QUESTION: I was listing an audiobook for sale on Amazon and noticed a huge price variation. There were two copies for sale. One was listed at $9.35, and the other was listed at $100.
Both are used, not collectible. Obviously, one is priced wrong. How can I find the real value?
I also have a book with a similar discrepancy. The low price is $39.82 but the next copies are priced $114.26 and $197.34. Usually I like to price my books at the lowest price and make a quick sale, but I don’t want to leave money on the table.
ANSWER: There are several sellers on Amazon who act as drop-shippers. They copy the listings of other sellers and triple the price, at least. They export these pilfered listings to all the bookselling sites and hope that some inept buyer overpays them. Then they buy from a seller who actually has the book, has it shipped directly to the real buyer, and the drop-shipper pockets the difference.
Usually these drop-shippers are easy to spot: Their feedback is horrible because so many of their customers never receive what they paid for. (I haven’t taken a close look at these listings you mentioned, and I’m not accusing any of the sellers here of anything. I grossly overprice my listings occasionally by hitting the wrong keys on my keyboard.)
Most books are in such plentiful supply on Amazon, the going price is obvious simply by glancing at the Marketplace listings. But for books in shorter supply, like these two, it helps to do a little research. A good way to double-check the value of a book is to search its ISBN at Addall or BookFinder.
These comparison sites will show you the lowest prices on all the major bookselling sites and usually give you a clear idea of a book’s market price and scarcity. If you still don’t find many copies at that site, it’s best to play it safe and price your listing high until you can research further.
I’m not sure about the price of your audiobook — it’s scarce but the demand for old cassette audiobooks is not tremendous. Your book, Food and Beverage Market Place, could probably sell for a good price if it was a bit more recent. Business directories can sell for good money on Amazon, even if they’re a few years old. Consider the buyer’s alternative: paying nearly $600 for the current edition.
The only problem is, your copy is six years old, and is probably woefully out of date, since there’s undoubtedly been turnover among the people listed in the directory. Used copies of the 2006 edition are available for around $200, so you’ll certainly have to beat that price to get a sale. In this case, I’d go with a price under $40. This is definitely a book that won’t appreciate.
6 Comments
You brought up some good points on the drop shippers. I am not sure there is anything “illegal” at the base of the drop shipping problems, it is more the details of how they do it. Selling something at a high price and buying it at a lower price is the basics of business. A product is worth only what another person is willing to pay for it, so the price listed on a specific book isn’t necessarily “wrong”. Drop shipping legally goes on in every industry, the questions of course come in as to where you get your listings (are they stolen or copied from someone else), are you deceiving your customers on purpose about where and when the product will be shipped, and as with Amazon, it would be very hard to have this type of business plan and not “break” many of Amazon’s Marketplace “rules”, and so on.
The question stated that “obviously one [price] is wrong”, well, you can sell something for any price you want (theoretically) as long as there is a buyer who is willing to pay that price. One thing I have noticed is that there are times when a buyer will post a book for sale at a very high price (perhaps $75-$100 when the “normal” used price would be $30) because there is not another single book listed on Amazon, perhaps they created a new catalog page for the book themselves. Later others come in and price their books at a more reasonable price and the high prices look strange.
Thanks for the great Q&A; today.
I wondered if some of the sellers were “laundering” money from somewhere. You could pass a lot of cash very quickly with the purchase of a few books. (I don’t fully understand “laundering”, it was just a thought I had.)
I had a book that had only one other listing on Amazon for $1500. I did some research on other book sites and the web in general. I only found the same book (being sold by the same person) anywhere else.
Still I didn’t think this book was worth $1500. I listed mine on Amazon for $400 (which I still thought was high). Within a month it sold to a buyer in Germany.
I probably could have priced it even higher.
Well, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily illegal or unethical about drop-shipping per se.
HOWEVER: The whole point of online bookselling, having small sellers directly connected with buyers on the Internet, is that the middleman is eliminated. It’s efficient. The buyer does not have to pay big search fees to some book specialist (when the buyer knows what they want and where to get it). On our online maketplaces, the buyer gets direct access to the person with the goods, and gets a better deal — supposedly.
The drop-shippers are inserting themselves as middlemen in a new system that has eliminated the middleman! And that’s why they usually have really horrible feedback. They either can’t deliver as promised, or the buyer catches on that they’re being taken for a fool, paying $100 for a $15 book.
Just my opinion.
There is another reason for dropshipping. Some sellers list on markets other than Amazon,l eBay or Half.com (which are the three places I sell). They may sell my book on another site or even in a conventional bookstore, add their market and have me ship it for them.; I have several people who regularly do this with my books. It is an honest practice as long as they do their part honestly. And it actually expands my market since my books get exposed to more potential buyers.
NWBookman
No one has mentioned the differences between sellers. I am a traditional bookstore. You know, the books pay for ‘everything,’ or I am out of business, and my online bails out the inhouse some of the winter months, until summer and my seasonal customers return.
There are more and more people who use books as a supplemental income homebased cottage industry: low overhead, or no overhead beyond the cost of a monthly listing fee, and seller’s fees. As there is little into the ‘business,’ they can charge much, much less, and as with the individual who asked the question the other day, when there is no ‘customer service,’ they can go out of business as readily and start all over again (if they have poor feedback).
Online is a mystery to a lot of people.
Still, we are getting more and more dissatisfied online customers coming into our brick and mortar because they aren’t getting what they asked for, or aren’t getting anything at all. So if you believe it doesnt’ come back to bite you at some point, be aware, buyers are getting more savy.
And i’ve heard that on many of the services, IF you pay a fee per sale, and you sell at say $.01, you don’t pay anything for listing your item, or at least that is what I have been told because I pay the monthly fees on my three listing services. I don’t want my listings to drop off after a month or so. They don’t pay as much for the item (some go dumpster diving, and ick, the customer doesn’t know this), and at a penny, what complaint would they have?
So, there is a large difference between listing amounts. I hunt down like new copies on most of my books, don’t take a book that has an ‘odor,’ and highlighting and underlining are rare in most of my copies. By the time I count my ‘overhead,’ I have to charge more than the DDs out there (see above), because I have more into my books (don’t ask about gas prices!).
THANKFULLY, I have a market of individuals who care about condition, and I sell enough online to almost satisfy me. More and more each month, too, btw.
Debbie K.