Are you thinking about branching out from Amazon, eBay or Abebooks and starting your own online bookstore business?  Perhaps tried sites like Chrislands already and found that you’re getting 10 sales a month compared to the 100 you usually get from Amazon?  There’s a reason; marketing and trust.

Taking a step back, I sell only on the big book sites like Amazon, eBay, Alibris, Abebooks and Half.com.  I’ve been doing this for almost 2 years now.  It’s been an exciting yet very time consuming , required a lot of hard work and has cost me thousands of dollars.  By piggy-backing on other websites that have already spent tons of money on marketing, a technical infrastructure to support themselves and countless employees, they’re not going to let you play for free in their playground.

As the end of the other month just rolled by I sat back recently to reflect on my sales and the expenses that were incurred.  Where did my sales come from?  Where did I spend all of my hard-earned money supporting the business?  It was a little shocking when I saw how much was going to Amazon in particular but all of the other sites also.

Full disclosure; during the month of July, my sales were around $8700.  Sounds great, right?  However…you knew there was a catch.  That’s GROSS numbers which doesn’t take into account marketplaces fees and other expenses.  Out of that number, Amazon alone took a staggering $3,300 for themselves not including all of the other sites albeit much less.  That’s an automatic 38% right of the top!  Who in their right mind would pay that kind of cash to sell some books?  *raises hand*  ME!

These fees may scare people off but I consider it cost of doing business and would never consider starting my own online bookstore business.  As I said before, these sites have spent countless dollars skyrocketing themselves to the top of the online bookselling heap.  Google “books” and see who comes up on the first page.  These are the sites that buyers will want to buy their books from.  The sites have the exposure and also the trust of the buyers.  I wouldn’t want to buy from joeschmoesbooks.com when I could just as easily get the book most likely much cheaper and faster from Amazon.

Am I the only one in this business that would never consider opening an online bookstore business site of my own?

- Adam

HOUSEKEEPING NOTES:  Development of the Amazon (and future marketplaces) sales and fee tracker app is really taking shape.  If you’re not familiar with this up and coming application it will be meant to provide automatic and accurate reporting of all complicated Amazon sales and fees.  When signing up, the user will simply input their Amazon (and other future marketplaces) seller information and you will then be presented with accurate and up to date reporting capabilities for bookkeeping and also for tax purposes.  If you’re interested, be sure to sign up for the mailing list on the form on the home page.