Selling Books Online

Textbook Season Ending & Return Season Starting

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:07:01 +0000

If you sell books online then you know that back to school season is a great time for us. Students are always looking for a bargain. I have hundreds of academic books and a decent amount of current textbooks so I sell my fair share this time of year. Now that we are at mid-September the textbook season is winding down and textbook return season is starting up. This is the time of year when I have the most returns.

Students drop classes or buy the wrong edition or no longer want their books for any number of reasons. So this time of year is is important for us to cintinue to implement excellent customer service when handling returns. If somebody buys a book and there is something “wrong” with it and they want to return it I accept it and provide a full refund (including shipping). If a person decides they no longer need the book I accept a return and refund the purchase price but not the shipping. This is my simple policy and I have never had an issue with a buyer.

There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns – most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon’s A-Z policy). I keep my return policy simple. The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting). Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers.

Tags:bookselling mistakes,how to sell books on amazon,how to sell books on ebay,how to sell books online,how to sell used books online,responding to feedback on Amazon,selling books on amazon,Selling books online,selling used books,selling used books on amazon

Amazon Charge When Shipped (Amazon CWS)

admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:29:14 +0000

Amazon Charge when Shipped is their newest change to their marketplace. Amazon CWS does what it says – which is that the buyer of your book is not charged until you confirm the book has shipped. This is somewhat similar to how Alibris handles their marketplace. I am not going to go over the whole terms of Amazon’s CWS as there is a comprehensive overview at Amazon but there are a few things worth pointing out.

What does CWS mean for us booksellers? Not much. You will not have your account credited until you ship a book. If you use The Art of Books or a similar inventory management system Amazon should be automatically updated when the book is shipped. There are a couple of downsides to Amazon’s Charge When Shipped – you do not get to send your own confirmation email to the buyer and the buyer can still leave feedback on a canceled order.

I like sending out my own confirmations. They promote my “brand” (nominally) and provide a more personalized experience. Also I ask that buyers contact me directly with any issues before going to Amazon and filing feedback or a “A to Z” claim. The sample confirmation email that Amazon has provided does not include seller contact information. Many times I have been contacted by unhappy buyer (mistakenly of course since I am perfect lol) who has an issues with the condition of the book. Though it turns out that they didn’t read the book description closely or their idea of what a bumped corner (or similar damage) is different then mine. With direct communication with the buyer I can resolve these issues to the buyers satisfaction quickly. My guess is that neutral or negative feedback will increase with less direct communication with the buyer.

Hopefully, Amazon CWS will go smoothly but I am concerned that Amazon is going to cause problems for a lot of sellers given how their feedback system works.

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Tags:Amazon Charge when shipped,Amazon CWS,responding to feedback on Amazon,selling books on amazon,Selling books online,selling used books on amazon

Is the Amazon Kindle bad for Online Booksellers

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:40:37 +0000

Amazon announced their earnings and stated that book (and all media) sales were flat but they are back-logged on Kindles. Does this matter to us small online booksellers given our scale is so much smaller then Amazon’s? Long term I think it matters if the Kindle really becomes an option for people.

People who buy Kindles are either gadget heads who just want the latest thing or they are avid readers who love having a portable library. The avid readers are likely avid book buyers so the transition of their book sales to electronic form will have a long-term negative effect on online booksellers. Will this happen soon – not likely but it does not bode well.

One of the issues with the Kindle is that Amazon is pricing titles on it less than they are a regular copy of a book. This can have the effect of havingo nline booksellers trying to beat the Kindle price on books. I am not sure if the inventory and scouting services are showing Kindle prices yet but maybe they should.

Lets not forget that the Kindle is not the only device out there – Sony also makes one and you can even put books on your iPhone. Sales of the Kindle are one thing but it remains to be seen if people are actually going to adapt to using it as their primary way to read – as we have seen with Amazon recenlty deleting Orwell titles there are several issues with the Kindle that will effect its popularity.

Electronic reading devices are going to have to become a whole lot more popular for online booksellers to throw in the towel

Tags:amazon kindle,Booksales and the economy,how to make money selling books online,kindle,online booksales and the economy,selling books on amazon,Selling books online,selling used books online

Should Online Booksellers Pay Sales Tax?

