eBay wants booksellers back at Half.com

eBay will expand exposure of its Half.com site, and wants booksellers frustrated with new fee hikes at eBay Stores to list more inventory on Half.

"Starting in August, we're going to bring back the Half.com merchandising that we used to have, and we're looking at other ways to promote Half.com listings on both eBay.com and eBay Express," eBay president Bill Cobb said on a recent conference call.

Two years ago, eBay said it would shut down Half.com, and asked sellers to move their listings to eBay Stores. At the last minute, eBay decided to keep Half.com open, but the site hasn't been aggressively marketed since then, and sales there have tanked.

In July eBay shocked Store sellers with huge fee hikes. Many booksellers have said they can't afford the higher fees.

Cobb said eBay managers recently decided to limit the visibility of Store listings in regular auction search results. From now on, if a regular eBay search returns 30 or fewer "core" auction listings, an equal number of Store results will be shown. "So I do encourage sellers in the media categories to consider using or expanding your use of Half.com," Cobb said.

Before July, eBay had been showing many Store listings at the bottom of its regular auction search results, which had boosted sales for booksellers with Stores. Apparently Cobb is suggesting that Half.com listings will take over that position at the bottom of auction search results.

There had been speculation -- including a prediction on this blog -- that eBay would kill off Half.com after its Express platform was launched this spring. Instead, it seems eBay booksellers are having the worst of all worlds this summer -- huge Store fee hikes making them unaffordable for general book stock, low sell-through on book auctions, and not much to show from Express.

I'm wondering if eBay will get Half.com back into gear to salvage at least some of the August back-to-school rush. Not much time left.

Q&A: How much do textbook prices increase in August?

QUESTION: You've mentioned that prices increase in August after the summer lull. Can you estimate how much?

ANSWER: That's a hard question, but I'll mention two anecdotes that illustrate how prices rise at the end of the summer.

In May of 2004 I got an incredibly good deal on two cases of introductory sociology textbooks. They were brand new, published only a year earlier. I got about 50 of them for only $1 apiece.

Freshman Sociology books don't hold their value well because they're so common, but since these were so new, I figured it was a great deal.

When I got home and looked up the price on Amazon Marketplace, I couldn't believe it -- they were going for $5. So I listed them at about $20. But none of them sold. After a few weeks I lowered my price to $5 and sold a few of them, but very rarely did any sell.

Finally, my Sociology books started selling in early August, and by mid-August I was selling three or four of those books a day for $50 apiece. I was able to raise the price by checking the competition every day. After they started selling, I raised my price to at least $10 above the lowest price on Marketplace. Of course with hindsight , it was a mistake to sell any at $5. The price rose tenfold on that book within a few weeks.

Here's another example that doesn't depend on textbook sales, and illustrates the August tide lifts all boats. Last year, in early July 2005, we moved to a house. Before we bought the house, we lived in an apartment, and all my books were in Public Storage units. I was able to consolidate all my inventory into the basement of my house, which was great -- but everything got disorganized for a couple of months, so I had to take most of my inventory offline until I got unpacked and reorganized.

I was back online in September/October of last year. And when I relisted my books, I was surprised to see that prices had literally doubled on many of my nonfiction books. For a minority of my stock, maybe one in five books, the price went down during those several weeks of July/August/September.

Those two stories illustrate how prices rise, but I don't think there's any way to precisely predict it, or to know what will happen with each book. I wouldn't go out on a limb and say, "most books go up 50 percent after the summer." There's just so many variables, and we don't have a crystal ball to know what the supply and demand is going to be. With textbooks, it just depends on how many professors assign the book, and how well the college bookstores meet new/used demand from students. For regular consumer fiction/nonfiction it's a little more predictable -- the higher the book is on the bestseller lists (the more popular) the lower the price will go once the initial demand is met.

One thing is certainly true: If you sell a nonfiction book at the low price in early August, you're leaving money on the table -- because nearly everyone who sells a copy later in August is going to get a higher price. Probably a much higher price.

Hey, maybe we should just all go on vacation every summer!

Amazon changes Marketplace 'availability' notice

Amazon changed the availability description for Marketplace listings. Previously, buyers saw this language:

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Today that display was changed to this language:

In Stock

Some sellers have been lobbying for this change for years, and the issue has been broached at Amazon seller conferences in previous years.

