Hate the Game only $6.47 on Amazon

Hate the Game the Loss Leader

Amazon’s pricing algorithm can be baffling at times. A few months ago, I noticed they had marked down the price of my book, Hate the Game. At first,, I thought they were trying to clear out their warehouses because they had overstocked, but a few days ago, I noticed they had completely run out of stock. For a few days, the buy button went to a 3rd party seller, because Amazon ran out of stock. But now, Hate the Game, is back in stock, and back in Amazon’s warehouses, but they are selling it for even less, only $6.47.

I did some research, and according to various internet forums, Amazon often sells books at a loss, because books are a loss leader for Amazon. That means Amazon is willing to take a steep loss on my book (my guesstimate is ~50%, assuming Amazon’s cost is $13 per book) because it hopes buyers will sign up for Prime to get shipping, or put $50 worth of high-margin items in their cart, to compensate for the loss on the book.

Perhaps because my book is a nice graduation gift, Amazon is hoping family members of grads buy Hate the Game along with high-margin graduation gifts, like fancy pens in Amazon gift wrapping. If the price goes up after graduation season, that’s a strong indication Hate the Game is getting graduation gift treatment from Amazon’s system.

But this means you can game the system! If you buy my book on Amazon and don’t add anything else to your cart, you can make Amazon take a loss and support my book at the same time.

Now, Amazon’s loss leader pricing algorithm means that independent bookstores can’t compete with Amazon’s book prices. So if you really want to stick it to Amazon, you can buy Hate the Game at full price from bookshop.org. But no matter where you buy my book, you are supporting me, and I very much appreciate that!