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A reader wrote in to ask what would booksellers do when Half.com is discontinued. For those of you who have been faithful to this selling site and haven't yet ventured forth into the other reaches of the world wide web, let me assure you-the terrain may change from time to time, but it's not hard to protect your income if you branch out to use several services.
There is what seems to be a two-tiered system of sales on the Internet. The mega-sites include Advanced Book Exchange, Alibris, Amazon. These sites are working hard to become top dog. They're constantly forging partnerships with other sites that allow you to broaden your listings on the Internet without incurring additional cost. This means that if you sign up with Abe or Alibris you can still list on Amazon through them; the same holds true for Barnes & Noble (http://www.bn.com). Other partnerships include foreign sites, specialized library listings, and other more obscure venues.
The second tier will generate fewer sales but do reach more serious booksellers and collectors and so they can't be discounted. For the sake of space, however, we'll divide this article into two parts. This issue will give a general overview of the Big Three, the next one will tackle the others like Bibliodirect, Choosebooks, etc.
Advanced Book Exchange
http://www.abe.com
Advanced Book Exchange is based in Victoria, British Columbia and began in 1996 with a married couple. Keith Waters was a web programmer, his wife Cathy ran a local used-book shop. Her need to find obscure titles challenged her husband and with the help of his friend Rick Pura, they launched Abe.com, a site that houses titles for sale by independent booksellers. Today the company hosts more than 45 million titles for over 10,000 booksellers. Ninety people work for them, and the service is excellent.
Abe helps Newbies by providing a free database management system called Homebase that you can download from their Web page. Homebase is easily used and can upload your inventory to the other sites without a problem. The most important thing to remember when starting out: delete your sold books faithfully before you reload so that you won't have sales generated for books previously sold.
The cost is simply defined with Abe and is based on the number of books you have listed with them.
No. of books/Monthly Fee
- 0-500 US$ 25.00
- 501-4000 US$ 37.00
- 4001-10000 US$ 42.00
- 10001-20000 US$ 53.00
- 20001-30000 US$ 80.00
- 30001-50000 US$ 125.00
- 50001-100000 US$ 175.00
- 100001-150000 US$ 225.00
- 150001+ US$ 300.00
Abe charges a monthly base fee of $25 even if you do not have books online. Above this cost, Abe charges a 5% commission on the price of the book price (maximum $25 per book). Abe will process your credit cards for 5.5% of the total order per transaction. For more about selling fees, see http://www.abe.com/docs/Sell/fees.shtml and for monthly fees outside North America, see http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SubscriptionRatesPL.
There is direct contact with your customer through Abe. They provide the mailing address and email. Your information is readily available to the customer through the homepage Abe provides, making this the easiest site to find an individual seller.
Partnerships or affiliates include Amazon.com Marketplace, Barnes & Noble, Half.com, BibliOZ, Akaikutsu, libraries and eBay.
Abe is a favorite among sellers because they have maintained true to their original format. When Internet selling first began there were several sites like Abe that were acquired and morphed to fit a larger, less personal model. Interlock became Alibris, Bibliofind was swallowed by Amazon. The greatest selling point for Abe is the retention of personal contact between buyer and seller.
Alibris
http://www.alibris.com
Alibris does not charge a monthly fee but does take 20% of the books' selling price up to $499. Items worth $500 or more are charged 10%. This fee covers Alibris' cost for processing credit cards, customer service, and marketing. (Find out more at http://sellers.alibris.com/why.cfm.)
You are required to maintain a minimum of 500 titles at any given time. Alibris can accept uploads from standard databases, even tab delimited files like Excel. You must, however, notify Alibris about the kind of database you'll be using if it is not tab delimited. Alibris demands a minimum fulfillment rate of at least 85%.
Alibris aggressively markets its site, and sellers using it can see results, especially when school terms begin.
Like Abe, an order-management page helps sellers handle sales. Sometimes books are shipped directly to Alibris' warehouse in Sparks, NV, other times it is a direct shipment to the customer.
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com
No other site has cast a larger shadow on the Internet landscape than has Amazon. It began selling new books, and that remains its staple. But over the past several years, it has acquired and developed used-book selling venues that allow individual sellers to piggyback onto the Amazon listings. When you search for a particular book, the new one pops up. Below you'll see a link to buying the book used, and that will take you to the Marketplace listings for that title.
Amazon has a dual role and therefore special restrictions apply. Sellers must price at or below Amazon's price for the same title. If the book you are selling is collectible (containing a signature or being out-of-print), the price must be higher than what Amazon is charging for its new one.
Amazon requires a Pro Merchant subscription if you are a volume seller (see http://digbig.com/3few.). If you're regularly listing on Half.com, you can consider yourself a volume seller. The cost for this is $39.99 per month.
Amazon charges 99 cents plus a percentage of the transaction (Pro Merchant subscribers do not have to pay the 99-cent fee). For books, this commission is 15%. More information about selling is found at http://digbig.com/3fwd.
Amazon maintains a transaction table with all sales registered. Overall the three sites provide a lot of exposure for sellers and generate a good number of sales. Notifications of sales are emailed to the seller and revenues collected are transferred to the seller's bank account on a regular basis. Returns are handled by the venues. Refunds are made through Abe and Amazon through the order maintenance pages, but Alibris doesn't make it easy, preferring to handle all aspects of the transaction in-house.
All the sites provide a packing slip that should be included with each book shipped.
With regard to shipping, the services apply a portion of what they charge to cover your costs. Abe is the most generous with a $3.75 fee for media rate shipping. They encourage you to swallow the additional ten cents to send the package priority rate but will not complain if you do not. Alibris and Barnes & Noble allow you $2.30 for media rate shipping, Amazon hands over $2.26. Priority reimbursements hover at the $5 mark.
It was once the standard that for every thousand books you have listed online, you will sell one per day. That has changed over the years and now sales can exceed this level if the books you're selling are desirable. All the sites regard their sellers as having professional standards and expect prompt shipping and exact descriptions.
Since fulfillment rates count these days, it is important to keep your database up-to-date by deleting sold titles and uploading regularly.
It's also important for you to maintain shipping records. If a book goes astray or a customer makes a complaint, the service expects you to provide an explanation. This is easily accomplished by keeping a list of your postal tracking numbers with the transaction information.
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