Q&A: Seller Engine says there's no Buyer's Waiting list anymore. Huh?

QUESTION: When searching for information about the recent changes to Seller Engine, I came across your site. I'm interested in Amazon's Buyer's Waiting feature. I found to my chagrin (besides the fact that their price increased) that this is no longer supported in Seller Engine Plus.

I wrote to Seller Engine to ask why, and got the following cryptic response from Jack Keegan:

"We are currently looking into this. Can you give me more information about buyer waiting, including a few ASIN's to look for the information? According to the research we have done, Amazon has not offered this service since 2004, so we are trying to figure out how to add it.
Thanks, Jack Keegan"

"Buyers Waiting" was phased out by Amazon in 2004???? But wait, I just sold a book via that method last week. Hmmmm ...

I have the trial version of Seller Engine 3.5 and it's still working but they will not allow new subscriptions to the earlier version. Is the whole service going to be terminated forcing the subscribers to buy SE Plus (or else...) ???

ANSWER: I've been using Seller Engine for about four years. I was one of the original buyers. I'd been a full time bookseller on Amazon for perhaps a year when it came on the market, it was the only software available then. I'm still using my original version, but the Seller Engine people say they're no longer supporting it. So the next time Amazon changes a feature, our original copies of Seller Engine will go up in smoke, I guess.

What does the double-talk you heard from Jack Keller at Seller Engine mean? It just means they decided they want a lot more money from their customers, and if you have a license for their original product -- well, you're just out of luck.

I don't have a lot of hard-and-fast rules. But one rule I do have: When I've gotten the shaft from someone, I stop doing business with them.

As far as I know, Seller Engine never supported Buyers Waiting. So whenever I checked a price on Amazon Marketplace using Seller Engine -- and no copies were listed on Amazon -- I'd check the price through Amazon's Web interface, just to ensure I wasn't lowballing a scarce book by accident.

The response you received from Jack Keegan proves how out of touch the Seller Engine folks are. You can see Amazon's Buyer's Waiting list right here. Obviously, there aren't any real booksellers involved in Seller Engine anymore, or Jack Keegan could have provided a real answer for your question.

Before they reneged on their promises to their original customers for lifetime service, I was one of Seller Engine's best customers. I paid full retail for their product, I recommended them in my book "The Home-Based Bookstore," and I recommended them on this Web site four or five times.

But I no longer recommend Seller Engine. I think it's critically important for booksellers to be able to trust the service companies their entrust their business with. Obviously, Seller Engine has proven themselves completely unreliable in that regard.

Security fears led to unpopular change at ABE

Consumer fears of identity theft and credit-card security prompted Abe.com to force its member booksellers to use ABE as their sole card processor, a company official says.

"There's a big security hole in our credit-card processing the moment we forward the credit card numbers to booksellers," particularly those who may have only recently joined ABE, said Boris Wertz, the company's chief operating officer.

Many ABE members are longtime sellers who also operate brick-and-mortar bookstores. Some ABE sellers have been upset since April, when ABE forced them to begin using its own card processing at 5.5 percent, while some of the sellers had been paying less than 2 percent through their own accounts.

About 40 percent of ABE members were using their own merchant accounts before ABE changed its policy, Wertz said in an interview with Canadian radio host Nigel Beale. You can listen to the entire interview here.

Some ABE members have been so angry that they've criticized the company in e-mails sent to book buyers.

But the security concerns, and a strategy to standardize the customer's buying experience, prompted the recent changes, Wertz said.

"We have a lot of heavy book buyers that buy multiple books on our site -- they buy three, four, five books from different booksellers," Wertz said. This could result in several different bookseller names appearing on the buyer's monthly card statement, and lead to confusion, he added.

"They might even forget about the bookseller's name, but they remember ABEbooks.com as the place where they bought their books," Wertz said.

A budding romance: Amazon and Microsoft

Today's eBay-Yahoo linkup won't change much for online booksellers, at least not immediately.

But things could get a lot cozier between Amazon and Microsoft, especially now that Google is shaping up as a big threat to Amazon.
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Q&A: Incorrect shipping addresses - how should I handle them?

