Selling 'Malta & Gozo - Islands of Cats' out of Switzerland: Amazon is not for small Suppliers

We have just removed the "Islands of Cats" hardcover edition from all Amazon stores. Reasons? Quite simply, as a small seller on Amazon, you earn next to nothing to amortise your costs and time.

• Amazon fees (Europe): In order to be reasonably competitive, the selling price must be kept low. Our last price for the hardcover edition was €27.99 / £22.99, which is actually too high for the subject of this book. From this, Amazon deducts a hefty sales fee of €6.65 / £5.88 (and VAT €2.16 Germany) and contributes €3 / £4.02 shipping costs. Makes € 22.18 / £21.13 net for us 👍🏻. But ....

• Postage from Switzerland: The hardcover edition weighs 620 grams. On January 1, 2022, Swiss Post merged the Economy and Priority shipping options for shipments to the EU / Europe, and instead of Fr 10 as before (exchange rate today €9.65 / £8.25), Swiss Post now charges double of that, i.e. Fr 20 (€19.30 / £16.50) = net for us €2.88 / £2.50. Unfortunately, as a small seller, you cannot adjust the postage on Amazon, you can only inform the prospective buyer in the product description. 👎🏼

• Other costs: The color printing of the book (offset) with its 220+ photographs costs around €3 / £2.60 per copy in Malta in 2016. That alone exceeds the income of €2.88 / £2.50, plus the padded envelope, the labels, the printer ink, the trip to the post office, the customer correspondence and the marketing work are not yet paid for. 👎🏼

• Alternative: Let Amazon do the work and use 'FBA - Fulfillment by Amazon', where the goods are stored in one of Amazon's large warehouses and are also shipped from there. However, this is of no interest to small suppliers, because monthly fees of up to €36 / £25 are incurred plus shipping the stock to the warehouse. If a certain sales target is not reached, then Amazon will charge extra. To recoup these fees, we would have had to sell at least 13 books per month to start making a profit. 👎🏼

• Public interest: We have also offered the hardcover edition to various Malta-related organisations free of charge, but animal welfare in the Mediterranean does not seem to be of interest. 👎🏼

For all these reasons, and as only a costly campaign could still sell the remaining hardcover editions, we decided to give it away free of charge, subject to packaging and shipping costs » LINK. 

What is still in storage by autumn 2022 will then be thrown away.

The book is still available, showing a new book cover, as print-on-demand together with the Kindle version in the Amazon stores (with similar low profit - the more colour photos, the higher Amazon's printing costs). The book's topic is timeless, the Maltese Islands are always worth a visit, and cat lovers will enjoy the many insights and photographs.

🐈‍⬛🐈

'Malta & Gozo - Islands of Cats' not available in Maltese Book Stores anymore !

Agenda Book Store Republic Street Valletta

And here's why. At the end of 2016, we had signed an agreement with a renowned book publisher and distributor for the Maltese Islands. We aimed to have the book in as many brick-and-mortar book stores on Malta and Gozo as possible; primarily, at the cruise port and the airport, for tourists to acquire a unique and colourful book about an unheralded group of volunteers. The book dwells into the private side of 22 of these individuals, who selflessly and lovingly take care of and strive to limit stray and abandoned cats. In addition, we invested a considerable amount in having beautiful hardcover books printed and delivered, promising €1 per copy to return to the carer community through Happy Paws to support their TNR program.

None of the above exploitation happened. Copies of the books in English, German and Maltese only showed up in a handful of stores across the nation, very few of which were frequented by the Islands‘ visitors. Reporting was late, and soon the distributer insisted that we reduce our stock as it blocked warehouse space.

Announcing Islands of Cats in 2016

Besides our own initiatives, including an interview on popular Animal Diaries and a spot filmed for TVM airing right before the evening news, several attempts to even pay for joint promotion campaigns remained unanswered. In 2020 we donated 120+ stock to the Maltese cat shelters portrayed in our book for them to sell and keep the funds. Due to this turn of adverse events, we were unable to keep our pledge to Happy Paws.

In spring 2021, we finally terminated the distribution agreement. We are still waiting for the distributor’s acknowledgement. And to this date, we have not received any final sales report. In the meantime, the distributor has removed the books from their web store. To say the least, we are disappointed by this company’s unresponsiveness to our promotional efforts.

Our hardcover books can still be ordered in all three languages from the authors directly, or through the European Amazon Stores such as amazon.it, or Gumroad or Lulu.com.