Archive for June, 2009

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Goodwill To Sell Books Online?

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

goodwillAccording to an article posted today on thedenverchannel.com (the website of ABC’s Denver, Colorado affiliate), Goodwill is currently trying to overhaul their image. This includes stocking more high-end, brand name merchandise, as well as giving the stores themselves makeovers. The idea is to bring Goodwill stores more in line with other retail stores and to distance themselves with the low-end reputation of traditional thrift stores.

The article quotes Rick Berninzoni, the vice president of marketing for Goodwill Denver, as saying that along with the other changes, Goodwill is moving into selling items online, specifically mentioning that Berninzoni “hopes to soon sell books online.”

Goodwill already operates their own online auctions at shopgoodwill.com, where buyers can bid on items in a process similar to Ebay’s. However, this change in focus may mean that Goodwill will be placing an increased emphasis on determining the value of their books, and could result in a lot more of them being listed online, either through their existing auction site, or through some new channel.

I have mentioned the value of thrift stores as a good source for books to sell online. How that fact is affected by these changes at Goodwill remains to be seen.

It is possible that, at least in the case of Goodwill, the books with the greatest resale potential will be cherry-picked for sale online and will no longer be on the shelves of their stores. It is also possible that some of the other large thrift store chains may follow suit.

It’s too early to tell what will come of all this, but it’s definitely something that’s worth keeping your eye on.

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More Tips for Selling Books on Amazon

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Selling books online these days means knowing how to sell on Amazon. I’d estimate they’ve got about 70% share of the market for online used book selling. If you want to give yourself the best chance for success, you need to know the ins and outs of the different marketplaces, especially Amazon. A lot of newbie booksellers start out having only ever sold on Ebay. Get ready to repeat after me, because here comes today’s mantra:

Selling on Amazon is not the same as selling on Ebay.

Learn it, love it, live it.

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, Amazon is a stickler for their rules. It’s easy to understand why, once you realize that, unlike Ebay for instance, they are on the hook to the customer should anything go wrong. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: know the rules. It’ll save you from having to deal with headaches and consequenses up to and including losing your Amazon account.

Here’s a few ways that Amazon is different than Ebay:

Multiple Accounts

On Ebay, a lot of people will recommend that you have different accounts for different things. Ebay doesn’t care how many accounts you have. You can have as many accounts as you can open free checking accounts and email addresses. As far as Ebay is concerned, you can have an account for every day of the month and another one for holidays and special occasions. Amazon is different. You cannot have more than one Marketplace Seller account. Not only do they have a policy against multiple accounts, they actually check. They have several ways of trying to find people skirting this rule, and if you get caught, you could be looking at being permanently banned from Amazon.

That being said, you may see some sellers that do have more than one account. There are some megasellers who get exceptions to the rules. This doesn’t mean you can do it. They have special approval from Amazon. You don’t. Often times these different accounts represent separate locations, separate operations, completely different segments of a corporate structure, etc. The point is, it doesn’t apply to you.

Returns

On Ebay, you’re the selling company and you get to set up whatever kind of return policy you want. A better return policy may make you more successful, but ultimately it’s up to you. Once again, Amazon is different. Amazon considers you to be little more than a dropshipper. From their point of view, they are the public face, the company, and they will set the return policy. Read the rules here. The bottom line is that you’re probably going to have to take any returns made within 30 days. You’re free to take returns beyond that 30-day window, if you so choose, but you cannot have a shorter return window. Personally, I’ve been contacted by Amazon to issue a return on a sale that was 40 days old. I refunded the order. It’s just not worth it to take on Amazon on these issues. Don’t take my word for it though, read and learn the rules in their entirety for yourself.

Blocking Buyers

You can’t. On Ebay you can create “blocked bidder” lists to weed out any undesirables. Not on Amazon. As long as their money is green, Amazon wants them as a customer. This goes for anyone who’s considered a “domestic” customer, including APO/AFO, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Guam. You can opt not to ship internationally, but that’s about it. Some sellers that specialize in selling used textbooks complain that certain buyers are actually other sellers who turn around and resell their books to students or textbook stores. Well, tough. There’s no way to block any buyer from buying any book. And as far as I’m concerned, if someone is reselling the books you’re selling, there’s no point in getting mad at them. It’s your own fault for pricing your books to low.

Anyway, these are just a few of the differences between selling on Ebay and selling on Amazon. As always feel free to ask me any questions you might have, and I’ll try and answer them in a future post.