QUESTION: I've had a few books returned because the Postal Service said they were "undeliverable" to the address given by the buyer. In some cases I've been charged "Postage Due" for the returns. What's the best way of handling this?

ANSWER: It's a no-win situation. If you accept the return and re-ship the book without charging the customer, you've paid postage three times. And if the customer simply asks for a refund, you're out two postage fees -- unless you subtract it from the customer's refund.

This problem is always the buyer's fault, but they never see it that way. They always claim -- and seem to believe -- that it was Amazon's fault, or PayPal's fault, for supplying an incorrect address. The most common culprit, I suppose, is buyers using Amazon's one-click checkout without checking the address.

The Postal Service will return Priority Mail packages at no charge. But they're supposed to charge you again for returned Media Mail packages.

I usually eat the postage costs in these cases, and consider it a cost of doing business. I'm unwilling to risk bad feedback on a customer who has already insisted they're "in the right." Once the customer has decided they're right, there's little chance you're going to convince them they're wrong.

Fortunately, address mixups have gotten much less common since Amazon began allowing customers to cancel orders they've placed within the past 60 minutes. Evidently most of the folks who've used an incorrect address are canceling after getting the e-mail showing their old address.
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Tired of bookselling? Try football jewelry...

Is there no shame?

Six months after Texas won its first national championship in football after nearly four decades, a Longhorn championship ring is up for sale on eBay.

By Wednesday afternoon, bidding stood at $4,495.00.

By contrast, a popular collectors book on the 2005 Texas football season is selling on Amazon for about $2. Those dag-gone lowballers!!


Texas athletic officials said they don't know who is selling the ring. Spokesman Nick Voinis said, "It's disappointing. It's something you should be honored to receive. Every other player is taking pride in theirs."

NCAA players are prohibited from selling championship rings, but there's not much to stop players from doing it. The school bought 200 rings for its players, coaches and staff.
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eBay asks for feedback on Express

eBay is conducting a survey on its Express fixed-price platform. Many sellers are taking the opportunity to complain about inconsistent search results since the Express preview began a few weeks ago.

In particular, booksellers are complaining that books aren't searchable by ISBN on Express, and that the addition of Express seems to have mangled search results for eBay's main site also.
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Treasure hunting with your cellphone

Is it possible to walk into a used bookstore, spend $100 on 10 books, and resell them on Amazon or eBay for $350 or more?

Yes, and it's getting easier than ever, thanks to cellphone price-lookup services like Scoutpal. Punch in a book's ISBN from its back cover, and these services will tell you the going price on Amazon Marketplace within a few seconds.

You'll pay about $15 to $40 a month for a subscription to one of these price-lookup services. That sounds pretty steep, until you figure it can double the profitability of your selling operation.

These price-lookup services will also help you find bargain-priced music CDs, DVDs, VHS videos, software, and video games.

Three recent innovations have made these pricing services a lot more effective and easy to use:

1. Integrated barcode scanners. If your cellphone has little keys and you have big thumbs, you'll appreciate having a scanner hooked up to your cellphone. Scanning the barcode is a lot faster than typing in the 10-digit ISBN.

2. "Buyers Waiting" flags. Just because the Marketplace price is $25 doesn't necessarily mean you'll sell your item promptly for $25. But if there's already a pending order on Amazon's Buyers Waiting List, you can sell immediately if you meet the buyer's specified price and condition. ScoutPal and ASellerTool tell you the value of any pending orders on Amazon, in addition to the Marketplace price.

3. "Unplugged" price-lookups. One of the newest innovations, MediaScouter, even eliminates the need for a cellphone connection. With MediaScouter, you simply scan the barcode, then use cached data you've downloaded to your PDA from the Internet. You configure MediaScouter to your preferences (for example, you might say a book worth $25 on Amazon is an automatic "buy"), and the unit gives you a corresponding beep for buy, or no-buy.

