How to Sell Books Online. A Familystone Publishing Product

Transcription

1 How to Sell Books Online A Familystone Publishing Product

2 Get Your PLR Rights HERE! You have the right to distribute/resell this document in anyway you wish but it must not be altered in anyway (unless you buy the PLR rights). You may sell/distribute this report via auction sites or include it in membership sites, but it may not be altered in anyway (unless you buy the PLR rights). You may use this report as a free giveaway for list building or as a gift to your list, but it must not be altered in anyway (unless you buy the PLR rights). Disclaimer: Familystone Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this product, or for any injury, damage and/or financial loss sustained to persons or property as a direct or indirect result of using this report. I cannot guarantee your future results and/or success, as there are some unknown risks in business and on the internet that we cannot foresee. The use of my information should be based on your own due diligence, and you agree that Familystone Publishing is not liable for any success or failure of your business that is directly or indirectly related to the use of this information. Familystone Publishing 2

3 This report is meant to be a short, yet sweet guide to selling books online, a more in-depth guide can be found at How to Sell Books using Online Auctions! Bookselling is attractive to many people because it conjures up ideas of Johnny Depp-esque characters that are dark and cunning like in the movie The Ninth Gate. Many other people are also attracted to selling books because of the amount of profit that can be realized from sales. Let s face it, what else can you buy for just a few dollars and turn around and resell for 10x to 100x the original price (that s legal, of course)?! In the past, many such people opened brick and mortar businesses with this very dream only to find they could not pay the operating expenses, or were forced to close their doors because of the competition of big chain stores like Barnes and Noble. With the advent of the internet, online bookselling has become a viable and very lucrative alternative to the expenses of brick and mortar establishments. Anyone who owns any books or printed material, or that can buy, borrow, or steal a few extra books a month can start their own online bookstore that is limited only by their will to succeed. The best ways to acquire books cheaply are from books in your own collection that you don t want anymore, from relatives, from library sales, from book sales, estate sales, and from ebay auctions of bulk items or misplaced listings, etc. These books can be found for.10 to $4 and sold for many multiples of that online. The best way to find the times of library sales and book sales is on booksalefinder.com. What Books Sell on Amazon? Not surprisingly, the books that sell well on Amazon are different than the books that sell on ebay. When you re at the book sales look for shiny books that look relatively new and un-abused. When picking out books, look for titles that aren t on the current bestsellers list because these titles often have the most competition and sell for pennies. Look up the books worth by searching for it by its title or ISBN. 3

4 What is an ISBN? A 10 or 13 digit number that can be found on the back cover or inside the front cover of almost all books. Note: If you are picking out books at the library sale you can set the books aside and check the worth by searching online on Amazon s site or by using Scoutpal. If you are at a book sale or thrift store you will have to look it up at home. If the book sales around your predetermined profitable sales price, take a look at the Amazon sales rank (on the book s page, scroll down until you see Product Details ). You typically want a sales rank that is less than a million. Books with a sales rank of six figures or less usually will sell quickly. Typically, if the sales rank is a million or more then Ebay might be a better option. Ebay will be a good option if the book s subject pertains to popular keywords because the majority of buyers on Ebay are searching for objects relating to a particular subject rather than specific titles. Metasites: Your new best friend Besides the millions of potential customers perusing the net looking for that next purchase, Metasites (book search sites) are the most important feature for online booksellers. Before the Internet, rare and out of print bookselling was an insider club that could only be entered through years of experience or the purchase of expensive volumes of auction record books and stacks of catalogues used for referencing. Thanks to the Internet, book values can easily be searched online with a few typed-in words and mouse clicks. Metasites, make bookselling easy and efficient for even the most inexperienced seller. They allow retirees, people cleaning out their attic, and children to be able to compete with even the biggest chain stores in the arena of e-commerce. The Parallel Universes of Online Bookselling The majority of Internet bookselling occurs in three very separate domains: one, in the area of the retail book listing platforms and the other in sites such as Amazon, ebay, and other auction sites. Very rarely do these worlds meet. Most people searching on Amazon or ebay will rarely search in other arenas for comparative titles or pricing. This is a good thing for you, the seller. Conversely, many book buyers purchase strictly from the book listing services and never bother to search for books on ebay, Amazon or Yahoo! Auctions Another great way to sell books online is to set up your own web page to sell your books on by using Google s marketplace formerly known as Froogle, or by driving traffic to your site using Adwords or Ebay. To get started with your own website you will need a hosting provider such as Hostgator! It is around $9.95 a month and allows for unlimited sites. If you need software to build a website Xsitepro is available. You may want to advertise to your site at first with Google s 4

