ffurger Posted January 6, 2018 Share Posted January 6, 2018 I really would like to buy the Affinity Design Workbook, but it looks as if Affinity doesn't really want to sell it ... I am located in Switzerland. I have always been able to buy books either on Amazon.de, amazon.uk, or amazon.com. Until now, that is. I'd like to buy the English, not the German version. But in any case neither of them is being sold to Swiss users. Not even on the Affinity web site. What's going on here? Best, FF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 6, 2018 Share Posted January 6, 2018 What is going on has been discussed in several different topics: for reasons unclear to Serif/Affinity Amazon is not interested in selling/shipping the workbooks to quite a few countries. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 Mmmh, doesn't strike me as a terribly credible explanation. If that were the case, why can't I buy the workbook directly on the Affinity website? Affinity could sell it directly, as is done by many other companies. It may be more expensive, but not possible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 A web site is not a physical location. The workbooks still have to be warehoused somewhere & shipped from that location by some shipping company. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 Of course, but as a company you certainly don't depend exclusively on Amazon. As I said, I have ordered book from companies in the same situation as Affinity - no Amazon - and I got the books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 11 minutes ago, ffurger said: Of course, but as a company you certainly don't depend exclusively on Amazon. As I said, I have ordered book from companies in the same situation as Affinity - no Amazon - and I got the books. Apparently, from what I've read here, Serif does depend exclusively on Amazon. What I don't understand is why Amazon would not want to ship to certain countries, unless they believe that the shipping charges they'd have to apply would mean that no one would want to buy the product. I have seen some complaints here in the forum about the shipping charges to some countries being nearly the same as the book itself. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 That's strange indeed. I have bought LOTS of book from Amazon.de, even from Amazon.uk, amazon.fr and amazon.it. Some of them were not exactly best-sellers. So...??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 If you see the book on Amazon UK (amazon.co.uk) or their French, German or Italian sites, then you should be able to buy it from there. You just can't buy it through the Affinity Store, because Amazon will apparently only sell the book direct; i.e. in their role as Serif's distribution partner, they will not ship it to Switzerland, Norway and several other countries. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 I tried, but then it would tell me that "this item cannot be shipped to Switzerland"... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 19 minutes ago, ffurger said: I tried, but then it would tell me that "this item cannot be shipped to Switzerland"... Oh well, in that case I take back what I said about Amazon selling the book direct! I wonder why they ship other books to Switzerland, but not these ones. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 16 minutes ago, ffurger said: I tried, but then it would tell me that "this item cannot be shipped to Switzerland"... Ask amazon why. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 14 minutes ago, ffurger said: Of course, but as a company you certainly don't depend exclusively on Amazon. Actually, these days an increasing number of companies do depend exclusively on Amazon for logistics, warehousing, & shipping. It isn't hard to see why. Bezos has built the most efficient, most innovative distribution network in the world, capable of handling billions of different products & filling millions of orders per day with ease. If you are a company with just a few products to sell, if often does not make much sense to complicate things by dealing with more than one distributor. If it is going to be just one, Amazon is very likely your best choice. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 It may be worth looking into Shipito. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 @R C-R: Well, believe whatever you want, the point is that I did order books several times from abroad NOT shipped and NOT paid through amazon. Is that so hard to believe? @Alfred: Interesting, I'll look into that. Alfred 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted January 7, 2018 Share Posted January 7, 2018 Well if Affinity, Amazon & Co are too unflexible or can't ship directly to Switzerland, why not order that book from some spezialized Bookstore which can? - In the past during my study I've got and ordered a lot of specific and partly difficult to get at all Computer science textbooks from shops like Lehmanns, which by the way also have a branch shop in Switzerland (Bern) see here. I'm pretty sure they can manage for you to get that workbook and send it to you. I mean they managed in the past for me to get some really rare programming and software design books, so it shouldn't be a theme to get the AD workbook for them as far as it has an ISBN number. - You can give that way a try! Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 8, 2018 Share Posted January 8, 2018 6 hours ago, ffurger said: @R C-R: Well, believe whatever you want, the point is that I did order books several times from abroad NOT shipped and NOT paid through amazon. Is that so hard to believe? What does that have to do with anything? Some companies decide to use one distributor exclusively; others don't. Some of them decide on Amazon; others don't. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 8, 2018 Author Share Posted January 8, 2018 The point is that it's quite simplistic to blame Amazon for the problem. If Affinity doesn't like Amazon's contractual conditions it can easily find some other way to ship its books, just like many other companies do. It's too easy to say that there are no other options. Obviously there are. Whether Affinity find them adequate or not it's a different question. As far as I can tell this company is doing quite well financially. It's certainly not some kind of flight-by-night operation. So cost doesn't seem to be an issue. So what is the issue? Without a statement by Affinity, blaming Amazon doesn't explain anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffurger Posted January 8, 2018 Author Share Posted January 8, 2018 @v_kyr: Absolutely - I'll give it a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted January 8, 2018 Share Posted January 8, 2018 36 minutes ago, ffurger said: It's too easy to say that there are no other options. Nobody is saying there are no other options. But you can't reasonably expect Serif to opt for anything that does not make good business sense for the company. Perhaps the demand for the workbooks from residents of the excluded countries is not high enough to justify the expense & logistical complications of adding another distributor. After all, we have no way of knowing what contractual obligations are involved, either with Amazon or with any other distributor. Maybe Serif gets a better deal if they agree to make Amazon their sole distributor & adding another one would result in higher costs across the board, which would mean higher prices for everyone. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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