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:00:41 +0000

The question isn’t if you should collect sales tax because that is impossible to do on most sites except eBay. Trying to collect sales taxes would kill sales if you are the only one doing it. Now – I am not a lawyer or accountant so I will simply tell you what I do – which is to pay my states sales taxes.

Some states do not require you to pay sales taxes on online business but I know where I live requires it. So I pay the few hundred dollars a year. I hate doing it (though my wife handles figuring out what I owe which is the most frustrating part). I don’t do it to be moral or anything but I do it because I am running a business and do not want to jeopardize my bookselling business by cutting corners. I don’t do mental gymnastics over this decision – I just keep it simple and cut the check to the state and I have no worries. I did my research about whether I need to pay and that was that.

If you sell books online check with your accountant ( if oyou have one) or go to your states website and start doing your research – or just ignore it and hope you have no reason to be concerned

Tags:Booksales and the economy,bookselling mistakes,how to sell books online,selling books on amazon,Selling books online

Book Sales are Slow – Time for a eBay Book Sale

admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:13:06 +0000

My book sales are slow as usual for this time of year. Even though I know they will slow in July I still get demoralized. I am going to set up a sale on my eBay listings and hopefully get a little uptick on sales. If you have a eBay store (not the Prostore which is separate) you can use the markdown manager that is provided. In the markdown manager you can give your sale a name and pick the titles and how much you want to discount the titles by.

The maximum number you can put for sale is 250 titles – and I think I will be using the full amount. You can offer free shipping which I recommend as it improves your best match search results. When offering free shipping inside the markdown manager you have to make sure you are not also offering insurance as an option as this causes some sort of conflict and none of your books will get added to the sale.

When I have a sale I generally provide a 10% to 20% discount on my 250 highest priced titles. I may tweak this formula this time and only pick the titles that are below $40 and see if I get more sales as I already provide “Best Offer” on everything above that.

There are lots of ways to get your inventory moving during slow times – just don’t get to demoralized.

Tags:bookselling,selling books on ebay

Gearing up for Textbook Season

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:56:24 +0000

We are less then a month away from one of the busiest times fo the year fro online booksellers. All the college kids are going back to school soon and looking to save money on books (for more beer maybe). If you have not alreay – now is the time to stock up on shipping supplies.

If you sell remainders (there are some that specialize in universtity presses) the text book season is when they move – so you could find some titles to buy in preparation for the school year. Try Great Jones for academic books – the margins on these are not great but if you can find a good title to buy in bulk in might be worth it.

Also – be prepared for lots of questions if your listings are not complete. Make sure you properly list what edition text book you are selling and if it has highlighting, underlining or margin notes – I make it the first thing in the item description. Do not sell international editions (or if you do be prepared to be banned by eBay and Amazon as it is against their terms).

Desperate for Book Inventory – eBay may have what you need

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:27:09 +0000

Let me start by stating that eBay is a terrible place for booksellers to buy inventory (great for selling books though). BUT… if you are desperate there are potentially a few ways to get inventory on eBay.

Arbitrage – there are certain titles that regularly sell for hundreds of dollars (even $1,000’s) on eBay such as Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman. I have bought this title for a few hundred bucks and listed for $1050 and sold it at best offer for $900 a few times – making a decent profit after commissions. Plus it generally sells fast. This works if you have the cash to tie up in one book. There are likely dozens of more books that you can arbitrage if you do your homework.

Bulk Lots – Be very careful here. Do not buy books by the pound or anything like that. Don’t buy boxes (or gaylords) of books that are “unsorted” any decent bookseller could fill up one of these without sorting the books. You can find people selling their online inventory and closing up shop. These sellers will have spreadsheets of their inventory available for you to review – if they do not then take a pass.

You can have eBay send you emails of your favorite searches – I have them send me an email every time Margin of Safety comes up for sale.

There are also certain sellers who have pristine feedback that often have large (dozens of boxes) for sale and these lots really are “unsorted” but I do not like the randomness of it. You will have to do your homework here.

This is not going to be a long post because eBay just does not provide great opportunities for booksellers to find inventory – though if you slog through it you may come up with some winners.