Here's more cellphone price-lookup services:
Bookhero. www.bookhero.com
AsellerTool. www.asellertool.com
BookScout. www.theoldbookstore.com
BookDabbler. www.bookdabbler.com

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Amazon offers full online access to books

Amazon has quietly launched a new feature providing full online access to books. Although electronic books have been around for more than a decade, this marks the first time that consumers have had full, unrestricted access to the full contents of standard paper-bound books -- the same books available in brick-and-mortar stores -- over the Internet.

Amazon hasn't announced the launch yet, but I noticed the new feature, which it's calling "Amazon Upgrade," today when I clicked on the cover image of a book. Before today, this would provide an enlarged image of the front and back covers, table of contents, and a few interior pages -- as long as the book's publisher participated in Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" program.

Now, Amazon Upgrade provides full online access to book contents for consumers who've purchased a paper copy of the book through Amazon. Full online access costs an additional fee of about 10 percent of the book's original retail price. For example, on a book I recently purchased, "eBay Powerseller Secrets," Amazon is now offering me online access if I pay an additional $2.48.

Will this affect the market for online sales of used books? Obviously, it could. If buyers have online access through Amazon to the full contents of an expensive reference book they've purchased, for example, they'd have few qualms about selling the paper copy to get most of their cash back. They would retain online access to the book through Amazon, and could easily search the entire contents using their computer keyboard.

Obviously, Amazon isn't trumpeting this new feature yet since only a tiny fraction of books are available so far. For example, only two of the hundreds of titles I've bought through Amazon are available now. You can find out which of the titles you've bought on Amazon are available online by clicking here.

Why are so few books available so far? It's a huge technical challenge to roll out online access to a book exactly as it appears physically. And undoubtedly it was difficult to recruit the first publishers to participate. Publishers participating in a program like this want to make sure there are airtight safeguards against piracy.

Google is also working on a program to provide full online access to books through its Book Search feature. Unlike Amazon's program, buyers won't be required to purchase a copy of the paper book. Instead, publishers will set a price for online access, and Google will keep a 30 percent commission on sales.

I'm interested in hearing comments from you on this new program.
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Friday chuckle: Irate customer challenges Amazon 'One-Click' patent

An Amazon customer in New Zealand was so irked by a slow shipment that he got the U.S. Patent Office to reconsider Amazon's 'One-Click' checkout patent.

And you thought you had problem customers!
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Amazon upgrades bulk-list tool for pre-ISBN books

Amazon is beta-testing an enhanced version of its Bookloader bulk-listing tool that will enable Pro-Merchants to automatically create book detail pages for older books without ISBNs.

I think this is the most important upgrade to Amazon Marketplace since it was created some seven years ago. Previously, sellers had to go through a tedious process of completing several complicated Web forms to add a book into Amazon's catalog. This new feature will greatly expand Amazon's place in the collectible-book market.

Here's the full story from Amazon's announcement board, and here's the new help file.
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Wall Street Journal features online booksellers

Today's Wall Street Journal carries a feature on online booksellers, including yours truly:

It helps to love books, but it's essential to know them. Market knowledge is especially vital for used-book vendors, who must glance at a title at a book sale and instantly decide whether they can sell it for a profit. With millions of titles in print and many millions more out-of-print books in existence, that's a challenge. Some second-hand booksellers rely on technology, scanning barcodes into handheld computers that look up likely market values from a database.

Entrepreneurs such as Mr. Wine and Mr. Weber prefer the old-fashioned way, relying on their well-developed sense of the market to decide whether to buy or pass, and how to price the books they offer for sale. "I like having to rely on knowledge and experience," Mr. Wine says. "And I like it that there are always going to be books out there that you've never seen or heard of."

Like Mr. Laties, Mr. Weber has distilled his bookselling experience into a self-published book, "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site." He expects the book to generate about $60,000 in revenue based on its sales since he first published it last October. That's got him thinking about writing more books, but no matter how he does as an author, Mr. Weber says he's not likely to quit selling books. "I figure I'm always going to do it," he says, "because it's fun."

One clarification: The story notes that I sell used books through this Web site, but as readers here know, I sell my wares on Amazon and eBay.
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Snipe Amazon bargains with free alert tool

I recently discovered a neat tool you can use to monitor items in your Amazon Wish Lists, and alert you by e-mail when prices hit your target.

