Commerce

I've just purchased $300 worth of books (with the proceeds from my recent adventures in eBay), from a bookstore I've never used before: The Book Depository. What could possibly go wrong?

Prices — at least, the prices of the books I was looking at — seemed reasonably competitive with Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, but what made the difference for me was that I had a coupon for 10% off (and I knew I'd be placing an enormous order, so it would make a difference), and the fact that I could pay via PayPal (and avoid the trouble of having to transfer money into my Checking account to pay it out again).

Here's the part I don't understand, though: the free shipping. I just assumed that, although The Book Depository is a British retailer, they would have a fulfillment operation here in the US. But they don't — they're shipping everything by Air Mail. And if that weren't odd enough, they seem to be shipping each of the 18 or 19 books I ordered separately. (At least, I think they are — the first arrived this afternoon.) I suppose that might make sense, if various items were sent from different warehouse locations (we'll see how the other items arrive), but I can't help but wonder how they're making any money at this.

This all reminds me of the excitement of the pioneering days of Internet commerce, when retailers were willing to suffer enormous losses in a desperate attempt to grab mindshare. A friend of mine used to refer to the early days of Barnes and Noble's web site as "The Great Barnes and Noble Land Grab," because they were offering a discount coupon of $10 off any order more than $10, and virtually no restrictions on how often it could be used. (I bought so much stuff with so many transactions that my bank assumed my debit card had been stolen.)