It’s time yet again for another review of a book scouting service!  This week’s pick is asellertool.  Asellertool is third in the list of book scouting service being reviewed in this series.  If you missed the previous two you can get Scoutpal or Neatoscan at their respective links.

The very first thing I noticed while doing some research on Asellertool is that’s it’s the cheapest real-time book scouting service you’ll find.  At $6/month they’re practically giving the service away but keep in mind the term “real-time”.  This is the codename for “Internet access required”.  For Asellertool’s $6/month plan you’ll have to have a cell phone with Wifi or some sort of other data connection or you’ll have to get yourself a PDA with a WiFi connection.  If you go scouting don’t depend on WiFi being available.  You’ll get lucky sometimes but more times than not you’ll not have any WiFi.  With this being said, don’t get excited about this being the cheapest there is.  Since Scoutpal provides both services; real-time and a downloadable database at $9.95/month Scoutpal is the king of price here.

If you want to step up to their typical “download the database onto your PDA/cell phone and scan books instantly” program you’ll pay $25.50/month.  Admittingly, it’s still not too expensive but don’t get the two service mixed up.  You’ll always want to go with the “offline” method to where you don’t have to worry about having an Internet connection when you’re out scouting.

The next cool thing about Asellertool I noticed is that it supports a lot of the international Amazon marketplaces.  What does this mean?  It means that you can download the pricing information from Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr for example.  What does this mean to a small seller in the US?  Probably not much but if you’re a little larger seller or you’re located in these countries this might be a nice option to have.

What sets Asellertool apart from the others is that they provide you with an Amazon listing tool.  As far as I know, no other book scouting service provides a tool to help you actually get the books on Amazon.  You would normally do that straight through Amazon or another third party service.  This is a very cool feature that comes with the service and at $25.50/month you can’t beat it.

Another cool feature of asellertool is the audio feedback.  Almost all of the other services provide some sort of audio feedback when you scan a book but asellertool lets you scan it once to hear the “Boo ya!” sound to let you know it’s a winner AND lets you scan it again to give you an audio response read of the market price on Amazon.  That’s a very nice addition to this service as well.  I’m not aware on any other service that can do that.  Take a gander at the video above for an example.

One additional attribute that I found about Asellertool that concerned me a little bit is how outdated their website is.  Also, if you look on the recent news section to the right they haven’t had any “news” since September of 2008!  I hope they’re continually updating the software else you guys have some really old data your pricing from!

Full and fair disclosure:  I have never used Asellertool before.  Because of this I emailed them prior to this post to give them a chance to give me the rundown on their product and heard no reply.  I hope this isn’t indicative of overall sales and support communication so your mileage may vary.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review of asellertool.  If you’re using asellertool now or have used it in the past please sound off in the comments section as I’m sure other readers would love to hear some first-hand experience with the service.

As always, if you’re a new online bookseller and really want some in-depth content about how to get started, things to watch out, tutorials, etc take a look at my revised eBook called Used Books: Big Business.  The revised edition has a brand new chapter just on book scouting that leads you through the ins and outs of what it is and how it can help you achieve more profit from your used books.