5 Adwords to generate traffic. All you will need to do is set up a Paypal account that you can use for people to buy the books directly from your site. Book Listing Services: There are approximately 24 online book listing services of mentionable size that profit by charging either monthly fees based on the books listed or by commissions on sales, or both. These range in size from 100 dealers to 20,000, with a total dealer listings of anywhere from 100,000 to 70 million books. There are three big contenders of among these services. They are the three A s : Amazon, ABE (Advanced Book Exchange,) and Alibris. Amazon originally focused on new and in-print books for their first four years of business while acquiring a database of over 6 million people. Amazon has now expanded into hosting rare and out-of-print books through its Marketplace. A guide to selling books online through Amazon is available Here. The Advanced Book Exchange (ABE) is located in Victoria, British Columbia, and is the largest of the out-of-print and rare bookselling venues with 13,000 dealers that currently list around 70 million books. Alibris, the pioneer of the online book listing business, started up in 1996 under the name Interloc. Although they have changed their name and formating, they are still a major contender in the book listing field. There are smaller sites that are quite popular among the more experienced sellers and buyers such as Biblio, TomFolio, AntiQBook, ChooseBooks, etc., that charge lesser fees than the Big 3. ABE and Alibris offer their sellers "affiliate programs," where the seller's books are computer listed for sale in all Barnes & Noble stores, library and international sites. Amazon, ABE, and Alibris all charge monthly listing fees based on the number of books listed and a per book sale commission ranging up to 20 percent of the retail price for major sellers but sellers not looking to set up a Marketplace Store don t have to worry about the monthly listing fees at the expense of a higher percentage taken from the backend. This is still quite profitable for the small to moderate seller. Book listing services are inexpensive. Listing fees per book are pennies or fractions of pennies per month and Amazon and some of the smaller sites charge nothing to list books and only take a commission of the books sold. (By contrast, ebay auctions charge listing fees for 5

6 all auctions, and a commission on sell-through auctions.) Listing services allow the seller to set up shop without all of the reoccurring expenses associated with brick and mortar businesses. Listing services are practically 'set and forget' venues. After the seller has written-up his/her book descriptions and uploaded them to the listing service's server, they will appear for sale until the book is sold or the seller deletes the listing. The Downside Selling on book listing services such as Amazon can be very competitive for certain titles with sellers constantly vying for the lowest listed prices. Some books sell slowly on the listing services. Rare and desirable books, and those bargain priced, will sell quickly on the Internet - within days or weeks. But some of the books can, and do, take months or years to sell. You can generally expect to sell a quarter of your inventory within the first few months. The slower selling rate of some of the titles is made up for by purchasing new titles and by the profits made from the books that do sell. It s not hard to see the earning potential from a book bought for $2 and sold for $45. Bookselling online is a time consuming process. Books in stores sit on shelves waiting to be bought, whereas listed books have to be described, one at a time, and for large inventories consisting of thousands of titles this can take weeks or months. One should expect to spend a good portion of time responding to s, packaging, and shipping the books, but working for yourself beats just eking by on meager wages working in a cubicle all day, any day. ebay Auctions = Quick Sales From large auction houses like Sotheby's and Christies, through the largest highend booksellers to the smallest of the small fry, sellers have gravitated to ebay. In fact the majority, if not the vast majority, of online booksellers list at least some of their titles in ebay auctions. The reason is because ebay works, and works quickly. Books that can take years to sell on some of the listing services can be sold in a matter of days on ebay. ebay offers an enormous worldwide, potential market, its book buyers are far more impulsive than those who use the book listing services. Buyers looking in the listing sites typically seek a specific book title on a listing or book search web page. The buyers get specific results on the title(s) they are seeking, and purchase only that book or books. On the other hand, ebay buyers tend to search by category of interest and bid on anything of interest within the category, frequently books that they did not even know existed. Here is a well received ebook about selling on ebay, SaleHoo. The Upside Cash flow. The quick sale that ebay auctions provide allows a seller to turn over their stock rapidly, generating profits that can be used to purchase other books. 6