Tags:bookselling inventory,buying books and thrift stores,how to sell books online,make money selling books,selling books on ebay,Selling books online,selling used books on ebay,where to buy books in bulk,where to find book invenotry,where to find books to sell on amazon,where to find used books,where to finds books to sell on amazon

The Apple iPhone as a Book Scanner and Book Scouting Software

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:17:13 +0000

Is there an app on the iPhone that can take the place of your pda book scanner and book scouting software? Almost but not quite yet though it is clear the capability is there. So do not cancel your book scouting subscription and throw away your PDA yet. Hopefully the day will come soon when you can.

There are several apps for the iPhone that try to replicate a scanner by taking a photo or video of a barcode and transmit back price info. These scanning apps will often have trouble reading a barcode and the info they give back isn’t all the info booksellers need. Amazon has their own app that when you take a photo of an item it emails you back the info – this is a bit slow if you are at a library sale but okay if you are just out at one of your book buying haunts. SnapTell is another app that is pretty good and like the Amazon app it is free.

If you have an iPhone it is clear the capability is there to provide an application that will be able to integrate with the Amazon database and provide Amazon sales rank info, book conditions and price info. At the very least the app would enable you to download the database and be able to get the info you want from it the catch is going to be getting the isbn’s entered into the iPhone quickly.

The camera on the new iPhone has been improved and hopefully we are close to seeing the potential uses for booksellers come to fruition.

Tags:Amazon sales rank,book inventory management systems,book scouting,library sales,pda services for booksellers,scanners and library sales,scanners for bookseller,selling books on amazon,Selling books online,What is Amazon sales rank

A1Books as a Marketplace for Booksellers

admin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:15:30 +0000

I received an email today from A1Books asking me to list my books on their site. I never really considered listing my books on A1 before as I viewed them as a competitor. A1 has thousands of books for sales on Amazon and they are priced low (and their seller rating is lousy). Something about listing my books on their site just bugged me plus I did not like their fee structure.

A few years have passed since I last even thought of them as a marketplace which show a lack of diligence on my part. I should always be looking for new venues. I need to start looking around to see if the fee structures and traffic have improved at other marketplaces – I am annoyed with myself for not looking. I generally focus on growing my inventory.

I am not sure if A1Books gets much traffic but given that they are not charging a monthly fee to list (like the crappy Abe Books) then I figure A1Books is worth a shot. I will let you know if I get any sales.

I will also give some feedback on other marketplaces and take a look at their fee structures in some future posts.

If you are interested in selling on A1Books you can click here to go to A1Books.

Tags:a1 books,a1books,abe books,how to sell books online,online bookselling,Selling books,selling books on a1books,selling books on abebooks,Selling books online,selling used books online

Branching Out for Online Booksellers

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:13:59 +0000

I have been selling books online for a few years now and over the course of that time have done a lot of research on other ways of making money online without giving up too much time. I consider my book business successful in terms of the goals I have set and space for inventory keeps my business at a certain level. I love it and it is my primary business focus but there are other opportunities.

So I have branched out a little to find ways to make more revenue while still working from home. I have sold items like game consoles, GPS systems and other small electronics and, though profitable, they were time consuming and I did not really enjoy the process. Plus these tied up cash that I wanted for book inventory.

I wanted something that would:

Not require inventory,
Had very little start up costs,
Not technically complex,
Somewhat related to my book-selling
Did not need a lot of tending to and
I could reasonably expect to make some money

The product I found that matched the above criteria is Build A Niche Store (or BANS) so I went ahead and bought it. Build A Niche Store is a program that lets you easily build a website around products for sale on eBay. How it works is if someone goes to your Build A Niche Store website and click on an item they will be sent to eBay to bid on that item. Now if they are the winning bidder on any item then you get a commission. You also get a commission if they are new to eBay and register.

I actually use Build A Niche Store – here is a link to one of my stores (I have four) – www.EastonSigned.com. I consistently make an extra $50 to $100 a month from these stores and I do nothing on them. I researched the products I wanted to promote and set up the store around the. I do no work promoting them or anything else – though if you did you could make more money.

Setting up a store is pretty easy and the tutorial, forums and BANS site are all incredibly useful.

So I strayed from online book-selling but I wanted those of you who may have the extra time or are already established at book-selling to learn about some other tangential opportunities. If you are still starting out in online Book-selling I would recommend keeping your focus on that for now and not put too much on your plate.

Tags:alternatives to selling books online,bans,Bans review,Build a Niche store,ebay affiliate program,ebay partner network,make money online,review of build a niche store

Selling Books Online

Textbook Season Ending & Return Season Starting

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