Tholt y Will Glen (above) is the closest photograph we have of a rainforest, and much too beautiful to represent Amazon. Those of you who like Amazon should stop reading now because I fear that this is going to be a rant. We have been selling books through Amazon for nearly twenty years, since before we set up Loaghtan Books in fact. We didn't like dealing with Amazon because we thought they were greedy; it's completely reasonable to charge commission but they take too much. For example, our A Brief History of the Isle of Man retails at £12.95. Amazon charges the customer £15.75 explaining that the additional £2.80 is for postage. Not that we get anything for postage, Amazon keeps that. Amazon credits us with £10.75 out of which we still have to take the postage, currently £4.16. Briefly, the customer pays £15.75, Amazon gets £5.00, the postage is £4.16, we get £6.59. Nevertheless we put up with getting only pennies more than half of the p...
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I hate rudeness. Yesterday we had a business meeting in Ramsey so thought we'd take the opportunity to have lunch out. We went to Gopher's; nice place with excellent freshly-prepared food. The only problem, if it is one, is that customers often have to share tables. Gopher's is rightly popular. So there we were eating our baguettes (warm, with gooey cheese and salad - delicious) and a couple of scruffy-ish men asked if they could join us. No problem with that and we'd nearly finished anyway. Then they started to talk to us. Now I like a good skeet (Manx = chat/gossip) as much as anyone, but I've rarely come across anybody as rude as one of these two men. He gave his order to the waitress in a bored voice while playing with his phone and without having the courtesy to look at her. He quizzed us loudly about Loaghtan Books, didn't listen to our answers, and seemed to think that we were second-hand book sellers, remarking that he'd have to ge...
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