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We recently had a letter to the editor from someone wanting to become a bookseller. Since the response was long and involved, I promoted it to a 2-part article. I am relying on my own experience as a bookseller, peppering my comments with suggestions I've gotten from other sellers. In Part 1 of this article, I suggested to our reader that he ask himself some important questions before he commits to a shop http://www.bookologist.com/cab/abu/y203/m10/bk0014/s03.
After my initial reply to Fred, he wrote back to say:
Thank you for responding to my inquiry. It is greatly appreciated. I am doing research on the shop. If I am able to acquire the building, it will hold 25,000-30,000 volumes with lots of storage. The location is Binghamton, New York. Although before beginning the actual store, I wish to do an online business. I need to get my feet wet and learn. I have had retail experience in managing as well as a chief executive office for public school as business manager. I have been doing research on Alibris and ABE books, which you know are online book sellers clearing house.
Could you recommend a booksellers software package that you would be able to enter the book information and selling price of the books that would work on both of the above sites? I wish to purchase one this week. Thank you so much for your valuable time. It is greatly appreciated.
Here's my reply to Fred and other booksellers who find themselves in a similar situation.
My recommendation for a database program is Homebase. It's free through Abe.com" and works with all sites. Alibris has its own program but they demand an exclusive, using only Alibris for a year, if you use it. Homebase has no restrictions and includes an ISBN look-up and a pricing tool. We use it but our experience shows that the database becomes unstable after 5,000 volumes. Books that we deleted for sale suddenly reappear without our knowledge and this can cause problems because some of the services require a high fulfillment rate. Our solution was to use multiple Homebase listings and to load all through Readerware. Their site is http://www.readerware.com and as you'll see from the home page, they will provide you with a free bar code reader (it is the same cue cat that Radio Shack was giving away free some years ago. It is a cute little bar code reader that's shaped like a sleeping cat.) Gary Nargi of Bowerybay.com recommended it to us and we've been happy with it. You may like their 30-day free trial. Gary also uses and recommends Booktrakker at http://www.booktrakker.com, but we had some difficulty with that program because we have a network system that was incompatible with it. Since they, too, offer a 30 day free trial you can always see for yourself how it will work for you.
Through Abe and Alibris you can sell on Amazon and BNBQ (Barnes & Noble). They are good sites to list with because they generate steady sales. You will have to maintain a high rate of fulfillment with them, so deletions for sold books must be made regularly on your database, and reload to the selling sites often. Purge regularly, too.
As for making a choice between Abe and Alibris for the partnership programs, we chose to list on those sites through Abe but sometimes I regret that decision. Alibris has a nice orders page that allows you to enter transactions more quickly. Since we are networked, we always check on the availability of a book before we can be sure to accept the order. Alibris allows you to see customer information prior to acceptance, whereas Abe does not.
Listing ISBN books will allow you to fly through listings. Our employee Heather can do up to 900 books in 6 hours. We maintain a database of about 10,000 books that are solely on Amazon.com (paperbacks handled by one employee) and for that we use Sellerengine at http://www.sellerengine.com as a listing and upload tool. (They, too, provide a free cue cat). Amazon is a nice site because they automatically delete your sold titles, and their system is more reliable than Abe's in that respect.
Pricing tools can run from $100 to $750 and are most useful for ISBN books.
If your books are older, non-ISBN books, Rockingstone has a pricing program called RS SearchStore that's the most expensive one out there. They do demonstrations at the ABAA fairs and it seems reliable tool, but it works on "lifting" descriptions from the Internet. You can see their demonstration on their Web site http://www.rockingstone.com.
Our staff researches non-ISBN books using Bookfinder.com and does another check with Amazon for newer, non-rare titles. (Amazon listings don't appear on bookfinder).
We use post-its that are filled in with a book number assigned by us, the location where it will be stored (warehouse, shop, show stock), and any important inclusions like first edition, signed book, etc. Any special notations are written below and tacked onto the first page of the book. Our typist then lists it into the database. She types about 50 words a minute (faster if she doesn't worry about spelling) and can do 75 to 100 non-ISBN books a day (she works 6 hours). It takes an equal amount of time to prep the books for her.
Some of the other sites we use are BiblioDirect and ChooseBooks. There are others (UsedBookCentral, BookAvenue, etc.) As for creating your own site, you might try looking at Chrislands.
I hope this helps. Please use our forum to ask other sellers what they recommend. We have a great, savvy group that is about the most helpful bunch of people I've ever seen. Please let us know about your progress.
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