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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> But today, many sellers hand close to half of every sale to Amazon. Half!

This is how resellers work.

Back in the 80s, I was selling my compiler direct. I also engaged a reseller, if you recall, those were ones that advertised in computer magazines with full page ads crammed with items for sale.

The resellers demanded that I sell it to them at half the retail price. I was shocked and horrified! I soon found out, however, that all resellers are like that. They cannot make money otherwise.

Amazon is no different.

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> They cannot make money otherwise.

This is obviously, hilariously untrue when Amazon produces hundreds of billions of dollars of profit every year: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/financials/

Yeah, it shouldn't really be too surprising that software distribution, and indeed retail generally, have changed radically in the forty years since Walter's anecdote but here we are.

Again, good luck finding a reseller for your product that doesn't do a 100% markup on it. They cannot make money otherwise.

How many of the major app stores make a 100% markup? Apple doesn’t, MS doesn’t, Steam doesn’t.

That’s before we get into the specific case you mentioned, where open source and the likes of intel/Sun/Oracle/MS have driven compiler prices to near-zero.

Apple has a 43% markup.

Apple doesn't have any inventory or warehouse or shipping costs.

43% is a hell of a difference from the 100% you were claiming it was impossible to beat!

I don’t deny that the app stores don’t have the same costs - sounds like you accept my central premise that software distribution has changed since the 80s? Glad we finally agree.

> 43% is a hell of a difference from the 100% you were claiming it was impossible to beat!

Again, Apple has no inventory, shipping, supply chain, etc., costs. I was referring to things with inventory, like what Amazon sells. That's a lot of COGS there.

All of that is irrelevant when we’re talking about software distribution, which was the subject of your anecdote.

If you want to look at Amazon’s “referral fees” though:

> Computers 7%

Still significantly less than the 100% you’re claiming.

Edit: Christ, this could’ve actually been an interesting conversation about how the business of selling software has been utterly revolutionised by the internet, digital distribution and payment platforms like Stripe, none of which existed in any meaningful sense 40 years ago. Instead you seem to think we’re still ordering Visual Studio by posting off a coupon from last month’s PC Magazine and a money order for 1000 of your local currency and waiting weeks for it to arrive on enough cassette tapes to crush a person.

> All of that is irrelevant when we’re talking about software distribution, which was the subject of your anecdote.

Software at the time was distributed in boxes by mail and store shelves, not over the wire.

Good luck finding a reseller for your product that does not do it.

> This is obviously, hilariously untrue when Amazon produces hundreds of billions of dollars of profit every year

It's an irrelevant figure to your claim. The relevant statistic would be the markup, not the aggregate profit.

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