Until recently, the language displayed was "usually ships in 2 days," and many buyers mistakenly believed this meant that delivery would occur within 48 hours of the order. Most neglected to read the fine print indicating that sellers merely were obligated to mail the book within two business days.

Here's Amazon's announcement on the change.

eBay considers feedback changes

eBay is sending sellers a detailed survey on proposed changes to its feedback system. The changes might make eBay's feedback system lots more complicated and more like Amazon's star rating system.

Currently eBay buyers use a simple positive, neutral or negative rating. That might be changed in favor of a system like the one below, where buyers can use a five-star system to rate sellers on description accuracy, shipping time, shipping fees, and communication. Kudos to eBay Strategies for being first with this news.

It's interesting that Amazon is considering a similar change to its feedback system, in which buyers would have several additional criteria to consider for seller ratings. My impression is that most Amazon sellers would actually prefer a simpler feedback system, much the way eBay does it now. A simple positive/negative feedback system like today's eBay feedback enables sellers who do consistently good job to maintain a nearly perfect feedback record. More options for the buyer at feedback just increases the likelihood that sellers will get dinged for some minor point beyond their control -- or feedback will be viewed as a hassle, and not completed at all.

What do you think?

Q&A: Why sell books on Amazon, when eBay's fees are lower?

QUESTION: I'm new to bookselling, but have been collecting for years. I need to start clearing some space. I've been selling in an antiques mall booth, and researching the different online venues.

My calculations show Amazon is one of the more expensive sites. I used a benchmark of selling 50 books a month for $10 each:

Amazon fees (non Pro-Merchant) = 50 x .99 = 49.50
Amazon commissions = .15 x 500 = 75.00
Amazon total = 124.50

eBay fees = 50 x .60 = 30.00
eBay commissions = .0525 x 500 = 26.25
eBay total = 56.25

I am working on a function to show the graduated fee structure of eBay, but it should show much slower increase than the straight fees Amazon charges, regardless of the book's selling price.

Have I missed something? Is there some advantage to being on Amazon, besides lists, customer reviews, etc.? Both sites show up on Bookfinder.com. I feel that an honest book seller, who does everything they can to accurately describe and picture collectible books on eBay can do just fine, yes?

Also, I can show as many pictures of a book as I want on eBay, participate as a Buy-it-Now seller, through timed auction and through live auctions.

ANSWER: You raise some good observations.

All the major online bookselling sites keep a generous share of the proceeds, but I believe it's a fair trade. Those sites attract the customers that enable us to operate a business with no advertising expenses, and practically no risk. Compare that to running a brick-and-mortar bookstore, or selling in an antiques mall, where you must pay the rent whether you make any sales or not. If there aren't enough sales, you're out of business -- and in debt to boot.

Also, it's quite likely your profitability would be better running an online store. Your costs per square foot can be much lower with an online store, of course, and you have access to the worldwide market.

As to Amazon versus eBay, I concede that eBay today is a superior selling venue for certain types of books -- particularly collectibles that require pictures of the actual book and a detailed description of the condition, faults, etc.

But I'd argue that for most booksellers with general stock, Amazon allows you to sell at a higher volume, at a higher velocity, and with less customer-service issues than eBay. The time you spend hand-selling each commodity book on eBay costs you time, and time is money too.

So if you calculate your time and aggravation, you might find that Amazon is cheaper, depending on your particular business.

For example, a couple of years ago I did a little experiment -- on the books I had in quantity (I also sell new books) I listed my inventory on both Amazon and eBay. On eBay, I used a Buy-it-Now price close to my "like new" price on Amazon. On some of the cheaper books I auctioned them starting at 1 cent.

I did this for about four months, and was able to generate about $1,500 to $2,000 in revenue from eBay per month -- a fraction of my take from Amazon, but then I didn't have nearly as much inventory listed on eBay.

