QUESTION: Now that Amazon has done away with zShop listings in lieu of building a universal catalog, how does one go about listing a book that is already listed on Amazon.uk, for example? I have bought from other U.S. third-party sellers who have listings there. How can a single person set up such an account which requires you to have an address, checks and a credit card in that country?
I would imagine that to list a book in the U.K. catalog, one has to have some markup to cover shipping costs. Any insight on listing books that I cannot list at my regular Amazon.com (U.S.) account?
ANSWER: As you probably know, several weeks ago Amazon launched a feature where our U.S. listings automatically appear on the international sites, if the book isn’t already for sale there, and assuming we’ve checked “Yes” for international shipping.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not?) I’ve gotten lots of e-mail lately from sellers having trouble listing books on Amazon.com which were published outside the U.S. Maybe this is a temporary glitch, maybe not.
Anyway, back to your question: Apparently a lot of U.S. sellers open up accounts on the international sites so they can sell there directly — although it sounds like a lot of trouble to me.
However, if you were doing a good volume of business at the international sites, it might be worth it to set up an account with one of the software vendors that can provide some automation, so that you’re not constantly having to manually delete the listings that sell.
I’m totally clueless about this, so I asked Shaun Jamieson, the business development manager at FillZ, for some more elaboration, and the answers appear below. (FillZ is one of several companies that provide automation tools for Amazon sellers.)
QUESTION: If a seller was using your software, can they automatically list on Amazon’s U.K., German, Canadian and French sites using their .com account? Or does selling on these other sites require new accounts with those international sites? Can someone sell on those international sites without software such as yours, just by using their browser?
ANSWER: FillZ offers access to all of these markets, but you still have to have separate seller accounts for each market. Sellers can sell directly on those international sites without of a service like FillZ, but it’s more difficult to maintain you inventory when you are getting orders from multiple markets simultaneously.
The main barriers to selling on these markets are having a local mailing address and bank account. FillZ has a referral program to help sellers get set up with escrow bank accounts in Germany and the UK . This makes the decision to list on their markets easier. Since we put this program in place, a number of existing sellers have started listing on the international Amazon markets. I know of sellers who had flown overseas just to get his accomplished.
QUESTION: It seems a lot of sellers are having trouble listing certain books on Amazon.com now because of listings appearing on the international sites. I’m not sure I understand the problem — whether it’s a bug, or just the way things are now.
ANSWER: We have many sellers who list the same inventory on multiple markets including the international Amazon markets. We have, however, only ever heard from one seller who received an error message for an item that was listed to Amazon.com in the context you mention.
This seller was told something to the effect of: This item was already listed on Amazon.co.uk and could therefore could not be listed on Amazon.com. After further clarification and investigation, it appeared as though this item had an ISBN that was in the UK catalog (UK ISBN), and was not in the .com catalog.
I don’t think Amazon was saying the item could not be listed on both markets. I think they were saying the item was not recognized by the catalogue of one market (.com) and were suggesting they list it on the other market (.co.uk).
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2 Comments
As Amazon was created to sell new books they will not sell a UK title on .com if there is a US title because of copyright laws.They do not understand the difference between new books and the second hand market.
I have been under the impression that Amazon plans to eventually (in the end of days) unify their international catalogs, so that any book can be bought or sold on or from any international version of Amazon. Abe’s already does this. Amazon tries to prevent sellers from making the unification even more complex by not letting them create new listings that have international duplicates. I just hope that day is coming soon! I’ve got a pile of books waiting.