Frustration at Getting Books Sold in the U.K.

Today a potential buyer of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera sent me a message asking why the book has been priced so high on Amazon.co.uk.  Until recently, it was priced somewhere in the range of £26 or  £30 and above; one or two sellers had it listed at more than £1,000.  In the U.S., the retail price is $24.95, which translates to roughly £15.50.

I replied, telling him that I am just as frustrated as he and other potential buyers in the U.K. may be at the high price of the book there.  The problem is, all I can do is make the book available and set the list price, which I did; I believe I set it at £16.95.  As of now, Amazon.co.uk is not selling the book on its own; evidently the print-on-demand mechanism is not yet sufficiently geared up to have the book printed and available for sale there.  I have an agreement with the printer, Lightning Source, to make the book available in the U.K., but it seems to take much longer for the book to become officially available through Amazon itself over there than here in the U.S., where it has been available for some time.

The book was available at Amazon.co.uk through some third-party sellers, as I noted, but they are able to choose their own prices, which they did, none of which was the actual list price.

What's worse is that now, no sellers are listing the book for sale on Amazon.co.uk, so Amazon is listing the book as "unavailable."

I tried to sign up as a third-party seller on Amazon.co.uk, but have so far been unable to do so; I got part of the way through the process of listing the books for sale on the site, but then I got an error message, with no good information on how to proceed.

So, for now, here is all I can say to buyers in the U.K. or elsewhere who want to buy the book from Amazon.co.uk.  First, the book is now in stock and available through www.camerabooks.com, an excellent small business in the U.S. that sells photography books online.  They do an excellent job with international orders, so you can order from them at the list price of $24.95 plus shipping.

As another alternative, I have listed a couple of my own copies of the book (brand new from the printer) at Amazon.com in the U.S., where I am able to sell items with no problem.  My seller name there is alexstrawhite, and I am selling the books for $24.95 plus shipping.  Of course, the cost and time to get to the buyer will be greater than if the books were being sold from the UK, but at least the price is the list price.  Also, I am a fast shipper; I will ship the books out via First Class Mail International the next business day after an order comes in.

So, although I expect Amazon.co.uk to start having the book available for direct sale before too long, in the meantime, there are at least two other ways for anyone who wants the book to order one at the normal list price.