Guest post by James Cecil, Candlelight Books LLC.  I love these personal story posts.  Please contact me if you’d like to write about your personal experiences with selling online.  As a reminder, I always pay $10/post for 500 words or more upon approval. – Adam

Today, April 16th, 2011, was my first actual Friends of the Library book scouting adventure. Prior to getting ready for this venture to a library book sale I visited scoutpal.com and read everything about the service on its website there. I also read what other book sellers have said about it from reading their postings from the sellyourbooksonline.com blogs and forum postings topic “Third Party Tools” subtopic “Best Scout Service”.  Yes, I did check out the other book scouting software as well however, ScoutPal was the only one that worked with the Tracfone LG cell phone.

Before I began, I visited the ScoutPal website and checked out the information there about the service.  What I liked about ScoutPal is that they offered a week’s free service trial as well as easy to follow instructions on how to set up your phone to use with ScoutPal. After I got everything set up on my phone I took a couple of books from my inventory and ran them through the service. I also visited another website and that website was BookThink.com. BookThink.com has a ScoutPal guide for new users written by Craig Stark dated February 14th, 2005. This article contains information on what not to do with ScoutPal, how to practice with ScoutPal first, formatting your ScoutPal information, and how to interpret the data you get back from a book that you just researched.

Having read Mr. Stark’s ScoutPal guide I then proceeded on with configuring the data that I wanted ScoutPal to send to me when I researched a book I thought might be worth selling.  The data I chose  ScoutPal to return to me was the Amazon’s price, the lowest used price, the lowest new price, the lowest collectible price, the lowest price overall, the sales rank and a formula. The formula is where you can set up an array that will check the criteria of what you have set up. For example say I wanted to have this formula check when I do search for books that meet $10 or more I would simply write the code up as:

if (lowest >= 10) {
return(‘BUY!’);
}
if (lowest <= 10) {
return(‘MAYBE’);
}
if (lowest = 2) {
return(‘KEEP LOOKING’);
}

Adam’s note:  Scoutpal is the book scouting application that I started with.  Prior to developing my own custom receiving application I also previously used Scoutpal in a different way (as a receiving application).  I would buy leftovers from sales and other places and have my employees sit and scan all day.  I used this formula that James is talking about extensively.  Just for illustration here is the one I used.  If you think about it logically, you can probably make out what it’s doing.  As you can see, Scoutpal is much more open than other scouting services and if you’re technically savvy you can really do a lot of things with it.  The only downside is that it doesn’t know anything about FBA offers.

salesrank = ’0′ . salesrank;
if (countused < 1){
return(‘List Stack (Lone Wolf)’);
} elsif (countused > 1000){
return(‘Discard. (Too much competition) Try bookscouter.’);
} elsif ((salesrank >= 1) and (salesrank <= 1000000)){
return(‘FBA Stack (<1M salesrank)’);
} elsif ((salesrank > 1000000) and (salesrank <= 3000000) and (lowest > 7)){
return(‘List Stack (<3M salesrank)’);
} elsif ((salesrank > 3000000) and (salesrank <= 5000000) and (lowest > 15)){
return(‘List Stack (<5M salesrank)’);
} elsif ((salesrank > 5000000) and (salesrank <= 20000000) and (lowest > 50)){
return(‘List Stack (>$50)’);
} elsif ((lowest > 35) and (salesrank < 1)){
return(‘List Stack (Unranked > $35)’);
} else {
return(‘Discard. (Salesrank/Price ratio too low) Try bookscouter.’);
}

Satisfied with the setup I waited till the weekend to venture out to the Friends of the Library book sale here in Richmond, Kentucky. Granted, it wasn’t the Wednesday night’s sneak peek. That is the night that vendors get to come and look through all the books that the library is selling before the general public gets to come in and purchase books from the library. Since I’m running my business here on a part-time basis I was not able to attend the sneak peek night due to two factors. One my current employment and secondly it was not payday for me yet.

Saturday afternoon my wife and I ventured out to the Richmond Mall where the Richmond and Berea Library sale was being held. My wife picked out some books, VHS tapes, CD, DVDs, Audio Books, and CD’s for me to research. I ended up hand entering each one that she placed in front of me and  consulted the results. I got a lot of maybes and 2 buys from the ScoutPal service. When we both were finished with book scouting we then walked our two boxes full of books and VHS tapes over to a counter to where I did a final analysis of my books. I then applied a six sided damage check to each item for any damages.  I then asked myself if I would buy this at Amazon if I was it listed. Four books out of my current selection didn’t make it past this point.  In fact, one of these really felt like it wouldn’t generate enough profit for me regardless of its condition. That decision was based on the sales rank of the item. In all I walked away only paying $34 and spent an hour book scouting. Now my next phase is to clean the new inventory up that I’ve got, set the price of each item and list them in my Amazon bookstore.

Also, by going to this sale I learned that for a $10 membership sign up fee the local library here will alert me of when they plan on having their next sale. I also left them with a business card too. As a side note, during my book scouting adventure there was a lady who was looking for a dinosaur book for her son. Naturally I had found one and despite the fact that the result I got back from ScoutPal about the book I quickly handed book to the lady and asked her if it was the one she was looking for. It wasn’t but the size of the book and the amount of illustrations of the dinosaurs that sold the lady on the book but the one I just gave to her she had exclaimed “This one is much better for my child.  There are more pictures in it.” She thanked me and my wife and we both told her she was welcome and we continued on with our book scouting. Yeah, I could have just said nothing and kept the book for myself and made a nice profit off it but in a way I made a customer happy at that very moment. I’m happy with what I have purchased from my book scouting adventure and just may go back tomorrow and see what else I might be able to get.

