Amazon is hosting its annual Prime Day this July, and it may be a bust this year. During their earnings call a couple of weeks ago, Amazon announced that during the last Prime Day event, third-party sellers accounted for 62% of everything sold on Amazon. Some third-party merchants who previously sold China-made goods are sitting it out this year or reducing the amount of discounted merchandise they offer, said Reuters.
Interviewed by CNBC earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company’s third-party sellers are likely to try to pass the cost of tariffs on to shoppers. He added that Amazon is doing everything it can to keep prices as low as possible. “We’ve done some strategic forward inventory buys to get as many items as make sense for customers at lower prices,” Jassy said. “There are some cases where we have deals that were negotiated that weren’t done, where we’ll renegotiate terms to make it easier for customers to have lower prices.”
Many e-reader companies that sell their devices in the United States and are based in China or import them from China are unlikely to offer Prime Day discounts. This includes Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Onyx Boox, Meebook, Remarkable, and others. Kobo has scaled back its e-reader sales completely in the USA.
One of the most bombastic discounts will be Amazon’s own devices. This includes Fire TV, Fire Tablets, Alexa, Ring, and the Kindle. The Kindle is manufactured in China at Foxconn. However, they placed a massive order to ensure their fulfillment centres were fully stocked before the tariffs took effect. You can also thank the tariffs from the Kindle Colorsoft for not launching into other promised countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and most of Europe.
Update: Amazon wrote to Good e-Reader and said the following;
“We’re pleased by the strong response from selling partners to Prime Day 2025 and look forward to bringing customers discounts across a wide selection of products. As always, Amazon continues to focus on consistently providing customers the lowest prices as well as fantastic extra savings during our deal events across the widest selection of products, with fast, reliable delivery. We’re working with our broad, varied range of valued selling partners in our store to support them in adapting to the developing environment while maintaining low prices and broad selection for customers.” – Amazon spokesperson
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.