But I was surprised to find out that my costs -- eBay fees, PayPal fees, etc., added up to nearly 10 percent of the revenue I was getting out of eBay. My assumption going into my experiment was that eBay would be a bit higher-maintenance although cheaper -- but it wasn't. eBay was nearly as expensive, and required much, much more specialized attention than Amazon. There were many more customer inquiries (most of them idiotic, such as questions about shipping terms that were clearly explained in the listing, and "where's my book?" e-mails when I'd already e-mailed a shipping confirmation with a tracking number. I tried to keep things simple by accepting only U.S. PayPal transactions, but this resulted in constant inquires from customers around the globe who wanted to send checks, money orders, wire transfers, or cash).

To be sure, Amazon produces problems customers, but on a per-capita basis I got three times as many headaches from eBay sales -- and non-sales. So I didn't think that the slight savings in fees on eBay justified the extra time and aggravation. I probably could have fined-tuned my eBay selling to get the costs down a bit, but just didn't have the motivation.

But, like I said, your mileage may vary. I don't have that many collectible books. If I did, I'd be happily hawking my wares on eBay.

All this is not to say the average seller should ignore eBay. Even though I don't prefer it, I think eBay is a valuable counterweight to Amazon. It's a decent alternative, and that every seller should have an active account there and stay current.

I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket, and don't recommend it for anyone. And if I ever need another basket, it'll probably be eBay.

Amazon eyes rare book market

Amazon today announced several new guidelines for "collectible" book listings.

Although eBay and older book-dealer sites like ABE and Alibris still have the lion's share of the collectibles book market, Amazon seems to be getting more serious about an expansion into the antiquarian trade.

A month ago, Amazon announced its first crackdown on junk "collectible" listings, establishing a $10 minimum and requiring collectibles to be autographed or unique in some way.

Today Amazon announced several more specific rules for collectibles, but added that these guidelines are "not mandatory." Prices must be above the original retail price or $10, whichever is greater. Also, collectibles should be:

• First edition and first printing, signed, inscribed or scarce
• Not ex-library, a remainder or a book club edition

Further, sellers should mention in their listings:

• Further detail on condition/completeness of exterior, interior and dust jacket (if applicable)
• Edition and printing
• Presence of signatures, inscriptions or other personalization

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the real world. By making the new requirements "not mandatory," Amazon seems to be saying they'll be looking at each listing on a case-by-case basis. But in practice, Amazon has enough trouble policing listings of pirated material, let alone borderline "collectibles."

The current practice among many sellers is to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the "collectible" category -- old editions, audiobooks instead of books -- seemingly anything but real collectibles. In fact, Marketplace "collectibles" listings are so overrun with junk that real book collectors can't be bothered to scroll through the dozens of wacky listings on the off-chance a real collector's book is in there somewhere.

To take but one example, here are the "collectibles" listings for "Gone With the Wind." There's just about everything in there except the one thing a collector would be looking for -- a first printing. I suppose for the listings without any "sellers comments" you might get a VHS tape of the movie instead of the book.

I've heard rumors several times this year that Amazon plans to set up a separate "store" for collectibles. If this was done right and promoted effectively, Amazon could grab a huge share of the collectibles book market.

And so these new "guidelines" would seem to indicate Amazon is getting serious about collectibles. But to say they're "not mandatory?" Then what's the point? The new guidelines have instructions for sellers to change their offending listings in bulk. But if the changes aren't mandatory, and there's no apparent consequences ... I don't see what the motivation for sellers to go to the trouble.

With eBay in such disarray these days -- with sellers outraged about increased store fees and slow sales -- this would be a great time for Amazon to make a run at the collectible book market. But it seems a bigger program is needed -- and more resources for sellers to describe their books and upload photos.

Perhaps this is just the first shoe to drop?

Q&A: How can I earn a living by online bookselling?

QUESTION: I sell books on Amazon and have excellent ratings. I sell about 15 books a day and earn $2,300 a month, but that's not enough. I'm a graduate student, so I have income from instructorships, but I also have a family and children. Is there any way to increase my sales?

ANSWER: Try not to be discouraged, I think you're doing well, making more than $2,000 a month selling books part time. That's probably better than most of us are doing. And the longer you do it, the better you'll become at finding valuable books.

Lots of people are working full-time waiting tables and driving taxicabs, yet making less than $2,000 a month.

I know how it is to feel you aren't earning enough. On the other hand, I feel fortunate to earn a good living selling books, which I enjoy so much.

