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New Amazon selling fees and features for media sellers

  • January 27, 2017
Reading time: 3 minutes

Amazon selling fees

 

 

 

Sellers of books, music, video items, DVDs and gaming consoles haven’t seen much change with their Amazon selling fees and options in years. But recent announcements will usher in a wave of developments they need to adjust to almost overnight. What are they and how will they affect you?

 

 

 

Our Amazon seller’s 2017 calendar is already brimming with deadlines and changes. Media merchants, in particular, will be affected this spring. Various new fees and features were announced in the tenth issue of our Digest. We’ll expand on 3 of these impending changes here for our readers. 

March 1, 2017 is the day that many sellers and their customers will experience a very different shopping experience on the Amazon.com Marketplace. Sellers of Media products or BMVD (books, music, video, DVDs and video consoles) will:

Compete for the Buy BoxThis refers to the situation where a sel... More with ‘New’ Books

‘Winning the BuyBox’ is Amazon lingo for being featured as the default buying option for an item, as seen below.

Amazon Buy Box example
Buy Box Winner

Merchants with new books to sell have never had access to the Buy Box before. But Amazon recently announced that they will be able to compete for it from March 2017 onwards. We don’t anticipate sales to rise sharply this year for third-party sellers, though. Amazon’s prices for many new books are simply too hard to match.

Yet, it’s not yet clear what effect making third-party booksellers eligible for the Buy Box will have on business in the long run. We’ve discussed aspects of Buy Box eligibility, Buy Box rotation and how prices affect your chances before. We expect these principles to apply to booksellers and new books as well.

 

Pay Higher Selling on Amazon Fees on BMVD

It used to be that Amazon would charge you $1.35 per BMVD item and another 15% of the price you sold it for. But this will all change in March. Selling on Amazon Fees for media items will rise:

 

The Fixed Closing Fee (CF) replacing the old $1.35/item Variable Closing Fee (VCF)  A per item fee that every Amazon ... More will now be $1.80/item.

The Referral Fee will be a percentage of total sales price (item price + shipping fee + gift wrap charges) at:

  • 15% of for BMVD excluding Video Game Consoles
  • 8% for Video Game Consoles.
New Amazon Selling Fees for BMVD
New BMVD Selling Fees

So, what does this mean for you? As the table opposite shows, you would earn less. For a book sold on Amazon after March 1, 2017, you’d earn between $0.45 and $1.05 less. For a book sold on Amazon after March 1, 2017, you’d earn $1.05 less. 

To put things into perspective, your earnings for a BMVD product sold on Amazon will look something like this from March 1:

Earnings
Earnings for $0.01, $10 and $30 books sold on Amazon before and after March 1, 2017

 

Offer Free Shipping and Personalize Shipping Prices

What does this mean in practice? Say you wanted to sell a book. You’d charge the buyer $3.99 to ship it, which sometimes wouldn’t cover your shipping cost. Starting March, you’ll be able to charge your buyers based on delivery address.
As for the buyers, they’ll see the standard shipping rate on the offers page, so they’ll make their price comparisons on the spot. Needless to say, offering free shipping would gain you some extra attention.

 

Elena Business Developer Specialist

 

Elena is part of the Business Development team at SellerEngine. She explores online expansion opportunities and goes by the saying
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”

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  • Posted in: Amazon, Amazon Announcements, Coaching, News and Updates

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3 Responses

  1. Caleb Roth says:
    January 27, 2017 at 8:11 pm

    Great post! However, double check your math on the penny books, as there will be an additional 60 cents charged for the referral fee moving forward. You factored that into the more expensive books, but not the penny books for some reason. Keep up the great work!

    Reply
  2. Melanie says:
    January 30, 2017 at 12:11 pm

    Hello,

    Thank you very much for your input.
    Our apologies for the mistake. We will correct the table and the chart over the next few minutes.
    Please continue to share your thoughts and opinions on our blog.

    Best regards,
    Melanie

    Reply
  3. jeff feezle says:
    May 4, 2017 at 8:46 pm

    I recently sold a $4.99 CD; Amazon charged me $4.06 in total fees, with $3.99 shipping. So my cost in shipping is $2.77. So the total commission rate of Amazon on a $5 item with $4 shipping is 67%. Outrageous!

    Reply

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