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Posted in Marketplaces | 4 Comments »

A Library That Operates Its Own Used Bookstore

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I had just put up a post that dealt with Library Sales when I ran across this article about a library in Waterloo, Iowa that just opened its own bookstore.

The article, written by John Molseed, is from the WCF Courier out of Waterloo/Cedar Falls Iowa. Apparently, in addition to holding regular sales, the Waterloo Friends of Library had sold donated books at a counter inside the library itself. However as donations outpaced what they could handle, they decided to open an entire bookstore which they call the Book Review (re-view, get it?).

It’s an interesting idea, one that allows the library to fundraise year-round instead of relying only on their annual sales. I’ve heard of other libraries who dabble in the year-round used books business before, but never on quite this scale. By all accounts it’s doing very well so far. If it is ultimately a success, this may be something we see more libraries getting involved in. If so, it’s not quite clear what the effect on us as online booksellers would be, but it sure is an intriguing concept.

What do you think? Are we going to be seeing more libraries opening used bookstores? What does that mean for library sales and for finding used books in general?

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The Ethics of Bookselling

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

As I’ve said before, finding books to build and maintain your inventory is one of the most important keys to being successful at selling used books online. Finding books is getting more and more competitive every day. The pressure to get to the books first, combined with people’s desire to make money has led some booksellers into some ethically gray areas.

Let me just start out by saying that I am in no way condoning, endorsing or recommending any of the methods I’m going to be talking about. That being said, I have also heard some fairly convincing arguments from those who contend that using, shall we say, “unconventional” methods is actually justified in many ways.

In any case, you don’t have to go any further than your local thrift store to see what I’m talking about. It’s not uncommon for booksellers to engage in pay-offs, $20 “tips”, even bringing around donuts or food, anything to ingratiate themselves and allow them to get first crack at incoming books.

But granddaddy of these ethically questionable methods involves our old friend the library sale.

As I mentioned in a previous post, library sales (sometimes called Friends of Library sales) are a great source for finding used books to sell online. I also briefly touched on the practice of booksellers “volunteering” at library sales.

This is exactly the practice that raises what I think is the most interesting philosophical question of bookselling:

Is it ethical for booksellers to “volunteer” at library sales in order to increase their own profits?

You may notice that I’m repeatedly putting the word “volunteer” in quotations. Before we go any further, let’s take a quick look at the definition of the word “volunteer”.

Volunteer:
vol·un·teer
Pronunciation: \ˌvä-lən-ˈtir\
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete French voluntaire (now volontaire), from voluntaire, adjective, voluntary, from Old French, from Latin voluntarius
Date: circa 1600

1: a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service: as
a: one who enters into military service voluntarily
b: (1): one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest (2): one who receives a conveyance or transfer of property without giving valuable consideration
2: a volunteer plant
3: capitalized [Volunteers of America] : a member of a quasi-military religious and philanthropic organization founded in 1896 by Commander and Mrs. Ballington Booth

- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

If we sift through the portions about joining the military, plants and religious organizations, the part that’s relevant to what we’re talking about is that one that reads: “one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest”. Of course, any bookseller who renders their services to a library sale has a very real financial concern and interest, which is why I hesitate to call them volunteers at all.

It usually works like this: If I’m a bookseller who wants to get first crack at library sale books, so I volunteer to work the sale. I get to go through the books before the general public and buy whatever books I want. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that most libraries know this goes on and don’t think anything of it. They just consider it a perk that goes comes with volunteering, and if I as a “volunteer”/bookseller happen to be able to make money off the books I get, well, good for me.

It sounds ethically questionable at best, but there’s also a way to look at it as a win-win. The library gets free labor to help sell books and raise funds, and the bookseller gets to make some money on the side.

A more recent wrinkle is that some of the more savvy libraries are hiring booksellers to sell their books online on behalf of the library. For their trouble, the booksellers of course get a percentage of the sales. Again, the bookseller is making money through what is supposedly a purely charitable fundraiser. On the other hand, the expertise of the bookseller allows the library to maximize their profits, getting much more for their books than they would be able to otherwise. Libraries and library societies tend to be lovers of books, but not necessarily experts on book pricing. Without the help of the booksellers they probably wouldn’t know, in monetary terms anyway, what they had.

It’s a tricky subject. Arguments can really be made for or against it. What do you think? Is the practice of “volunteering” at library sales ethical if it’s done to fatten your own wallet?

