When I started selling books online, I thought it would be just fine if I made a couple of dollars of profit on each book I shipped. If I could make more than that on certain books, great — but I figured I’d sell anything I could for some chump change.
I also offered every book I had for international shipping because I figured that adding overseas sales to the mix would help me make money even faster.
These latest Postal Service rate hikes, though, are going to take a toll on our business. Media Mail is going up a lot, nearly 18 percent. And on Amazon, overseas customers will have to spend $12.50 on International shipping — more than the price of my average book!
If you combine this with Amazon’s constant offers of free shipping for new merchandise and Fulfilled by Amazon merchants, we’re going to have to scrap a lot harder for every sale. So from now on, I’m going to concentrate on higher-priced books, so that each sale is worth the headaches.
This week the Associated Press asked me how I thought the postal rate hikes would affect online bookselling. The story, which hit the wire this morning, says:
I don’t know what in the world I was thinking when I said “poetry.” I haven’t sold a single poetry book in seven years, I don’t even know if anyone buys them. I was just trying to think of an example of something you can specialize in.
What do you think? Will the postal rate hikes change your business?
6 Comments
Just so you know…
We’ve sold a modest number of poetry books at decent prices. We’ve found it somewhat semeter-driven (more sales at the beginning of a school semester), and completely unworried by condition issues (as long as they are properly described).
Poetry is now one of the areas we eyeball when we have unfettered access to a library sale area.
We have just started selling online and are taking a wait and see attitude. We sell alot of low profit books to get our feedback score up and develope a base of customers. We have only been selling 6 months and already have repeat customers. Our inventory is only around 1500 books and we sell for a second income. My wife and I spend around 15 to 20 hours a week doing “books” and now have something to do together and it also takes her mind off her health problems. We get around 800 to 1000 a month in deposits from our sales on half.com and amazon with a profit of 2 or 3 hundred. Before we invest in a scanner/program or make a effort to double our inventory (its around 1500 books) we are going to see how the rate hikes shake out the field of sellers along with how it affects our bottom line.
I do have some lower priced inventory, but I have focused on books with higher prices for a couple of years, and I don’t regret having lower sales volume, as my net income meets my needs.
That said, the business continues to require more work for less profit every year, so depending on a book’s sales ranking and condition, sometimes I list a book or two that ordinarily wouldn’t be worth the effort.
And by the way, I’ve also sold a modest number of poetry books for decent prices. I don’t look for poetry, but I don’t dismiss it automatically, either.
I am going to wait and see. With gasoline over $3 the hike does not seem unsupportable. My kids are 24, 28. They don’t blink at retail prices that turn me away and they eat out whenever they can afford to. If they are my “representative customers,” the rate hike won’t phase them.
We used a month’s profit, bought a reader as a toy (with a gps unit as well) and it paid for itself in our next month’s sales, which jumped in price per book. So I am weeding out the under $3 inventory to have space for higher value books. I am more concerned with competition from more sellers using technology than with the postage rate. We figure this is not likely to be a permanent source of extra income.
For over two years, we have been paring our low-end titles because after buying the book, including gas in travel, the fees for Amazon (including our monthly listing fee), we often don’t make any money at all on books under $4.00. Five dollar books garner a bit, esp. if they are small enough not to cost much to ship. STILL, not much there to work with if the customer loses track of the book (and we have to refund not just the book, but postage and ‘handling’ costs).
We are going through our inventory this week to ‘cull’ anything too heavy for international shipping. Debating on just stopping ALL international shipping on Amazon (Abe allows us to ask what we need to before accepting the order, although if we don’t take it, it affects our seller status).
Debbie K.
I pulled ALL my international listings at the last postal rate hike already. Amazon paid less than it costs to ship the book.
I told Amazon that this would really affect the international market.
But do they listen?
I maintain my no international shipping rule. The hazzle with customs, forms, books getting lost, customers who do not understand the feedback system and think 1 star is the best and cannot figure out how to remove it, and the trip to the Post Office for books weighing over a pound is sooooo not worth it. Especially if Amazon does not even cover the costs.
I feel really sorry for the many, many international customer that Amazon simply does not care for, but who do they care for?!