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Have you ever been to a Friends of the Library book sale to pick up some new inventory and found other online booksellers there?  You most likely have because I have no idea how many of us are out there but I’ve encountered other online booksellers at just about every Friends of the Library sale I’ve ever been to.  It’s been mostly a cordial experience because there have been more than enough books to go around.  While I’m in the medical section, another may be in the biographies while another may be scanning away in the animal section.

In a perfect world, I would be the only online bookseller at the sale and would have an infinite amount of time and energy to buy every single resellable book at the entire sale.  Because this is not possible, I’m completely fine with seeing my competition there.  Unfortunately, not all people are as happy to see online booksellers come through the doors with scanner in hand.

I recently received an email from a reader that subscribes to a Friends of the Library listserv mailing list and asked for my input on the issue of online booksellers at Friends of the Library sales.  I had a few things to say and with her permission, decided to make a post about it and ask for everyone’s input on this issue.

Here is the email I received:

I’m a librarian AND an online bookseller.  Recently I got this email on one of the librarian listserves I belong to:

“Our Friends have three book sales a year, and there are a few buyers (the same ones each time) who sell books for a living online and can be rude and aggressive toward other people at the sale, which is why we are searching for some guidelines or rules for book sales.  Does anyone out there have rules governing their Friends book sales as far as the use of scanners, number of books that can be stockpiled, and behavior of people frequenting the sale?  Has anyone purchased a scanner to scan donated materials?  If so, how has that worked for you?

Our prices for sale materials are:    $3 per hardcover; $2 per paperback; $1 for children’s hardcover materials; 50 cents for children’s paperbacks; $1 for other media (DVDs, VHS, CDs, cassettes, records, audiobooks), and $1 for puzzles and games.  I’d be interested to know what others are charging; recently we started a collectibles section for the more valuable materials, and that has done well thanks to the work of a wonderful retired librarian.”

I’ve left the names and library off so that they stay unknown… but I worked at this library for five years and have used the FOL sales to source my bookselling business for three years.  I understand the library director’s frustration because there are (I can really only think of one person) that is rude and has even pushed my husband while he was carrying our child.

I hate it when booksellers set bad examples.  My concern is that things like banning scanning devices (one suggestion on the list serve), limiting the number of books you can buy at one time (another) etc. will become common place and hurt booksellers as well as FOL organizations.

My business has supported the library generously with lots of donations and $$$ at the booksales.  I was at one library booksale recently where my business provided 5% of the money that was earned overall.  I also wonder what would happen to all of the books purchased if there were no online booksellers providing their service of finding and making books available to waiting buyers.

I want to respond to this email constructively… What would be your suggestion?

Here is my response:

Online booksellers and FOL sales go hand in hand.  On the same note, not all online booksellers are cordial.  There are simply generally rude people in this world that make things worse for all of us.  I’ve heard of this kind of behavior a lot and it’s very unfortunate.  I’ve been at a lot of FOL sales and they all have varied rules to combat this kind of behavior because unfortunately there are assholes at just about every sale.  It doesn’t matter to me if you’re making a living or not at selling books online.  If you can’t find more sources than just FOL sales anyway, you’re not going to be doing too much living.

The best approach I have seen a FOL group do is to allow scanners and allow people to buy as many books as they want.   As one book sale coordinator told me, “I don’t care how many books you buy for a dollar, as long as we get the dollar”.  That’s all FOL members should be concerned about because at the end of the sale, they have to pack up all the books that didn’t sell anyway.  Allowing scanners gives online booksellers a tool to use to buy more books and thus more money for the FOL.  Disallowing scanners would be a really bad idea for FOL groups as it would probably greatly hinder their sales.

One thing that should not be allowed is stock piling.  At some sales, the online booksellers will take entire tables of books at one time, run off to a corner, scan them and, if the FOL is lucky, put them back on the table.  Some people simply leave the ones they don’t want in a pile.  It’s horrendously rude.  That’s why I would put a rule in place that forbids this practice and enforce it strictly.

I agree about the relationship between libraries and online booksellers.  Libraries probably account for 75% of my inventory and most of the time they love me when I come in because I’ll either buy hundreds at the sales or offer them a few hundred bucks for all the leftovers so they don’t have to deal with them.  It’s been nothing but a good relationship so far for me.

So what does everyone else think?  Do you think scanners should be allowed?  Stockpiling?  Kicking online booksellers out all together?  I’m curious to hear other people’s opinion on this issue.

I recently visited a local Friends of the Library Sale this weekend and decided to shoot some video.  In the UNEDITED videos, I walk through the sale and discuss what you’ll typically see at a Friends of the Library sale, some tips to find the best books for your inventory as well as who to watch out for when you’re battling your way to the tables!

In this first video, the sale had not started yet but you can already start to see the people lined up around the tables waiting for the sale to begin.  I arrived about 20 minutes prior to the sale starting and there were some tables that had people lined up all the way around them already!

Before the Friends of the Library Sale

This next video was taken after I had purchased about 40 books and had my fill.  As I explain in the video, I don’t like these sales due to the competition but you really can get some very nice books.  Not only do you have to compete with other book sellers but you also have to compete for space with everyday patrons for space.  As you’ll see, the space is tight in some areas where the demand is high for example the music table.

During the Friends of the Library Sale

The lesson of this post is that if you ever see a guy with an iPhone walking around a book sale stalking other online booksellers all in the name of education, tell him Hi!, it just may be me!