Fishpond sends me books, but can’t beat American prices
Remember how Australia’s attempt to compete with Amazon, Fishpond, cleverly convinced me to order my first books from them? The first book just arrived, in under a week, which is obviously not as fast as Amazon.de used to deliver to me in Germany, but I can accept that the distance across Australia to my isolated suburb on the west coast is a whole lot further than anywhere within Germany. So for speed, they get a check mark.
Packaging is fine too. They don’t use the heavy cardboard that Amazon.de sent me, but they do use nicely solid envelopes and, on top of that, my copy of What Was Lost was lovingly protected by a plastic bag (hmm … environment?). In any case, the book came to me unblemished, so I’m happy.
But since I placed the order I’ve been wondering about why, after all these years, there isn’t an Australian Amazon-equivalent that is actually doing well enough for everybody to know about it. I’m wondering if it’s just because books are so crazily expensive here in Australia. Here’s an experiment using the very book I’ve just bought:
- Australian online price at Fishpond is A$22.77, discounted from A$24.99. Using today’s exchange rates, that’s a cost of just over US$21.00. This time, shipping was free.
- on Amazon.com in the US, the same book retails for US$11.20 (discounted from US$14.00); a little under half the price of the same book in Australia. On top of that, I’d have to pay shipping to Australia of US$9.98, but I get a discount of $0.56 because I’m making a pre-order - making a grand total of US$20.62. If I buy more books or participate in other Amazon deals, my shipping costs would be reduced.
But even with the full shipping price and the uneconomical method of buying just one book … it’s still cheaper to order this (British) book from Amazon in the US than from “Australia’s biggest online bookstore”. This time I’ve used Fishpond’s enticing first-sale discount to come out on top, but in the future, I’d be financially better off ordering my books all the way from the US. Something’s really wrong there.
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Comments
Guera, thanks for the tip, they sound interesting - will definitely check them out.
Glad you like the new site - it’s still needs a fair bit of work to look anywhere near as good as yours =) - and I’ve been loving all your new photos recently. Keep them up!
[...] popular exports as our own. And it looks like I’ve done the same again with my discussions of Fishpond, the online bookstore down [...]
Hi Amanda
You should check out http://www.bookdepository.co.uk - a British online book seller with free worldwide delivery. I haven’t used them myself (only cause I don¡t get things posted to Mexico) but have heard good things about them. Might be worth a look. I think I’ll be using them a lot when we’re back in Perth.
Also, the new wordpress site looks great. I can highly recommend wordpress and having your own domain - you’ve got so much more freedom to get everything looking the way you want.