There's always a debate over whether things are getting better or worse, or whether it's possible to earn a "living wage." There's a raging debate on Amazon's seller discussion board on that right now. The original poster seems to be complaining about making $600 to $700 a week.

Everything is relative. I read somewhere that the key to wealth is not earning a lot, but simply spending a bit less than you earn.

The only way to do better at online bookselling is to keep doing it and getting better. Easier said than done.

Fed up with negative feedback? Take them to court!

Every time some bone-headed customer leaves negative feedback for me, I just go nuts.

I should mention too, I never give customers a reason to leave negative feedback. Never! Not because I'm an angel, but because I just won't. I sell for a living, and feedback is the best way to compete.

So, take my word, I turn cartwheels to avoid bad feedback. Whenever I screw up, or the Postal Service screws up, or lightning strikes, whatever ... I make the customer whole.

That's why I'm always livid, because 90 percent of the time, the customer who left bad feedback without checking with me ... got me mixed up with the wrong seller. Or they DID receive the book after all, they just FORGOT! Whaddyaknow?

And that's when I'm always tempted to mention, "Aren't you worried about getting sued?" After all, they're questioning my ethics, my trustworthiness, they're flat-out saying I'm a crook in public -- on the Internet. Readable by a billion or so people. And they haven't spent two seconds to make sure they're right!

But I never threaten to sue. Something tells me that careless people probably don't respond well to threats in an e-mail from a stranger. But this guy has no problems with it. I'm hoping word gets around.

Obviously eBay or Amazon would ever get sued because a seller was defamed on their sites. I just think they should give a strong hint that users be careful about making false statements on their sites. Online or offline, it's never a good idea.

eBay jacks up fees for Store listings

eBay has been wrestling with an important issue -- whether its Store listings should carry relatively low fees, yet appear in regular eBay search results.

Well apparently eBay decided today -- that it will increase fees on Store listings effective August 21, while its "core" listing formats, including Auction-style, Auction-style with Buy It Now, and Fixed Price, remain unchanged.

Here's the new fees. Will eBay will return Store listings to its regular search results? Stay tuned.

And here's the confusing, long-winded explanation from eBay's Bill Cobb, which he calls "Resetting the Balance of the eBay Marketplace."

The timing on this announcement is interesting, to say the least. The ad campaigns for eBay's Express fixed-price marketplace are just starting to run. Is Cobb admitting that Express was a blunder? Or is this just a smokescreen for sellers?

My hunch is that ads touting Express will continue straight through Christmastime -- on TV, in magazines, on billboards, atop taxicabs, and in cereal boxes. ChexMate!

The news isn't going over well with booksellers who've recently opened eBay Stores.

On the other hand, Cobb's announcement goes on to talk about the "unique challenges" these changes will mean for booksellers -- and that Half.com listings are going to be restored to eBay search results.

Wow! And I thought Half.com was toast...

Q&A: Will you attend the Amazon Sellers Conference?

QUESTION: I live a long way from Seattle but am considering attending the Amazon Sellers Conference next month. Will you attend? Have you been to previous conferences or heard any comments on how helpful they are?

ANSWER: I'm a long way from Seattle, too. And as much as I'd like to escape the heat and humidity of Virginia this time of year, I can't justify a trip to Seattle.

I love bookselling, but the main reason I do it is to pay my bills. And about 25 percent of my annual sales happen in August, just like other online booksellers. So shutting down my business during the most important part of the year to take an expensive cross-country trip isn't in the cards.

Even if the scheduling was better, I'm skeptical. According to sellers who've attended in previous years, results have been mixed.

I'm certainly not trying to discourage other people from attending. For sellers who live close to the west coast, I'm sure it will be fun to meet and schmooze with fellow booksellers, and -- who knows -- making some contacts with Amazon employees will come in handy someday.

But my impression -- from a lot of experience -- is that Amazon is very, very reluctant to listen to anyone outside the company, which is a shame. They should be picking sellers' brains for everything we know. We have an understanding of Amazon's business that no $2,000-an-hour consultant could provide -- because we're actually living it and breathing it.