7 Book list sellers frequently have to tie up money for lengthy periods of time before an expensive book finds a buyer. A picture can sell better than a thousand words. Some listing service booksellers post photos with their listings, but the vast majority of listings do not. Magazines, documents, brochures, paper 'scraps,' as well as post cards (which sell particularly well) and the like are notoriously difficult to sell on the book listing services. With the aid of photos and the ability of the buyer to search by category, this sort of printed material sells quite well on ebay. Traffic and bidding wars. ebay has a huge amount of traffic on its site and users who are ready to buy. Also, as mentioned, many ebay book buyers do not check for book availability outside of ebay, and this leads to bidding wars that can drive the selling price of a book well above its retail. The Downside On average, books auctioned on ebay only get a high wholesale price but this often is considerably less than they can be listed individually for on the retail selling platforms. Over time, this is somewhat balanced out by bidding wars but normally only rare or desirable books sell for retail or higher in ebay auctions. ebay is a gamble. Success in any area of ebay auctions depends on who is up and browsing the listings during the auction, which can vary greatly from day to day. Books that fail to achieve a minimum bid on the first listing will usually sell for fractions of the minimum on a second posting. Be sure to remember, though, that the listing fees can quickly add up and cut into your profit margins. The majority of listed books WILL not sell on ebay. The new seller who buys a few boxes of common books at a flea market or auction and lists them indiscriminately onto ebay will probably lose money. The process of learning what sells and what does not sell on ebay can be costly in time and money. Like listing services, posting one-of-a-kind titles on ebay auctions is a time-consuming process. Starting Out The chat rooms and bookseller forums offer valuable general information, news and bookselling hints for both the novice and veteran seller. Many members of the forums are helpful people that are glad to answer questions posted to the sites. For these reasons, ebay and general bookselling forums should be considered the first step in entering the online bookselling market. An Open Secret When selling books online, the primary tool for anyone seeking to sell or buy books on the Internet are the Metasites, or book search sites. For checking book prices, availability and general bibliographic information, the main book search 7

8 sites are far more comprehensive than the search pages on ebay or the largest book listing services because they search the databases of all the main listing services (and parts of ebay and the Barnes & Noble site) for specific titles. Results are displayed by simply typing in the authors name and title or the ISBN. Search results can be refined by specifying 'first edition,' 'signed copies' and other qualifying filters on the search engines. The sites provider their service free of charge and obtain their income through banners and other advertising. Despite their superiority over other book search engines, the sites remain unknown to many book buyers and sellers. There are two main book search engine sites: Bookfinder.com This is the larger of the two search engines, currently covering books listed on at least 39 bookselling sites, including a partial search of ebay and Barnes & Noble. BookFinder allows for keyword searches and will sort books by lowest price and selling site, and can be set for French, German and Italian searches. Addall.com Smaller, covering at least 16 of the larger selling sites; the benefit is a quicker average search time of 16 seconds. Add/All offers the advantages of sorting by lowest and highest price books, by dealer, and allows alphabetized searches. Google and other general search sites can not search databases so many books on the specialized book search sites will not appear. But Google has great ability to search static pages where many booksellers advertise their books. Sorting the 'Pass-Through' Book listing Sites You want to sign on with the sites that generate good traffic and market attention reaching the largest spectrum of potential customers for their specific inventories at a reasonable cost. A means of determining the sales-generating potential of a site is web traffic and the number of sellers using the service. ABE (Advanced Book Exchange) Monthly Listing Charge: (0-500) $25 Commission Rate: 8% Participating dealers: 13,500 Total Listings: +100 million Joining fee: $25 According to spokesperson Richard Davies, ABE claims to sell 25,000 books a day on its five North American and international sites. ABE is the largest and probably the best sales producing site for used and antiquarian books. The commission rate is moderate and the site offers a free book uploading database, 8