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Storing Your Books: Organization

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Being a bookseller means wearing a number of different hats. One of the roles you have to play, a role that you might not have considered when you got into the business, is that of a warehouse coordinator. After deciding on a shelving option, you need to decide how you are going to organize your growing inventory.

The most basic system is to simply use the SKU (stock keeping unit) that you use in your Amazon listings. Of course, if you don’t have a Pro Merchant account, you don’t even get a SKU field. In that case you should just include it in the description.

The other system is to use both the SKU & location. This is a much better option, in my opinion.

Number your rows, starting with zero, and use that numeral to indicate the location of the book.

You can make the location as elaborate and detailed as you want, having numbers to indicate the room, section, shelf, bin, even a particular position in a bin.

This is just a quick post. After all, creating a system to organize and quickly locate your books may seem like a simple and common-sense part of online bookselling. However, it’s worth mentioning because it’s so important.

I know of a bookseller, an engineer by trade, who is supremely disorganized. He can never find the books he needs. He always gets poor ratings. Despite all the trouble it causes him, he hasn’t changed his ways. Learn from his mistakes. Take the time to set up a good organizational system. It will save you countless hours of headaches and stress.

Do you have a organizational system that works great for you? I’d love to hear about it.

Posted in Storage | 3 Comments »

Sell Books Blog Guide to Customer Service (part 3 of 3)

Monday, June 15th, 2009

You just wanted to make a few bucks selling used books online. It all seemed so simple and straightforward until you ran into the one thing you didn’t count on: dealing with customers. Now that we’ve talked about difficult customers and scammers, you may be feeling pretty vulnerable. Can a disgruntled customer damage your business by bringing down your seller rating? Can a spurned scammer exact his revenge by destroying your ability to create repeat business?

Calm down, take a deep breath and repeat after me:
“When it comes to selling on Amazon, there is no such thing as repeat business.”

That’s right. Oh sure, it happens occasionally, you’ll get an order from a customer you’ve sold to before. It’s usually by accident as much as anything else. But in practice, repeat business just doesn’t happen. Customers just have too much choice, they have too many options. Think about how the customer finds used books on Amazon. They search for the book they’re looking for and see who’s selling it. They don’t try and look up sellers they’ve used before, attempting to see if that seller happens to be selling anything they might want to buy. I’ve said it before, Amazon goes out of it’s way to try and make you as the seller invisible to the customer, and that’s just fine. Just be realistic. If you want to build repeat business, get your own website. If you’re trying to build a loyal customer base on Amazon, you’re wasting your time and effort.

So what does set you apart as a seller? It’s gotta be your seller rating right?

Wrong.

Hold on, let me back up for a second. The importance of your rating/feedback does vary from marketplace to marketplace, but let’s start by taking a look at Amazon.

There’s a percentage of customers who will look at your feedback and rating. However, in my experience they tend to be fairly lenient. On Amazon, a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars is considered good. It sure sounds good, right? But let’s think about that. 4.5 out of 5 means that a full 10% of your feedback was neutral or negative. 10%! In my opinion that makes you a pretty poor seller. Unless you are seriously messing up, you should have no problem maintaining a “good” Amazon seller rating.

Then there’s a whole other segment of Amazon buyers who don’t care about your rating at all. These are the customers who are just looking for the lowest priced seller and don’t look at anything else. These are the same buyers who purchase books that are clearly listed as “acceptable”, thinking that they are going to get new books. Whether it’s by virtue of ignorance or apathy, they just don’t pay attention to anything but price.

Ebay is another animal altogether. Ebay evolved in a completely different way. Because Ebay’s transactions weren’t and aren’t backed up by a big company the way Amazon’s are. That’s why Ebay developed much more of a community component; it was necessarily built on trust from it’s inception. As a result, its rating system is better at assessing sellers performance. There is also more of a tendency to look at feedback than there is on Amazon. On the other hand, it’s a much worse place to try and sell books these days.

Half.com is more like Amazon. Again you’ll find that buyers here are usually just looking for the lowest price.

Other marketplaces like Alibris and AbeBooks rate you as a seller based solely on your fulfillment percentage. However as you move into dealing in high volume, a lower fulfillment is just part of doing business.

Feedback and ratings are something to be aware of, but don’t lie awake at night worrying about it. If you’re generally doing the right thing, you’ll be just fine.

