A Strange Amazon Business Opportunity?

My daughter bought a book on Amazon yesterday from a vendor who sells second-hand bestselling novels for 1p each plus £2.75 p&p.

I understand that the p&p amount is fixed by Amazon.

The book arrived today, nicely packed in a brand new padded mailing bag, posted first class.

Now, for the weight of parcel, the cheapest 1st class parcel mail is £1.80. The Mail Lite Bag can, with some shopping around and serious bulk buying be had for about 10p each.

So the vendor is making roughly 86p per shipped item without the cost to him of the almost new paperback being factored in. Surely that has to be at least 50-75p?

In fact, the book she bought was so new that even the spine wasn't creased.

I can't see how the profit potential can be more than 10-20p per item shipped - without any thought for his time.

And then there are Amazon's fees to come out of that.

I guess that if you have a ready supply of decent paperbacks, via thrift stores or garage sales maybe, then this could be reasonable low-margin, high volume business opportunity, but it seems a lot of work to me for almost no real reward!

Am I missing something here?

Martin