9 Homebase. ABE's monthly listing fees begin at $25 for less than 500 listings and range up to $300 for 150,000 or more booksthe site offers affiliate programs including linkage with Half.com and Akaikutsu, a Japanese bookselling site; however, these affiliations tend to change with fair regularity as does the site's commissions and dealer rules. For instance, ABE's current affiliation with Amazon.com will end in October, at Amazon's behest. Alibris Monthly Listing Charge: $9.95, (0-500 listings) Commission: sales on their business-partner channels (Barnes & Noble, Books- A-Million, Borders, Chapters/Indigo, Ingram, and others), require 15% commision to that partner and either 5% OR US$0.25, whichever is greater, to Alibris. Total Listings: 60 million Participating Dealers: 10,000+ Joining Fee: $19 Alibris formerly under the name Interloc was the first major antiquarian book listing site, founded in Currently, dealers listing less than a thousand books can opt to pay a $1 surcharge per sold book $19.99 yearly fee instead of a monthly fee. Alibris rates its dealers with a five star system visible to potential buyers. It offers an extensive array of affiliate programs including an exclusive affiliation with Barnes & Noble and bn.com, as well as 7,500 research libraries among a total of 12 such programs. Amazon Monthly Listing fees: $39.99 (unlimited listings) Commission:15% Joining Fee: None Participating dealers: 20,000+ Total Listings: 70 million+ (estimated) Founded in 1995, Amazon now claims 13 million customers in 160 countries. While many of these buyers drop in for music, CDs electronics and toys, etc., Amazon began by selling books and it remains easily the largest Internet bookseller. Antiquarian books are offered through its Amazon Marketplace and shops programs. Sellers can list books by ISBN on any book published from the early 1960's on and BASIN's assigned ISBN numbers for earlier titles. Amazon remains a superior marketplace for selling every manner and form of book. 9

10 Biblio.com Monthly fees: 15% commission and no listing charge decreasing down to 7.5% with $40 commission cap on individual book sales and a monthly fee of $10 (0-10,000 listings) Participating dealers: 5,500 Joining fee: No fee Total listings: 50 million The largest of the commission-free sites based out of North Carolina-that offers phone tech support, total dealer-buyer contact and a high caliber of booksellers with quality books. ebay Stores Monthly Listing Charges: Commission Charge: 10% Joining fee: None Participating dealers: 10,000+ (estimate) Total Listings: 2 million (estimate) ebay is more focused towards its auction programs, with the Stores not receiving as much attention; (an indication of this is the low estimated number of total listings verses the total seller estimate). Buyer/seller contact is similar to the auction format and dealer ratings via the feedback system. Froogle Now named Google Product Search Monthly Listing Charges: None Joining Fee: None Froogle has now been dumped by Google (as of April 2007) over the new Google Product Search is the product division of Google and listings cover a large range of products beside books, which makes a book search on the site slower than on dedicated book listing services. On the other hand, the price is right and bookseller Web sites are listed with full contact details. TomFolio Monthly Listing Fees: $45 (0-4,000 listings) Commission Charges: None Participating Dealers: 200+ Total Listings: 1.5 million (estimated) TomFolio is a bookseller's co-operative with a $500 buy-in share fee required. 10

11 Half.com Monthly Listing Fees: None Commision Charges: 15% for orders of <$50 Half.com is a division of ebay which means your ebay account username and password will work on Half.com. You have to be a US resident to have an account with Half.com though. The good thing about Half.com is that it draws a lot of the ebay community onto its website which means a high amount of traffic will see your listing. Half.com also will not charge you any fees if your product does not sale. Books frequently sell for more on Half.com than on Amazon or ebay. A well received book about getting started on Half.com is Sale Used Books Online. The above is just a partial listing intended to give a general view of the resources available in the current book listing service marketplace. (Log on to the IOBA website for a complete list.) Sellers need to find the proper niche for their specific inventory of books. Around percent of online book sales are for used books. This leaves the majority of the books sold on the Internet market to new, in-print, and niche markets such as college textbooks (a an extremely profitable market that is growing rapidly as more and more students are faced with ever increasing education expenses) bulk sales, paperbacks, bargain books, etc. Why ebay Auctions? The Parallel Universe Paradox Add to this the huge worldwide user base ready to buy and sell, and you have a dynamic book market unique on the Internet. Many booksellers have noted that books frequently sell for more on ebay than they can be purchased for on other online venues. Beyond the entertainment value and addictive qualities of ebay buying and selling, there is the general auction psychology that works in ebay's favor: a sense of competitiveness and the hope and/or dream of landing a bargain also drive the ebay auction buyer, as well as the all-american urge to acquire. ebayer s surf the site ready to buy. Further, surprising numbers of ebayer's confine their online book purchasing to the site never bothering to comparison shop on the rest of the Internet. The result is an excellent selling platform for those who know what their doing. Potential Buyers? Booksellers regularly trawl ebay for bargains, along with millions of book collectors advanced and otherwise, and general book lovers. Unlike those who seek specific titles on the book listing services, ebay book buyers tend to 11