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Sell Books Blog Guide to Customer Service (part 2 of 3)

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Selling books, like selling just about anything else, means dealing with customers. In part 1 we talked about difficult customers. In this post we’re going to look at customers who just out-and-out lie to you, the ones who try to scam you out of your hard earned money.

Beware of scammers. Especially if you’re selling used textbooks online. There are a lot of college students who will try to pull a fast one on you, but it can really be any kind of customer or any kind of book. They will especially target new sellers, so it’s important to be on your guard from the get-go.

A common scenario goes like this:

You’re selling a used chemistry text book, you list it, someone orders it and you ship it out. Everything seems like business as usual, until all of the sudden the customer claims he never received the book.

Now a certain percentage of customers who say they never received a book are totally legit. On the other hand, a certain percentage aren’t.

A lot of sellers, especially small, individual sellers will just believe the buyer and give out a refund.

This is why it is so important to use delivery confirmation or tracking, especially on more expensive books. A lot of the time if you get a customer who claims to never have received a book, you can just give them the tracking number and you’ll never hear from them again. But believe it or not, there are some who will stick to their guns, even in the face of evidence against them. They will try and beat you with persistence. They think they can bully you into giving them what they want, even when you know you’re right. Don’t let them.

What I do when I run into a situation like this is to provide them with the delivery or tracking information, and if they still demand a refund, I very politely invite them to file an A-to-z claim. They can’t file unlimited A-to-z claims, they only are allowed a certain number. Even the most persistant of scammers will usually leave you alone at this point.

Don’t be afraid to have an A-to-z claim filed against you, especially if you can prove you are in the right.

Using delivery confirmation is a hugely useful tool, and a great deterrent. A lot of potential scammers won’t even bother with you if you use it. It’s also just good customer service.

Be aware that the post office’s delivery confirmation isn’t the same as having a FedEx tracking number, for example. Often times the only status update you will see is when it’s delivered. If I get a customer asking where a package is I check, sometimes they’ll get lucky and there will be an updated status I can give them. Otherwise, it’s the usual spiel about media mail taking 1-3 weeks, please be patient, etc. The important thing is to respond.

The other consideration is where to draw the line, deciding what price justifies shelling out for delivery confirmation. I’m still experimenting with this, but I’d definitely recommend using confirmation for any book over $3-$5. Again, just taking this one step will dissuade a lot of scammers from going after you, especially because they tend to go after the more expensive books.

So I’ve told you not to let unreasonable customers take advantage of you. I’ve told you how to stand up to scammers. You may be thinking to yourself “That’s great, what about my rating and feedback? What about repeat business? Can’t these people sabotage my business?” I’ll address all that and more in part 3.

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Sell Books Blog Guide to Customer Service (part 1 of 3)

Friday, June 12th, 2009

complaint-2Selling used books online is actually a kind of retail sales. Even though you’re not standing in a brick-and-mortar store, handing people receipts and wishing them a nice day, you’re still selling directly to individual customers, and that means interacting with those customers to some degree.

A lot of people learned all they know about customer service at their first job, believing deeply in the wisdom passed down to them from some 23 year-old assistant manager: The Customer is Always Right.

I’m not one of those people.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating treating your customers in any kind of disrespectful or unprofessional manner. On the contrary. However, to be a smart businessperson, especially in this business, you need to be aware that there are those people out there who will try and take advantage of you.

Most customers will be a breeze to work with. Things happen. People know that. Even if there is some problem or issue, if you make the effort to communicate with them, if you respond to their concerns in a timely manner, a lot of customers will be willing to forgive and forget (up to a point). Communication is the key. Be professional, be respectful and be reasonable and most of the time things will go smoothly.

Then there’s the rest of the time.

Some customers will be unreasonable. Before you even have a chance to work with them, they’ve decided to be upset and nothing you can do will change their mind. Don’t sink to their level. Be just as professional and respectful to them as you would to any other customer, but at the same time, don’t give them the shirt off your back just because they throw a hissy fit. Just accept that there are some people who will refuse to be satisfied, no matter how reasonable you are with them.

The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer is a jerk.

Also, sometimes the customer is a scammer. More about that in part 2. Of course, you may be concerned that the jerks and scammers can damage your reputation. Don’t let them hold you hostage. In part 3 I’ll talk a little about customer feedback.

For now, let me just repeat that I’m not saying I think all customers are jerks. Again, most of them are very reasonable. I’m also not at all suggesting that you be rude or anything less than totally professional. I’m just saying that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Accept that fact, and don’t let a few bad apples take advantage of you.

