Why Amazon Does Not Care About Their Sellers

Updated
June 7, 2023

So if you're anybody watching this is new, that's, that's what it is. Amazon only cares about the customer, not the sellers.

What sort of KDP content do you do?

Are you doing more of like low content? This is just based on my, like reading, because I'm in some KDP groups. I just try to say I have a KDP account. Just, I think I have one book on there just from testing. Are you doing more like low content? Or are you doing some more of the higher content? Are you writing books yourself? Maybe you should just share some information on what kind of products I suppose you're selling there since it's a little broader than just, hey, t-shirts on Amazon.

I started out with tangent templates and they've got very basic templates. So graph paper and lines, but that quickly became saturated. And what was interesting was in December, 2018, I went to, it might have in January, 2019, actually. I went to the Merch UK conference, the first and only one because the next one got canceled.

Covid, yeah.

And I asked everybody there, there was about 60, 70 people there. And I kept saying to them, you're doing KDP as well? And they were like, no, not doing KDP. This is strange because I'm doing quite well on KDP. But people haven't got into it from the Merch side. So I was following more traditional people that had always done KDP had never done Merch.

Okay.

No returns for KDP?!

So I started out with a very basic stuff, but as the Merch people came in, that became just so saturated. And a lot of it was just absolute rubbish. And one thing Amazon is big about, and I'm big about too, is that you give the customer value. I don't want to buy something off Amazon and get it and think that's a load of rubbish I'll just send it back. And KDP are not taking our returns off at the moment like Merch. But I think they will at some point because I've never seen a return in my dashboard ever. And yet it must be sending them back.

Let's like, I would imagine like, I can imagine Amazon not accepting your return. Like that blows my mind if Amazon just accept a return on basically anything since they're so customer-centric. I mean, if anybody has been that's watching this, has been selling on Amazon, they know the customer is the only thing Amazon cares about. So the sellers, they don't at all. So if you're anybody watching this is new, that's, that's what it is. Amazon only cares about the customer, not the sellers. So that's really interesting.

As creators, we have to care about the customer as well. Because sooner or later Amazon will crack down on that rubbish. They're bound to, they're bound to start charging for every book you upload like Etsy do. Or they're, well, they're going to start reviewing accounts where they've got thousands of books. Well, they're going to start limiting us on how many books we can upload.

How to come up with content ideas

So I do more and do quite a variety of books, whatever kind of fires my interest that week. Okay. And I tend to do, I wouldn't say they're low content, but I don't write reams or reams because I don't get interested in that. I quite like the visual side of things. So I enjoy the covers the most, but I also do a lot of research into the keywords.

And I try to do things that are a bit different or first to market. So not necessarily research when Amazon itself and following the herd. For instance, I like watching my local news and I live in quite a low crime area. I live in the Southwest of England. It's quite beachy, it's quite low crime. So they have to fill the local news up with what people are doing.

And they, they sometimes have the most interesting things on there. And I think all those people could do with a little book to help them along. That's it. I mean, magnet fishing, for example, I haven't done it because I don't think there's that big of a demand.

But apparently people are going with magnets to fish in rivers and see what they can pull up. And of course, they're pulling up, you know, a little grenade that somebody's left there for 20 years and having to call the bomb squad out. And bring that for that. But people are actually doing this as a hobby. They're going out with a magnet on a fishing line and fishing metal things out of canals and rivers.

Need more help?