May 8th 8:00am PDT Scheduled Down Time on Alibris Inventory Management

Next week, Alibris will be launching the first stage of a major initiative to improve our inventory management system and prepare for significant growth to our business. When complete, this project will help ensure that changes to our sellers’ inventories are processed more quickly, as well as improve our search functionality. The launch will begin at 8:00am Pacific time on Friday, May 8th and end at approximately 12pm on Sunday, May 10th. We will update the service alert on our Seller Hub as the launch progresses, as well as if the schedule changes. During this scheduled down time, please note:

• We’ll continue to take orders on our websites and from partners, but they will not be sent to sellers—the orders will queue and be released to sellers on Sunday
   
• We will not process any inventory files uploaded by sellers until the work is complete—uploaded files will queue
   
• Inventory management functions on the Seller Hub will not be available
   
• We’ll be adjusting the five day auto cancel function to allow sellers a few extra days’ processing time

I just got done recording my first screencast showing everyone how advantageous it is to sell on Amazon vs. some of the book buyback sites. It’s pretty basic, but informative nonetheless. I always like showing example and I think it really helps some people grasp the concept a little better if I’m actually showing you what to do and how to do it. I plan on doing many more in the future so please check it out here!

I could go on and on about selling books online and a dump of my brain would take longer for a 7,000,000 sales rank book to sell on Amazon. So, I am asking you, my audience what you are looking for in education of how to sell books online either than be selling on Amazon, selling on Half.com or simply selling books anywhere on the Internet.

Would you like to know more about just selling on Amazon? Do you want to be more agnostic in regards to online marketplaces?

Let me know in the comments!

Amazon is the leading company to sell your books on.  Amazon is, by far, my biggest money maker.  eBay comes in a distant second followed by Alibris.  Amazon is where you will want to concentrate the majority of your time.  I list on multiple marketplaces because I wanted some additional exposure, but if you are just starting out, I recommend Amazon.

Amazon has two different programs that you can participate in when trying to sell things on their site.  The first is the standard method where you can simply click on the Sell yours here button.

This method will get your book listed on Amazon, but you will still have to pay an additional $0.99 fee tacked on to the already 15% commission as well as the $1.35 fee.  Now if you’re only selling a few books here and there, this is the way to go, but if you’re ever planning on going to sell more books on a regular basis, you will want to look at the Pro Merchant account.

The Pro Merchant account is an Amazon account that you pay $40/month for that gives you some additional options that you wouldn’t get if you were a non Pro Merchant subscriber.  You get to create product detail pages, forego the $0.99/sale charge, get to upload books in bulk among a few other things.  For complete details, reference Amazon’s Pro Merchant page.  The only way you would want to pay the $40/month is if you anticipate selling more than 40 books/month.  If not, it’s a waste of money.  For me, I’ve been a Pro Merchant subscriber ever since I started because I set out to sell thousands of books on a mass scale.  This may or may not be for you, but if you’re looking to make more money than a few bucks here and there, the Pro Merchant subscription will most likely be for you.

I will be planning to go in depth on each of these options and how to setup a Pro Merchant account in future blog posts and post a how to video.  Check back often or sign up for the RSS feed to get your updates automatically here!

Underselling your books could leave money on the table, but overselling could leave your book hanging out there inevitably.  A good strategy is needed in order to properly price your book to sell and to get as much money as possible from it.  Here are three strategies that you can use to get top dollar from any book.

1. Condition

Check the conditions of the other books that are selling online that are the same as what you are selling.  You don’t want to price your Like New book against an Acceptable one, would you?  If you are trying to compete with a piece of junk with your pristine tome, that will get snatched up in no time leaving tons of money on the table!  ALWAYS price against similar conditions.

2. Feedback

Your feedback and others’ feedback is also very important to keep in mind.  If your feedback is 99% and you notice that you have a huge mega seller on Amazon that has a feedback rating of 85%, as a customer, who are you going to lean towards for the more?  Price accordingly in regards to feedback.  You have the upper hand if your feedback rating is much greater than your competitors and you can generally command higher prices!

3. Descriptions

I can’t stand it when I go to Amazon and look for a used book and the description says something like “Satisfaction guaranteed!” or “1,000,000 orders shipped!”.  I could care less!  I don’t care if you have shipped more books than Amazon itself or your cliche customer service line is true or not.  I want to know what THIS book looks like, feels like and any problems associated with it.  Since I’m online I can’t actually touch and inspect the book so I want to know as much as possible about the condition of this book.  The description box is NOT there to put in flashy statements to get them to buy UNLESS it is AFTER a great description of the book at hand.

Has anyone else ran into any listings on eBay, Amazon or any other book selling site that you thought simply made no sense whatsoever?