Despite all my gripes about Amazon, I still recommend it as the best place to sell books online, and I'm grateful to have made a living doing it for the past six years. It's just tantalizing to think of the possibilities, though, if there were open lines of communications between Amazon's staff and its sellers.

Recently I listened to an audio replay of a question-and-answer session from eBay's official seller conference from this summer. The eBay sellers were grilling eBay's top executives. It was a real, unvarnished discussion of the problems eBay sellers are having. My hunch is that:

1) eBay is working furiously on fixing the problems the sellers brought up, and will figure out a way to get it done, or;
2) eBay's future is shaky.

Amazon will replace order e-mails with desktop software

Amazon plans to develop Windows desktop software for sellers to download order notifications for their Marketplace sales.

The software will allow Amazon to eliminate most order information from its "Sold, Ship Now" e-mails sellers use to fulfill orders. Starting in February 2007, the e-mails will contain only the name of the item sold. Sellers will need to get details like the shipping address from the new software or their Amazon Payments account.

According to an announcement on Amazon's message board, the new software will be made available in "plenty of time" for sellers to try it before its use becomes mandatory.

Two big unanswered questions are:

1) Will sellers continue to have access to buyer e-mail addresses? Amazon has made a series of changes over the past few months making it harder and harder for sellers to communicate with buyers. This has resulted in lots of extra work and frustration for sellers and buyers struggling with Amazon's poorly designed Web-based contact form. If past experience is any guide, the new Windows software will also be poorly designed and phased in over a weekend with no notice to sellers, resulting in lots more problems.

2) Will Amazon bring third-party software makers into the loop on these changes? Most large-volume Marketplace sellers are already using software to help them process orders. If all this third-party software becomes obsolete overnight, there will be thousands of unhappy buyers and sellers on The River this winter.

This is the third bombshell Amazon has dropped on its sellers in 10 days. Here's number one and number two. I'm guessing there will be lots to talk about at next month's Amazon Sellers Conference, if it still happens.

I would think Amazon's brain trust could have postponed these three items if they wanted input from the Sellers Conference. Looks to me like Amazon doesn't much care what seller think. What do you think?

Q&A: Why are so many booksellers lowballing on Amazon?

QUESTION: Why do people "lowball" on Amazon and other bookselling sites? Today I listed a book on Amazon which normally sells for $60 and has a sales rank of 100,000. Someone had listed a copy for $15. Fine, they will get $15 and I will get $60, but why leave money on the table?

ANSWER: The only reason I can think of for listing a $60 book for $15 is ... inexperience. When I was new, I regularly lowballed too -- but I lowballed by a dollar, not $45.

The longer you do this, the more you realize how hard you're working to find that $60 book. That's when you start thinking about how to get every penny you deserve.

If you lowball, you can get sucked into a reverse bidding war, where you're fighting to sell at the lowest price.

And we’re in the summer lull right now, so it’s the worst time to be lowballing. In a few weeks students will be buying books when college starts and prices for everything will be higher.

Amazon scrambles closing fees, shipping credits

Amazon announced new closing fees and shipping credits for books, music, video, DVD, software, and video game sales effective August 1.

The changes range from a few cents to about 75 cents. Generally, seller fees are increasing for expedited and international shipments.

If anyone has a clue about this, please let me know. This is the second nutty announcement out of Seattle within the past two business days.

Q&A: Is Amazon cycling my book listings?

QUESTION: Since March, my biggest sales month ever, it's been straight downhill on Amazon. I've continued listing books, but sales have fallen so dramatically that I can't help wondering what's going on. I've asked Amazon if they've done anything to hurt Marketplace sales, but received a canned response. It doesn't make sense, since I have many times more new items listed than several months ago. Meanwhile sales have fallen to the same level as when I started.

ANSWER: This is always the worst time of the year to be an online bookseller. It's after the exhilarating Christmas and springtime rushes, and before the August rebound. It's depressing.

With less demand, competition among sellers heats up. It's harder to find the real gems this time of year too. Everything just compounds. The dog days of summer are the worst.

I don't believe in the cycling theories. Sure, Amazon has its problems -- I've been selling full-time nearly six years now, and I've never seen a week go by without some major malfunction. Negligence? Perhaps. Premeditation? No way.

