Bookselling Tools: Auto Repricing (part 3 of 3)
As I discussed in parts 1 and 2, auto repricing is something you need to be aware of if you’re serious about selling books. Repricing can be done in different ways, but one of the ways I used to employ it is no longer an option thanks to something called consolidated SKUs.
Once upon a time, if you had multiple copies of a book you had a choice in how you listed them. A lot of sellers would individually list each copy of a book under individual SKUs. These were books with the same ISBN, same condition, everything. Back then, Amazon tolerated these kinds of seller’s listing practices.
The problem was that this led to large volume sellers practicing what’s called “page hogging”. They would list dozens of same title at a really low price so that all the buyer would see would be that particular seller’s books.
About 3 yrs ago, around 2006 Amazon started cracking down and really began enforcing the consolidating listings. Books with the same ISBN and condition now have to be consolidated into a single SKU.
That’s all well and good, but the issue, as far as repricing goes, is that consolidating the listings means that we can’t effectively age our inventory.
I used to use the age of my inventory extensively in setting up my repricing. New books would have one rule, and never be listed at at the lowest price. For books that hadn’t sold after 30 days, another rule would apply, putting some books at the low price. After 60 days another group of books would end up listing at the low price. After 90 days, it would pretty much all be listed at the absolute low price.
All that went out window with consolidated SKUs.
Instead of being able to keep track of how long I had had a book through FillZ, every copy of that book was now “aged” based on when the book’s SKU was consolidated.
Was Amazon in the wrong to require consolidated SKUs? I don’t think so. They had to do some thing about page hogging. It’s just one of those good news/bad news situations. I had to adapt, change how I did things, but I was still able to be successful. To sell online, especially through marketplaces like Amazon, is to accept that things WILL change. You need to roll with the punches, and understand all the tools and strategies that are open to you at a given time, so that you can best take advantage of them and succeed at selling books.
Tags: sell books
