If I remember rightly, the end-of-the-day (can't remember if it's net or gross...) profit after all costs were deducted for a high-street Waterstone's was about 7-9% even when the books were supplied at 35-55% discount, and this was in the days before mass discounting to customers.
It gets more interesting at Amazon where they sell what a high street bookseller would call "bread and butter" titles at silly discounts purely to get people in - they then make theirt real money on all the stuff the high street can't stock which they sell at full price.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chiming
no subject
Date: April 15th, 2005 01:11 pm (UTC)From:It gets more interesting at Amazon where they sell what a high street bookseller would call "bread and butter" titles at silly discounts purely to get people in - they then make theirt real money on all the stuff the high street can't stock which they sell at full price.
(I really should write a book about this...)