My sales are abysmally low now too, I've never had lower unit volume since I started. On the other hand, I haven't had time to check my prices lately. So I'm not sure whether my prices are just too high at the moment, or if the wheels have totally fallen off Marketplace.

I used to check my prices at least once a day, but lately I haven't gotten to it. Fortunately I've had enough high-dollar sales this summer to pay the bills.

I think the automated price-cutting is getting things out of whack too. I happened to be watching the price of a certain book last week, and noticed that two sellers were lowering their price every 10 minutes by about one percent, so their listing would be on top. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. The price was falling about 50 cents an hour. I watched this go on for about five hours, until one of them eventually got the sale -- but at $3 less. What happens when it takes a week to get the sale?

The good news is, August is right around the corner. When the college students go back to school, business will be brisk, and we'll be seeing the world through rose-colored glasses again.

So don't bother chasing the lowballers this month. Let them knock themselves out to sell low. We'll be selling high in August!

The Long Tail of used books

If, like me, you're fascinated by how people discover and buy obscure books on Amazon, you'll like a book being released today, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

The Long Tail already has several good reviews on Amazon, including one written by me you'll see at the top. There are so many good parts in "The Long Tail," it was hard to review it in less than 1,000 words, as Amazon requires. So I'll use my unlimited space here to expand a bit ;-)

"The Long Tail" was written by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine. It germinated with his 2004 magazine article, which grew into a blog, and now it's the hottest business book of the year. Boiled down to its essence, the Long Tail is the idea that niche products (the yellow portion of the curve above) is starting to become a big business, and might someday soon be a bigger business than the red part.

That yellow part of the tail is our bread & butter. Those are the niche and out-of-print books unavailable in the local Borders, so we're able to sell them for nice profits.

The other part, the red head of the tail, are the "hits" -- the blockbuster books like this one. The hits make big money initially, but since they're overprinted, after a couple years the price becomes 1 cent. (I'm not knocking this book, I'm simply pointing out that 600 sellers are tripping over themselves to give away a copy.)

Amazon was the first business to prove the Long Tail concept, thanks partly to you and me. When we began listing our out-of-print and obscure books for sale on Marketplace six years ago, used books gained critical mass. Now, most hard-to-find books can be found in a matter of seconds, by anyone in the world able to type the title into Amazon's search box.

Think for a moment of what this electronic marketplace replaced: a fragmented, unconnected bunch of brick-and-mortar used bookshops. To find a copy of this book 15 years ago, you might have spent six months driving from bookstore to bookstore or waiting for a copy to be listed in a collectors catalog. Now you can buy a copy in 2 minutes, and choose from 40-odd vendors waiting to take your order on Amazon.

Now, 25 percent of Amazon's book sales come from titles that can't be found in a Barnes & Noble superstore that stocks 125,000 books. And that's the concept of "The Long Tail": thanks partly to the Internet, the short end of the tail may soon become a bigger business than the "hits." Not only in the book business, but music, movies, snack foods, advertising -- practically everything.

I don't want to oversell "The Long Tail" -- if you're a part-time used bookseller, reading it probably won't help you become more profitable this year, or maybe even next year. But if you have a long-term interest in bookselling, I'd suggest you give it a look. (You can probably wait six months and get a used copy on Marketplace for $8.99.)

One of the ominous things (for used booksellers) discussed in "The Long Tail" is how publishers are learning to become much more efficient. One of their tools is "print-on-demand," which enables them to print a book instantly each time a customer orders one. Once print-on-demand is widely adopted, our out-of-print bookselling business will be hurt. That's because with print-on-demand, books won't ever have to go "out of print" anymore. Instead of taking up space on a bookshelf, those niche books can reside on a computer disk at Amazon or your local bookstore.

Once that day comes, we all will have become collectible book dealers, or we'll be out of business.

And if you think print-on-demand is a nightmare scenario for booksellers, there's lots more in "The Long Tail" to keep you up at night. Now that it's so easy for amateurs to write and produce a book (thanks to PCs), prices for all books will probably begin falling soon. And with lots of this content turning up for free on the Web, nonfiction sales will probably take the biggest hit the soonest, Anderson says.

