UKH

I was looking at a couple of books on amazon and I wanted to purchase them, they are listed at one penny with a couple of quid delivery.

old books to be honest but im trying to figure out the catch, why would a company send out books for a penny, at 2 pound and a few pence they cant be making anything of the postage.

is there something im missing here. 

No catch  necessarily, they pass on books which they've got cheap,  making a small margin on the postage/package costs.

They dispatch quickly, get good reviews, pushing them up the SEO and satisfaction rankings, whilst boosting turnover for the business ( which I appreciate is different to profit).

Have got a few decent books this way.

In reply to Ade in Sheffield:

thanks, looks like im getting a bit of a bargain for once then.

Possibly the actual postage cost is less than they charge you so make a bit on that?

At the opposite end of the spectrum why are some books listed for £100's of pounds when you can buy them elsewhere for normal prices?

For example, there's a copy of the Valais Alps East guidebook on Amazon at the moment for £395 whereas I bought a copy off ebay last year for £10.

Probably, if it arrives as described, at the price quoted,

what do you have to lose ?

ps. Whats the definition of a Yorkshireman?

Swings and roundabouts- pick your ride carefully.

Spare a thought for the poor blighters working there socks off getting your package to you. Amazon dont allow their staff to sit down even when its quiet and have to work excessive hours.  Modern day slavery some would call it................

Yes, good point. My oldest brother has stopped using them because of that.

Thanks. Actually found the news paper report in my van earlier today while tidying up so just thought I would throw that into the mix. 

It's a result of the software they use. A lot of the marketplace companies use software to adjust prices based on rareity. This results in them going to 1p or up to thousands. They turnover thousands of books and make a good product on a few.

Most of my reference books for gardening and woodwork come from Amazon for less than 50p.

It's £2.80 postage. It's 30p for a jiffy bag and £1.58 for a large letter up to 500g. So they make about a £1 a book. If they've got physical premises, they won't make the same per hour with normal second chance bookshop turnover.

Mmm yes but the books that the OP wants to buy are supplied by non-Amazon suppliers usually small book shops trying to supplement their 'real world' income. 

Amazon rank books in order by price without p&p, rather than including p&p.  

Therefore selling at 1p and making 50p on the p&p gets them higher up the list, and so more likely to be bought,  than selling at 51p and breaking even on p&p .

You could use the library. 

Actually not so:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1408803585/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr...

Except there might not be one in the area any more, and even if there is there's a good chance they won't have many books anyway:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/23/25-million-books-missing-from...

I think they do this when it's not in stock, so the listing doesnt have to be taken down. This is common on eBay stores.

It's possibly money laundering: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/02/money-laundering-via-author-impersonati...

'puters and book pricing algorithms innit,

have a listen to ...   BBC Podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05w5d72

$23.7 Million  'The Making of a Fly' seems a tad over priced (see http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358)

even one of Dan Baileys books is listed at £8900+ quid on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00G0A4VY0/ref=tmm_other_meta_bin...

A lot of the 1p books are on Amazon Marketplace, ie independent sellers.

its an issue I guess however cant fault their service,

last thing I bought was a pair of Salomon cross trainers for my grandson, I ordered them of "Trekkit". six weeks and countless e mails later I still had not got them, they couldn't tell me where they were and refunded my money.

I ordered the same pair from Amazon cheaper and they arrived two days later.

Often it's due to vendors using pricing algorithms and not putting proper limits on....  It can also work the other way and drive price down stupidly (although they tend to notice that quicker!)