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Selling Books Knows No Borders

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Many booksellers consider questions like “What books can I sell?” and “How can I sell my books?” but fail to ask themselves “Where can I sell my books?”.  Where on the planet can you find customers? What countries can you ship your books to?

Where can you sell your books? Worldwide.

It’s too bad that some booksellers don’t consider the international market, because they’re essentially closing themselves off from countless potential customers. Maybe they think selling internationally is too complicated, or they just don’t want to spend the time to learn how to do it. I can’t say for sure why some sellers don’t take advantage of the world of opportunities out there, but for me, it’s a no-brainer.

Think about it. There’s 6.7 billion people out there. How much are you limiting yourself if you only sell in one or two countries? Admittedly, in practice selling worldwide doesn’t mean exponential increases in sales. But if there are any customers out there who want to buy my books, why wouldn’t I make myself available to them?

I’ve sold books in more countries than I can list. Name a country and I’ve probably sent a book there. A lot of those sales (especially the ones to more exotic locales) are from my website, but I’ve also sold on:

  • Amazon
  • Amazon UK, DE, FR, CA
  • Alibris & partners
  • AbeBooks
  • Ebay

To sell on Amazon UK [United Kingdom], DE [Germany], FR [France], or CA [Canada], you need to set up a bank account in whichever country you are doing business.

If you want to get into international selling I recommend checking out WorldFirst a UK-based foreign exchange broker. They specialize in this kind of thing.

Shipping
Just like shipping domestically, you have different options for shipping abroad. There are Brokers, UPS Mail Innovations, DHL (usually for larger shipments), and of course, our old friend USPS.

Pricing
Be sure to take into account currency exchange rates. You may also need to compensate for the fact that shipping credits won’t always cover your costs.

This is just the briefest of brief overviews on selling internationally. The point is to be aware of what’s out there, and to take advantage every opportunity.

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Paying Taxes on Online Book Sales

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

**DISCLAIMER** The following is based on my own experience, yours may vary. I am not claiming to provide professional financial advice, legal advice, or tax advice. Find out for yourself what the laws are where you live, and consult a professional before making important decisions.

Sales tax can be a sticky subject in the world of online bookselling. If you sell on Amazon, you’ve agreed to Amazon’s Participation Agreement (whether you know it or not). One of the terms of that agreement reads as follows:

Sales, Use, or Similar Taxes. You agree that it is the Seller’s responsibility to determine whether sales, use, or similar taxes apply to the transactions and to collect, report, and remit the correct tax to the appropriate tax authority. You also agree that Amazon is not obligated to determine whether sales, use, or similar taxes apply and is not responsible to collect, report, or remit any sales, use, or similar taxes arising from any transaction.

Basically this means that Amazon will not collect taxes for you. There is also no mechanism for you to collect taxes through Amazon. This means that whatever taxes you owe, you have to take directly out of your profit. In my opinion, since Amazon is the one collecting payment, they should really should be the one to collect the taxes. But the fact of the matter is that they don’t.

The good news is that for now, sales tax generally only applies to sales made within your state. I have heard rumblings that in the future internet sales tax could apply to all states, collected either by the state or even federal government.

If you look around on sellers’ forums you’ll find people doing all kinds of armchair lawyering, talking about this loophole or that loophole. For example, I’ve seen people claiming that you don’t have to pay taxes on Amazon sales in a certain state because Amazon is considered a “virtual consignment shop”. Be smart. Don’t take legal advice from anonymous people on the internet. They won’t be there to turn to when the taxman comes knocking. Find out for yourself what the laws are in your state. If you think you don’t have to pay taxes for any reason, you’d better get it directly from the government and you’d better get it in writing.

I also hear about sellers who just try to “fly under the radar”, not paying sales tax, not reporting their income when they know full well that they are legally obligated to do so. Don’t do it. It’s a huge risk, and it’s just not worth it.

Personally, I pay my sales tax, and in when it comes to Amazon, I pay it out of my profit. I may not like it, but not paying is just not worth the risk. My business is a corporation, which provides certain benefits, especially since I have employees, etc. It’s works out better than being a sole proprietor, LLC, or partnership for me. I’ve made all these decisions with the assistance of professional advisers. I always consult my accountant, my attorney and my banker. They are experts. I’m not, and you probably aren’t either.

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