12 search by keyword and category and are serendipitous and impulsive in their purchases instantly open to new ideas. Many of the largest auction houses, book stores and booksellers use ebay book auctions on a regular basis. What Sells? The first step in determining whether a book is eligible for auctioning on ebay is to determine its value. The most accurate gauge of performance on ebay is via an ebay search of current and completed sales. If this turns up nothing, then a check of the title on the book search engines should find prices for most titles. Bear in mind, books achieve, on average, a high wholesale price in ebay auctions. Avoid posting common books found in quantities of 20 or greater, or values of $10 or under, unless you are willing to accept prices of $5 and less or more likely, fail in selling the book. Previously thought of as a dumping ground for common books, 'dead stock' or bulk lots by veteran booksellers. ebay book auctions now encompass the entire range of books from overstocks to rarities. In between are every manner and form of book, magazine and ephemera offered in a sprawling array of categories and sub categories. Below are the main ebay book categories with the current number of active auctions and sub-categories indicated in parentheses: Non-Fiction: 155,531 (33) Fiction 102,781 (22) Antiquarian and Collectible 69, 809 (21) Magazine Back Issues 51,022 (33) Textbooks: 28,420 (21) Children's Books 49,018 (29) Other 6,139 Catalogs 3,995 Wholesale 2,754 Cookbooks 12,617 Because of the large number of books sold in each category it is best for you the seller to understand the sub-categories. Sometimes this requires listing in a category that might not at first seem appropriate. For example, a high value book that might seem best placed in 'Antiquarian and Collectible' may actually fit better in a Non-Fiction sub-category. An expensive title of modern fiction might perform better in 'Antiquarian and Collectible' under the sub-category 'Literature' rather than in a 'Fiction' sub-category. Keyword and description searches will help the book be found among the ocean of other sales 12

13 Cross Listing You, the seller, need to consider listing books or cross listing books in non-book categories which can be a better fit for a title's contents. This occurs in many categories. Books on any form of transportation from planes to trains will fit within a sub-category of Non-Fiction books but also in 'Collectibles' within an array of sub-categories under 'Transportation.' Cross listing items doubles the listing fees, but this expense can definitely pay off over time. Be sure to familiarize yourself with all the sub-categories in 'Collectibles' and in other major categories where you can find profitable niches for the subjects found within your books. Pamphlets, booklets, documents, brochures, trade cards, postcards and general paper ephemera are notoriously difficult to sell on the multi-dealer book listing sites that are geared towards specific author/title searches over keyword searches. General ephemera do quite well on ebay and can be posted for sale in several ways: in an appropriate Book sub-category or in the "Postcard and Paper" sub-category under "Collectibles." Sell similar topic books together to encourage multiple buys; the better the quality of the books, the more this makes sense. Be sure to mention in each of your books auctions that you have other books on the topic currently for sale. Another good idea to keep in mind is to list one or more books in the "Featured" section to draw attention to your listings. Keywords Keyword searches are what get an item found in ebay. Try to use up all of the 45-character header and the descriptive text of your sale with as many descriptive keywords and keyword names as possible. If a book's author or title is not well known, use the header to describe the subject matter if it is popular; and use as many keywords as are related to the book's subject matter as possible. For example, a catalog on a closed down soap factory in Boston, MA will probably attract more interest from the thousands of Boston collectors than the handful of soap connoisseurs. Be Descriptive Book buyers Love to Read. Play up the book with a good, detailed description. If the book is a good source of info tell the potential customer why in detail. As a general rule, no descriptive text can be too long as long as it sticks to the facts. This may take a little bit of time and effort, but it will sell books. 13

14 Condition is Key It is very important to accurately describe the condition of used books both as an ethical and practical point of avoiding buyer disappointment. If a superficially clean book has some inner defect, it must be noted, especially when hidden from view. It is equally important to offer an overall grading of a book. The universal grading system ranges from Very Fine (mint,) to Poor (fire kindling.) Don t worry if you are not experienced in grading books or do not know the terminology of grading, many of the major book listing sites will outline in detail the grading aspects of books as well as general book terminology. The Fast Nickel versus the Slow Dime Books on average sell for less on ebay than on the listing services and auction fees mount quickly, requiring sellers to choose carefully what they post for sale. Experienced booksellers adjust quickly to what sells in ebay book auctions you may have to devote time and effort to acquire the proper footing in this venue. The retail online book listing world can be volatile, in that the listing services are considerably more likely to change fees, rules and affiliations than ebay. But these venues are stable in that books can be offered to a worldwide market for indefinite periods of time at a cost of pennies a month. E-commerce bookselling can be quite rewarding over time, but remember some effort is required on your part. The books simply will not sell themselves. Now, what are you waiting for? Go list some books. Buy Master Resell Rights HERE! 14