Bookselling Tools: Auto Repricing (part 1 of 3)
If you are new to bookselling, you may not be aware of one of the most valuable tools available to you to help you sell books: auto repricing.
Basically, auto repricing is done through applications which are hosted either on your desktop or remotely on the web. You set up rules for a group of listings, and the software automatically reprices your listing based on listings by other sellers. For instance, you can set it to take the lowest price for a book and either do a price match, set the price slightly higher than that price, etc. Some sellers even set the rules to set the price lower than their lowest competitor but that, in my humble opinion, is just plain stupid. You can also set up more advanced rules, for example, you can set them up to base the reprice off of the third lowest price, rather than the lowest, or set them to match condition, etc.
I’ve used a few different repricing applications over the years. There’s some overlap with the companies I talked about in the post about inventory management tools.
Seller Engine
Site: www.sellerengine.com
I used Seller Engine early on (between 2003 and 2005). At the time, it was the best out there, but these days there are a lot more vendors to choose from. Seller Engine was great for me in that it gave me a the ability to scale and grow. Ultimately though, I decided that I needed to make a change. I got to a certain size and I just outgrew it. I needed something with a bit more flexibility.
Monsoon
Site: www.monsoonworks.com
When I used Monsoon, the main problem I had with their repricing service is that it didn’t offer a lot of flexibility. However, that was a while back, and things may have changed since then.
FillZ
Site: www.fillz.com
The great thing about FillZ is their flexibility. You can write your own script, set up any rules you want as to how to reprice.
This is just a very basic overview of how automatic repricing works and some of the services I’ve used. In part 2, I’ll go a little more into the “how” and “why” of repricing. Then in part 3, I’ll talk about how Amazon changed everything with consolidated SKU’s.
Tags: sell books
