, their book pages had two carousels of &amp;quot;similar titles&amp;quot; on each book detail page. Similar titles were selected by some pretty helpful algorithms based on what purchasers of the current title had also purchased, as well as some other secret sauce.&lt;p&gt;At the time, ads weren&amp;#x27;t very prominent, and they were profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, I made money.&lt;p&gt;Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a sale or not.&lt;p&gt;To some extent, they&amp;#x27;ve given up on matching customers to the best or most suitable products. Why should they work that hard if ads are more profitable?&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, &amp;quot;Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to stay in business?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;She said, &amp;quot;We vet every product on our shelves. We know who makes it and where, whether it&amp;#x27;s legit, and whether it contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find that info on Amazon.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The reporter didn&amp;#x27;t seem too impressed at the time, but the Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon&amp;#x27;s merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat.</text></item><item><author>elcapitan</author><text>With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the right titles, to enter them 1:1 into Amazon search to get to the books. Context based discovery has become next to impossible (which I used it before a lot for). Something must have changed in their indexing algorithm a while ago. Also many results are flooded with garbage, like some ridiculous &amp;quot;notebooks&amp;quot; with similar titles to the searched book or product name.</text></item><item><author>codeslave13</author><text>Amazon has a piracy&amp;#x2F;counterfeit problem. And has for a very long time. I have basically stopped buying there as much as possible.
 My current trend is to use them as a search engine then got to the companies site. At this point you might as well shop alibaba as thats where half the crap is from anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nerdponx</author><text>This is somewhat of an aside about Target, but I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that their inventory has moved significantly upmarket in the last 10 years or so. Their long-term strategy appears to be distinguishing themselves from the &amp;quot;bottom-of-the-barrel low-cost stuff&amp;quot; market and settling in a &amp;quot;low-cost but still decent stuff&amp;quot; niche.</text></comment>