[aresant]

" I sell a used book on Amazon, it takes a cut of the transaction, I am the one packing and shipping that item to the buyer. "

In true Amazon "dominate all retail by making it accessible to consumers" their relatively new "Fulfillment By Amazon" service drastically simplifies consumer reselling by eliminating the need for the consumer to do the "packing and shipping".

It's an amazing service, and they are getting darn close to the "just ship us a box of your stuff"

I bet that we see that inside of the next five years, there are lots of problems (like what is / is not valuable) but you can see them already working around these issues by only accepting items with modern barcodes, charge small warehousing fees if something sits too long in inventory, etc.

(1)http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/benefits.ht...

[nhebb]

I wasn't aware of that service. So to some extent Amazon is doing to Craigslist and eBay what Craigslist and eBay did to the classifies and Nickel Ads?

[hershel]

This service is even more useful to merchants and manufacturers. Amazon handles :fulfillment, customer service, offering you a global supply chain using simple tools, good financing options for some sellers and options to sell on amazon and outside of it. And from what I read it's priced quite well.