Selling books on Amazon is just about mandatory for anyone wanting to get into online bookselling these days. You can make a lot of money there if you’re smart and you follow the rules. Amazon is in business to make money, and if allowing you to make some money along the way benefits their bottom line, they’re all for it. But never forget that it’s their playground and you have to play by their rules.
Most of the rules are in place to protect Amazon’s reputation. Amazon is the brand, they want you to be almost invisible to the customer, and that’s fine. But the second you start threatening the strength of their reputation, you become a liability and they will not hesitate to give you the boot. Don’t kid yourself; there are a billion other sellers out there climbing over each other to sell on Amazon. Amazon will not miss you. But if you can’t sell on Amazon you will miss that income.
Become familiar with “A-to-z” claims. If a buyer files one against you, you’re being accused of violating the terms of Amazon’s A-to-z guarantee, and you’d better hope you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s. Know the rules and follow them to the letter. I cannot stress this enough.
If you do not comply with Amazon’s condition guidelines you will lose the claim. If you list a book as “Like New” and Amazon considers it “Very Good” or “Good”, you are in the wrong. It doesn’t matter what arguments you can make for listing it as “Like New”, you will lose. Do yourself a favor and err on the side of safety, list your books’ conditions on the low side. It’s just not worth losing money or even your account over.
Similarly, if you don’t comply with Amazon’s shipping policies you will lose the claim. You need to be able to show you’ve shipped items within 2 days of purchase. There are different timeframes for standard, expedited, and international shipping. They don’t regulate how you have to ship it, you can use the post office, you can use UPS, you can have your brother-in-law drive it over in his ’83 El Camino. Amazon doesn’t care how it gets there, but it better get there on time.
I don’t mean to frighten you away from Amazon altogether. If you play by the rules you’ll be just fine, and like I said, there is definitely money to be made there. Just always keep in mind that Amazon will prioritize covering their own you-know-what.
Another example of one of the ways that Amazon protects itself is by putting a hold on funds for new sellers. This has pretty much become their standard operating procedure these days. They’ll put you on a “review” status, and you won’t get paid for up to 4-5 weeks. This is basically to weed out fly-by-night scammers who try to collect payment and never ship what they promise. It can be tough to wait out this review period, but it’s definitely worth it.
Not all of Amazon’s policies are restrictive, either. While they do put a hold on new sellers’ funds, one nice thing is that you can get paid early if you need the money. Typically you get your funds deposited every two weeks. However if for whatever reason you need the money sooner, you can request deposit of your balance before the two weeks is up. This is a nice perk not offered by others like Half or Alibris.
It may seem like a lot to remember, but I’ve really barely scratched the surface. Do you have any questions about selling books on Amazon? Let me know and I’ll try and answer them in a future post, along with more Amazon-related tips.
Tags: selling books on amazon
Is it better to give a detailed description of each single book or is it better to make a standard one for each condition type? While copying and pasting a standard description ls much less time consuming, I’ve realized that when I personally buy a book, I like to buy it from a seller who has checked the book personally and given it some thought. What do you think? Do you have any other way to go about it?