WishList Buddy is a free Web-based service ripe with possibilities for online sellers and collectors of books, music or video.

You can ask for alerts on any item in Amazon's catalog -- new items, or used merchandise offered by third-party sellers.

For example, let's say you have a favorite hard-to-find used book. You know you can sell it for $75 instantly on Amazon or eBay, whenever you manage to find a copy. Using WishList Buddy, you'd know immediately if an inexperienced Amazon seller has priced the book too low. (Some sellers perform this same task using Buyers Waiting pre-orders to snag valuable books from overeager newbies. But with a pre-order, you're unable to examine the seller's feedback and condition comments before making the commitment to buy.)

WishList Buddy was developed by programmer Thom Wetzel, who uses it to buy music CDs. Instead of buying at the retail price, Thom waits until the CD has been on the market for a while, then snags one when a used copy becomes available for a few dollars.

I've tried WishList Buddy and it works just as advertised. After you sign up, it will ask you for your Wish List number. The quickest way to find the number is to view your Wish List in your browser -- your Wish List number is the last series of characters in your browser's address window after the equals sign.
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Q&A: What do you think of this new bookselling service?

QUESTION: I read this solicitation today and would like your opinion. The owner of the Web site distributed this message, complete with these misspellings:

To all Book Sellers!

A new service has been launched to offer private booksellers tools to open their own personal on-line bookstores. It menas that your customers will come to your bookstore and will see only the books that you sell. This service is significantly cheaper than amazon.com or any other on-line private bookstores.

You can visit out site at http://www.booksupply.org and open your own bookstore in minutes. The bookstore activation and hosting is free and you never pay a dime until your book sells. As a payment method it uses PayPal, which offers protection for buyers as well as sellers.

Thank you for you time,
BookSupply.org

ANSWER: It's a very attractive Web site, but it appears to be quite new. In fact, Alexa.com, which ranks Web sites by their traffic, has no information about this site, which means it's practically brand new and has no traffic.

It's not enough to simply list books on the Internet. You'll need to put them on a site that already attracts shoppers, or you'll need to invest the time in building such a site.

I'm also skeptical of a service provider who hasn't taken a moment to run their debut marketing message through a spell-checker. And I'd want to know the name and physical address of someone who's offering to host my business on the Internet, none of that information is provided.

On the BookFinder discussion list yesterday, I read where this domain was registered by someone with a Russian e-mail address, which is obviously a red flag.

Several vendors in this area have long track records and hundreds, if not thousands, of satisfied customers, including Chrislands and White Oak Books. Before doing business with BookSupply.org, I would want to see some links to its existing bookstore clients or testimonials on its Web site.

If I've been overly cautious about BookSupply and they do provide a reputable, competent service, I'll be very glad to hear about that.
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Q&A: Why do booksellers tolerate Amazon's high fees?

QUESTION: With seller fees so outrageously high on Amazon, why don't more booksellers do business on eBay? Amazon charges 15 percent, while eBay's final value fee is only 5.25 percent.

ANSWER: The total fees on eBay are more than you might expect.

About 18 months ago, I opened an eBay Store, put most of my inventory there, and was able to generate about $2,000 a month in gross sales. My objective was simply to see if eBay would be a worthwhile sales venue for me. I used a combination of fixed-price listings for my faster-moving, newer books, and auctions for some deadwood I wanted to clear out.

After about four months, I took a good look at the numbers, and was surprised to discover that eBay and PayPal fees were eating up 12 percent of my eBay sales. Since eBay selling required so much more time and attention compared to Marketplace, I closed my eBay Store. And the bottom line was, the prices I was getting for my books on eBay was, on average, less than the going prices on Amazon Marketplace.

Amazon does take a generous commission, but you should remember the main benefit you're getting in return: the ability to operate a business with no advertising costs and very little risk.

There's a good discussion happening on the eBay bookseller board this week about this very topic, and this post caught my eye:

I sell 10 or more books on Amazon to every one on ebay and half. It doesn't matter to me what their fees are - I wouldn't be in the book business without them. I love being able to add to their database. Prices are usually higher on Amazon than ebay - I guess people go there expecting to pay retail and are happy to find a bargain. (Here's the whole thread.)

It will be interesting to see if eBay's fixed-price Express platform will change the equation. I suspect Express will be a worthwhile venue if it enables Store owners to sell their newer books for better prices than we're seeing on Marketplace now.

During the past two weeks I've sold five books at fixed prices on eBay for about 25 percent more than the going price on Amazon. Based on that experience, I'm going to re-open an eBay Store and test the waters again. No doubt, traffic will increase on eBay this spring or summer when the advertising campaign for Express hits the airwaves.
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Q&A: Why are book sales so slow on Amazon now?

QUESTION: Our family has been selling books on Amazon for one year. I can't understand why sales are so uneven. We usually sell a dozen books a day, but lately it's only a few sales a day.

It's very frustrating. I've heard rumors of reduced listing exposure time due to some Amazon servers being down. Is there any other explanation for these dramatic lapses in order flow?

ANSWER: Just like you, I experience those ups and downs. First, let's look at some things that cause orders to surge:

Advertising
During certain times of the year, Amazon advertises in Sunday newspaper circulars. The ads never mention books, they're always hawking the big-ticket stuff like kitchen appliances. But I always see a boost in my book sales whenever those Sunday ads hit the papers.

Recommendations
As you probably know, Amazon stimulates much of its volume by sending personalized book recommendations to previous customers in periodic e-mails. If you've never seen one of these messages, here's an example:



My hunch is that these "Amazon Recommends" e-mails go out periodically in huge batches, and can produce a big spike in book sales when people receive them. Likewise, sales probably dip between these campaigns.

Amazon's recommendations will probably drive even more sales as its customer base grows and it refines its system.

Student demand.
I carry lots of nonfiction titles, so my business triples during two times of the year -- August and January -- when most college students are starting new semesters. Students buy lots of books for assignments, not just "textbooks."

Here's some less obvious patterns that can slow your sales:

Competitive listings sell first. Whenever you get new stock in, you'll sell a bunch of those, maybe 20 percent of them, pretty quickly. It's due to a combination of these factors: desirable books, competitive prices, and perhaps a bit of luck. The ones you're left over with sell more slowly, and some -- maybe 10 or 15 percent -- never sell at all. So if you take time off from listing new stock, sales can dip dramatically.

Leisure time
Certain times of the week produce a stronger flow of orders. Generally Sunday night through Tuesday night is the fastest for sales, then it tapers off until the next Sunday night.

When people are taking time off for leisure -- weekends and holidays -- your sales will be lower. In the five years I've been selling, early springtime has always been the slowest part of the year. I expect it's due to lots of young people being away on "spring break."

Unique events can take people away from their normal routines and prevent sales. Since I started selling nearly six years ago, my slowest sales day by far was Sept. 11, 2001.

Technical problems.
Amazon makes constant changes to their Web site, which can throw a monkey wrench into the buying process. And plain old malfunctions take a toll.

Something as complicated as Amazon's site can't be expected to work 100 percent of the time. But the problems are especially frustrating for sellers because there's no way for us to report bugs directly to Amazon's technical staff. For Amazon to ignore troubleshooting reports from the outsiders who know its business best (you and me) is incredibly foolish and shortsighted.

During my first few years of selling on Amazon, its staff would routinely conduct "planned maintenance" on Friday afternoons. And just like clockwork, orders would grind to a halt for the rest of the weekend. The orders wouldn't start again until Monday morning, when the right person came back to the office and flipped the correct switch.

But is Amazon doing this on purpose? I've never believed the conspiracy theories. I suppose certain listings might get switched off when Amazon's site is overloaded. But I don't think "cycling" could be intentional. Is it negligence? Sometimes. Premeditated evil? I don't think so.

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Q&A: Where does Amazon's 'Buyers Waiting' prices come from?

QUESTION: I've researched several of the books on Amazon's Buyers Waiting list. In the rare cases where a book is for sale elsewhere, they're always offered at four to five times the price mentioned on the Buyers Waiting list.

Is this a good reflection of overall market price, not just Amazon buyers? If I match the Buyers Waiting price, does that mean I would likely get the sale at that price?

ANSWER: It's important to remember that the information on Amazon's Buyers Waiting list isn't set by Amazon. The list is generated by orders that customers have placed on Amazon's site.

So if there's a pending order for $50 for a given book, if you list that book at $50 or under, you'll get the sale -- if you've met the buyer's minimum condition rating. That doesn't necessarily mean that the book's value is $50. That's just what one person is willing to pay -- normally the book could be worth more or less.

So the Buyers Waiting" price very rarely gives you an accurate reading of a book's worth, it just tells you that someone wasn't able to find it for sale at the price they wanted, so they placed an order on Amazon at "their" price.

When you looked around and saw other listings at 4 or 5 times the price, that's probably a more accurate reflection of the value. On the other hand, if those
other listings don't sell within a few years, it's safe to say that they were above the real market value.

There's an old saying in the book trade: A book is worth exactly what the buyer is willing to pay.

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ABE adds textbook buyback program

Advanced Book Exchange has added a textbook buyback link to its home page, angering some booksellers who believe ABE is now competing directly with its members.

ABE is advertising the buyback service in e-mails sent to customers who have purchased books from dealers on its site. "ABE must be losing all their dealers," one irritated bookseller said on eBay's message board. "Why else would they go into direct competion with them? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you."

ABE has outsourced the program to We Buy Textbooks, one of several book buyback services that have been aggressively advertising to college students. After users type in their ISBN, they are quoted a price for the book and can print prepaid shipping labels. The buyback price is usually about one-third what the book is worth on popular online marketplaces.

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eBay 10-cent listing day May 9

eBay is sponsoring a one-day promotion with 10-cent insertion fees on fixed-price and auction listings. The promotion doesn't include Store listings and a few other categories.
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Is Alibris now Toast.com?

Just six months after its bookseller listings were banned from Amazon, Alibris, the former bookselling hub, was sold off to Oak Hill Capital Partners of Silicon Valley.

Alibris members have complained of poor sales, particularly since member listings were deleted by Amazon in November. It's possible that many booksellers have abandoned Alibris for Amazon, so they can avoid paying monthly fees. However, Alibris' management says the company is doing fine.

An e-mail sent to Alibris sellers this afternoon said:

This is terrific news for our sellers because it enables us to invest more in marketing, accelerate our international expansion and rejuvenate our music and movie business. We will continue to grow our distribution channels, improve our Web site and deliver tools and innovations that benefit our premiere network of sellers.

Our partnership with Oak Hill will help us fulfill our commitment to making Alibris sellers the most successful in the online world.

Sincerely,
Martin Manley
CEO
Alibris

But its sellers complain Alibris hasn't followed through on recent promises. For example, when it was dropped from Amazon Marketplace, the company promised to offer bulk listing tools and an upload system for Half.com. Now, the Half.com plans are on hold while eBay introduces its Express fixed-price platform.

Bill Pade, an Oak Hill partner, said Alibris' current management would stay on the job. "We are impressed with the position that Alibris has built in this market and with the quality of its management, technology, and business partnerships," he said. "We are excited about helping this company grow and prosper."

More from Publishers Weekly.

More from the press release.

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eBay won the auction battle, but did it lose the war?

Veteran booksellers remember the days when Amazon threatened to topple eBay by launching its own auction platform.

Greg Linden, one of the early Amazon employees who developed the auction system, has written a retrospective of Amazon's ill-fated auction venture. He blames the failure on arrogance:

Amazon Auctions was designed to be a frontal assault on eBay, reproducing everything they had in one fell swoop. Amazon thought its tens of millions of customers would immediately adapt to auctions and small businesses would flock to our site. It was an aggressive move that was foolishly arrogant.

At the time, Internet pundits blamed the failure on Amazon's neglect of building a "community" of small mom-and-pop sellers. And ever since, the conventional wisdom has been that Amazon's foray into third-party selling was a catastrophe. Meanwhile, its Marketplace program has developed into one of its few cash cows.

Seven years later, eBay's growth has stalled. To rejuvenate itself, the company is taking a page from Amazon's book. eBay's Express fixed-price platform is clearly designed to steal some of the book and music buyers who have migrated to Amazon Marketplace. These folks just want to buy stuff, not sit around waiting for an auction to end.

How successful Express will be depends not only on its marketing campaign, but whether eBay can erase the perception that it's only about auctions.

If you're interested in Amazon's early history, check out Greg's fascinating series of "Early Amazon" articles.

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eBay bookseller accused of forging author signatures

Speculation is running rampant on eBay's message board about the identity of a bookseller found guilty of forging author signatures on copies of books advertised as authentic, signed collectibles.

According to the gossip, a judge ruled against the bookseller in a lawsuit involving two alleged forgeries auctioned for $70,000. But the bookseller hasn't been publicly identified, supposedly because the judge hasn't yet published his opinion.

Some booksellers believe that a significant portion of signed collectibles on eBay are forged, but law-enforcement authorities seldom investigate. One entrepreneur even brags of how he perpetrated one of the biggest eBay collectible scams in history.

eBay does a brisk business in rare books.

Signatures are not the only thing that makes a book collectible. This brand-new bestseller is a hot collectible now because its author was accused last week of having plagiarized parts of other popular novels. And so the publisher is recalling the title from bookstore shelves.

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Amazon ends Google partnership, embraces Microsoft

Amazon has ended its two-year search venture with Google, which has been providing results for Amazon's A9 search-engine since 2004.

Now Amazon will be working with Microsoft, which is trying to expand its search-engine business with Windows Live search.

A9 has some useful, unique features, including the ability to display results from Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" program (for Amazon-registered customers), and users can get 1.57 percent off Amazon purchases.

But A9 hasn't gained much traction, and Google is turning out to be a huge potential competitor for Amazon. Google Book Search currently sends most of its book shoppers to Amazon, but the Google site is expected to begin selling online access to current books later this year. In February, Google hired away A9's president, which perhaps sharpened the rivalry.

The change won't affect product search results on Amazon, it will only applies to Web and news searches viewed through A9.

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Top children's books average $2,120 on eBay in April

The top 10 most valuable children's book auctions brought eBay sellers an average of $2,120 during April. The highest ending price was $4,316 for "Where the Wild Things Are" by Sendak.

A signed copy of Paul McCartney's recent kids book "High in the Clouds" netted $1,424.

Get the full rundown here on Elaine's eBay Bookseller Blog.



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Are good books getting harder to find?

I usually don't pay much attention to booksellers who complain about the state of bookselling. My thinking is, the people who complain most are probably the least successful to begin with. And they can't improve if they're spending all their time whining.

But lots of eBay sellers now are saying it's nearly impossible to profit by auctioning books. And they blame a proliferation of sellers for soaking up all the good book inventory. Here's a interesting comment from eBay's booksellers board:

This business used to be easy for an eBay seller. You'd go to an auction and bid against traditional booksellers who maintained an inventory. It was often easy to outbid them as you could sell immediately on eBay, and they had a fixed overhead and expenses you didn't have. Today your competition is your fellow eBay sellers. You have to recognize value that they miss. That's not easy, as you may be outnumbered 50 to 1.

And here's the whole thread.
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PayPal issues guide for avoiding chargebacks

Booksellers who are active on eBay will want to take a look at PayPal's new guide for avoiding chargebacks.

Used booksellers don't run into scammers often, but problems tend to occur when you least expect them. Here are two red flags PayPal's guide mentions, and I've noticed these characteristics with the few problem customers I've had over the years:

Price of Item. The higher the price, the lower your tolerance for risk should be. Valuable items attract thieves.

Questionable behavior. The buyer asks for immediate overnight shipping. This is particularly a problem with the buyer sends partial payment from different PayPal accounts. Also look out for buyers who ask to have a high-priced item shipped to one country, but billed to another.

With some of its recommendations, though, PayPal is hypocritical: It recommends shipping items only to "confirmed" physical addresses. But PayPal's parent company, eBay, is requiring sellers to accept PayPal payments from customers with unconfirmed addresses, before being allowed to sell on its new Express platform.