How to Get Your Book Listed in Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Through the Amazon.com Advantage Program and the Amazon.co.uk Advantage Program Amazon offers small or foreign publishers the opportunity to market their books online just like titles from major publishers in the US and UK respectively. If you are the author or publisher of a bird book that is not available from both American and British Amazon, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the appropriate Advantage programs. This may be the least expensive way for a small publisher to achieve large scale distribution.

Overseas Shipment by Amazon

It's obvious from the WorldTwitch books pages that many more bird books are available from Amazon UK than from Amazon US, and that some choice books available from Amazon US are not available from Amazon UK. In addition, some books are considerably cheaper in one country, e.g., the BWP Concise Edition, which Amazon UK sells for £42 and Amazon US for $295. In addition, textbooks tend to be much less expensive in the UK.

I recently ordered some books from Amazon UK and was surprised to find that their international postage terms were unusually reasonable. For airmail to the US, they charged £4.95 postage for the first item and £2.00 for each additional item, regardless of weight, size or number of volumes. On moderately heavy books, that's less than domestic US postage. Citing the example above, the air shipping charge on the 2-volume, 2128-page BWP Concise Edition would be £4.95, a fraction of the actual cost. Bird book purchasers apparently are being subsidized by Harry Potter and Beatles fans etc.

International shipping rates from Amazon US are even cheaper, since they have a surface mail option. Their basic charge is $5.95 for the first item, plus $1.95 for each additional item.

Furthermore, in my experience, books ordered from Amazon US have been well packed, arriving without any shipping damage whatsoever.

Finally, I have invariably linked to softcover editions where available, since most people elect to purchase the cheaper, softcover edition if there is a choice. If you prefer the hardcover edition, simply scroll down on the Amazon page for the softcover edition to "Other Editions" and click on the link to the hardcover edition.