"The Long Tail" isn't just about books, it examines markets for music, film and many other product markets. Most of the data in the book is about the music industry, and how rapidly it's gone to digital-downloading, leaving albums and CDs in the dust. You can see this playing out right now on Amazon Marketplace, where prices for used CDs are crashing.

Thank goodness most people still find value in books. Real books, the ones made out of paper.

Amazon sellers irate about feedback changes

Amazon plans to change the "Leave Feedback" page to enable buyers to give specific reasons for their seller ratings.

Here is the announcement, no word on when the changes will be phased in.

The biggest change is a set of three questions relating to delivery time and seller service. Buyers will have the option of answering "yes" or "no" to each question.

Many Amazon Pro-Merchants are irritated that the new feedback form seems to further encourage buyers to:
1) Blame sellers for tardy deliveries by the Postal Service
2) Submit negative feedback before contacting their seller

I'm interested in hearing other opinions about this. Hopefully these issues can be addressed at next month's Seller's Conference in Seattle.

Below is a picture of the new form, and below that is the form buyers see today. In case your view of the picture is unclear, the three "Optional Questions" are:

1. Did the item arrive by X date?
2. Did your item arrive in the condition described by the seller?
3. If your contacted this seller, did they provide prompt and courteous service?

eBay bans Google checkout payments

eBay has banned Google's new payment service, Google checkout.



Why? I can understand why eBay recently banned cash payments through the mail. Obviously, cash attracts thieves. Doh!

But banning Google? Does Google attracts thieves? I need some help understanding this.

Hey, eBay! Don't treat your customers like children. At least give a reason!

eBay offers free replays of eBay Live classes

If you're interested in eBay but didn't make to the annual sellers conference last month in Las Vegas, here's your chance to see replays of the most popular eBay Live classes.

Q&A: Is Goodwill's Web site a good place to get books for resale?

QUESTION: Do you think Goodwill's online auctions are a good way to find books? I recently found a few books there I could have resold, but was surprised by the shipping & handling fees -- a lot of 10 thin paperbacks weighs 20 lbs?

ANSWER: Thanks for bringing this up. I was vaguely aware Goodwill was selling online but didn't know they were auctioning many books. Wow! I'm going to have to give this a closer look. At first glance, it seems Goodwill's auction site has a few gems among all the junk.

This is interesting, because until recently, where I live (near Washington D.C.) Goodwill had a huge book sale every summer. Despite having to wade through a lot of junk, every year I found a carload of good books, and always found a few rarities that went for $200 to $300.

A few years ago Goodwill discontinued their summer book sale here. A lot of people were really disappointed, and there was a big article on the front page of the Washington Post. Goodwill claimed they couldn't continue their book sales here because storage had gotten too expensive. Looks like there was more to the story -- Goodwill decided they could get more money selling online.

I guess it's their business. Goodwill is trying to raise money to fund their programs. According to their Web site, "revenues from auction sales fund education, job training and job placement programs for people with disabilities and other disadvantages."

But if Goodwill is trying to get the maximum cash out of its donated books by auctioning them, I don't understand why they wouldn't put them on eBay. Sure, they'd have to pay fees to eBay and PayPal, but I would think the ending prices would be much higher if you had a few more million potential bidders.

Goodwill also has a fixed-price site for what it calls "used text books and out-of-print and collectible books." The prices seem really high to me. But some of the books are so obscure, you might be able to find some real winners.

It's a shame so many of the sources for good used books are drying up. The Goodwill and Salvation Army stores here have pathetic selections of books, and very little turnover. But I've heard from people in other areas who find great books at these charity stores.

I'm guessing the odd shipping charges you found were an oversight. That's the biggest drawback to buying from charities and Friends of the Libraries groups online -- the attention to detail is usually lacking. The sellers are usually part-time volunteers who have good intentions but can't focus on service to the same extent as a seller whose income depends on happy customers.

The benefit of buying from charities and FOLs is that you can usually find great deals on books for resale.

Children's book fetches $9,050 on eBay

A signed first edition of "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini sold for $9,050, making it the top-priced children's book auctioned so far this year on eBay.

See June's Top 10 list of valuable children's books on Elaine's eBay Bookseller Blog.

The average price of the top ten was $3,583.64

Also note the new address of Elaine's blog, http://www.booksellingblog.com