"Graham Bell" <grabelly@netscape.net.dumb.spam> wrote in message
news:rCJ2b.16$c8.1617@newsall.dti.ne.jp...
> Ryan Ginstrom wrote:
> > I got that figure from my last order -- I ordered 5 books (ATL Internals
> > being one of the lightest of them), and shipping was $29.44.
<...>
> I have no idea how you ended up with such a low shipping rate -
> according to the rates on that page, shipping to Japan for 5 books would
> be $43.94 ($8.99+ $6.99*5). I just tried it out, and sure enough, thats

Maybe Amazon is giving me some kind of preferential treatment for being a
good customer. I checked back on my last few orders, and they were all
pretty cheap. The shipping for the order before this one was $11.95, for 4
videos.

> Quite true. I haven't ordered any computer books (or similar expensive
> ones) for a while - lately its been mostly novels and stuff. Still a
> little more than amazon.com prices, but usually only about $1 or so. Not
>   enough to worry about. Heaps cheaper than Kinokuniya though..

Yeah, I think the huge markups are mostly for technical books. Things like
novels are usually not too bad.

I'll have to look at the software selection, though. From what I've seen so
far, it looks like the markups are still pretty high. For instance, I bought
Dungeon Siege of Amazon US for 19.95 or so (had to have it shipped to my
parents' though). On amazon it's 5,480 yen! But at my local computer store I
saw it for 6,800 yen... There's massive collusion going on in the Japanese
software market, and it looks like Amazon is in on it. They probably can't
help it since they have a Japanese supplier, though.

-- 
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom