eBay adds features to TurboLister

eBay is adding features to TurboLister this week, including some functions that were only available through "My eBay":

• View and Edit your Active and Scheduled Listings. You can now view and edit your live and scheduled listings right from Turbo Lister. Make your desired changes within the tool, click on "Synchronize" in the top navigation bar, and your listings will be updated on the site.

• Relist or Sell Similar Items. Relist items or use the Sell Similar option in Turbo Lister by using the new buttons within the Listing Activity view.

• More Time-Saving Options. "Find & Replace" text within your listings. In addition, you'll be able to use Windows shortcuts to copy/paste information between views, and to export data from Turbo Lister to a spreadsheet program like Excel.

Q&A: Is it getting harder to be a full-time bookseller?

QUESTION: Can a person just starting out in the bookselling field today still make a full-time living at it -- like people used to be able to do about 7 to 10 years ago?

I hear so many booksellers on eBay complaining that books sales are so bad, and that they can't make a living with the new fees. Is your book still congruent for today's seller, or has the market really changed since you wrote it?

ANSWER: I got into online bookselling six and a half years ago, right about the time it got popular. Third-party selling had just been introduced on Amazon, and Half.com was going like gangbusters.

Back then -- and ever since then -- there has been a vocal contingent of sellers who've said, "Things used to be great, and now they're terrible."

Personally, I never felt like there was a gold rush in Internet bookselling. And there's no doubt, things have gotten a lot more competitive. Sometimes I feel like I'm working harder and harder just to keep my head above water.

As far as being able to do it full time, it all depends on whether you have access to plenty of stock at reasonable prices. I'm lucky in that sense because I live near Washington D.C. and there's several libraries within easy driving distance. It's pretty unusual if I can't find two or three good library sales every weekend of the year. I suppose someone who lived in a very rural area without lots of nearby libraries would have it much tougher.

I still think online bookselling is a revolutionary way for an entreprenuer to have a viable home-based business with very low risk. But you have to put a lot of time and labor into this. It's not a get-rich-quick plan. For long periods, I've worked 10 hours a day on this, and I've never netted more than $40,000 a year selling used books. But I would never work 10 hours a day for someone else, so I don't complain about the way things are too much.

Regarding eBay, I prefer selling at fixed prices, so I do about 80 percent of my business on Amazon and the rest on eBay/Half, and I don't auction books anymore. I'm sure it's much harder now to auction common books on eBay for profit than it was five or six years ago because eBay has lost some of its novelty for people -- there are lots of other places to shop online now. (Collectibles are another story. If I specialized in collectibles, 80 percent of my business would probably be from eBay auctions and the other networks.)

Nevertheless, I stay active on eBay/Half.com because I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket. Sales on Amazon have been crummy lately for a variety of reasons, so I've stepped up my activity elsewhere.

And you're right -- I think there was a time when you could sell practically anything on eBay and make great profits. But that was before my time.

What does everyone else think? Is it still possible to make a full-time living as an online bookseller?

That eBay purchase might arrive in an Amazon box?

The River continues to get a ton of publicity for its Fulfillment by Amazon program, including today's writeup in the New York Times.

Since last fall, the program, Fulfillment by Amazon, has allowed independent sellers who list their goods on Amazon.com to use its network of more than 20 distribution centers around the world to fill orders. Now Amazon, which is based in Seattle, is opening the program to vendors who list their items elsewhere on the Web — on their own site, through Google, or even on Amazon’s e-commerce rival, eBay.

I think this program could work for a lot of businesses, but I see a lot of problems with used books. There profit margin is low enough, without the FBA fees.

But the Times article does quote one enthusiastic bookseller:

Barry Mark, who runs Treebeard Books from his home in Palm Beach County, Fla., buys surplus books and sells them on Amazon and other sites. Since he signed up for Fulfillment by Amazon last September, he says that his sales have jumped more than 30 percent, and a third of the orders that come in are from members of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium discount shipping program.

But he says he sees the biggest benefit in the reduction of his workload, on peak days when 200 packages have to go out the door. “Usually there’s not enough hours in the week to ship everything,” he said.

The article also quotes another Amazon bookseller, John Brown, who estimates FBA could save him $2,000 monthly in storage and labor. But Brown hasn't switched because he sees two show-stoppers with FBA: no international shipping, and no expedited shipping.

Call me a control freak, but there's no way I would trust my fulfillment to anyone else -- even if I could watch over their shoulder.

Book donation site knocked for selling on ABE, Amazon

Doesn't it bug you when you go to a library sale and there isn't a single decent book? It's obvious when there are thousands of books and nothing but crud, someone has cherry-picked the donations. It's getting more and more common these days for Friends of the Library groups to skim the cream and sell their best donated books online.

FOLs aren't the only ones, regular charities are getting into the act too. There's a well-known book donation outlet in Baltimore called The Book Thing, which accepts book donations and gives away the books every weekend. But it turns out they don't give away all the books, they're skimming the best ones.

Book Thing operator Russel Wattenberg was criticized in the newspaper today for selling lots of donations on ABE.com and Amazon. He also consigns some books to auctioneers, the Baltimore Sun said.

But booksellers insist that Wattenberg should be more up front about the growing number of books he creams from donations, how much money he is getting for them online, and how that money is being spent at The Book Thing, a charity that has received grants from local entities such as the Open Society Institute, the Abell Foundation and Kiwanis.

A recent survey of the Internet sites AbeBooks.com and Amazon.com found more than 4,000 titles for sale by a business linked to The Book Thing called Boards & Wraps, bookbinding lingo for hardcovers and paperbacks. The online ads make no mention that proceeds from sales would go to a nonprofit in Baltimore, although Wattenberg's name and The Book Thing's Waverly address are listed.

Charities (and other businesses) have the right to run things as they see fit, as long as they're not breaking the law. But I think they should make it clear that some of the donations aren't given away, as most people seem to think.

In the short term, yes, cherry-picking provides more income for the FOL or charity. But what about the long term? If booksellers and collectors can't find decent books at these sales, they'll quit attending. And I think that could mean far less income for the FOL or charity in the long run.

What do you think?

Amazon will raise shipping credits and closing fees

Amazon announced it will adjust Marketplace shipping credits and variable closing fees when the Postal Service changes rates March 14:

To reflect these changes, we will increase Marketplace shipping credits for Books, Music, Movies, Video Games and Software, effective May 14th. The increases will range from $0.39 to $2.51 depending upon the product category and shipping method. In addition, we will implement modest increases to the variable closing fees in these product lines.

A full list of the changes compared with today’s rates is set forth in the charts below. Here is a short summary of the changes:

1. The Books, Video Games and Software standard shipping credit will be increased from $3.49 to $3.99.

2. The Music, DVD and VHS standard shipping credit will increase from $2.59 to $2.98.

3. The Books, Video Games and Software variable closing fee will increase from $1.20 to $1.35.

4. The Music, DVD and VHS variable closing fee will be increased from $0.70 to $0.80.

Shipping credit changes:

Domestic Standard
Current: $3.49, New: $3.99

Expedited
Current: $5.99, New $6.99

International
Current: $9.98, New $12.49

Variable closing fee changes:

	Current	New
Books	$1.20	$1.35

If you have questions about these changes, please contact Seller Support by going to our Help pages and clicking “Selling at Amazon.com,” and then “Contact Customer Service.” If you have feedback about these changes, and you do not need a response, please feel free to write to postage-increase-feedback@amazon.com.

Q&A: Is USPS Delivery Confirmation worth the money?

QUESTION: I'm fairly new to selling on Amazon (about eight months now). I've sold on eBay for many years (not books). On eBay I've always shipped with UPS (larger items than books.) With Amazon I sell primarily books and DVDs, and ship with USPS. I use Delivery Confirmation on items over a certain dollar threshold, and for expensive items I also add insurance.

My problem is with Delivery Confirmation. I've had two cases now where the customer says they never received the item, but the Post Office shows it as delivered. I've tried the reasonable approach of filing a lost package report and suggesting that the customer wait and see or request a refund from Amazon (I know Amazon won't give it if the Post Office shows the delivery, but I figure it will buy some time for the item to show up or for the Post Office to do their job). I also end every e-mail with a request that if the customer has any questions, other problems, or needs any other assistance, to let me know.

In both cases, after about a week, the customer didn't contact me, but left negative feedback. I don't want negative feedback, and work hard to keep my feedback at 99 percent. So I give the customer a full refund and they remove the negative (I don't ask them to, they just do it after the refund).

If I'm going to end up giving a refund anyway, what's the point of Delivery Confirmation? My complaint is with the Post Office; their service is terrible. They make a mistake, claim a delivery that was not made, and stand by it -- no matter what. My experience with UPS is completely different. First of all, UPS can actually track a package, the USPS can't (their tracking is a joke).

UPS gives me a refund 100 percent of the time, and within two weeks for a lost or damaged package. Of course, UPS is too expensive to use for books or DVD's so I'm stuck with the Post Office.

So, what good is Delivery Confirmation? I'm considering dropping it completely.

ANSWER: You're right, on the surface it doesn't make a whole lot of business sense to use Delivery Confirmation. Although I've been too chicken to drop DC myself (yet), I agree with every point you've made.

For example, at the end of 2005 I tallied up how much I'd spent on DC during that year. It was over $4,000, even with the discounted online rate from using Endicia. Obviously I didn't get my money's worth. During that time I had three or four A to Z claims worth perhaps a total of $100 that I was able to get reversed because I was able to show DC. So I spent $4,000-plus to save $100?

Also, during 2005 I answered about 400 or 500 e-mails from people who I'd sent a DC number to, but they couldn't get a tracking result from the Postal Service. (At the time I sent the DC number in my shipping confirmation e-mail). I heard back from the people who couldn't get a tracking result from the USPS Web site because their package was never scanned until delivery. So when the customer checked the tracking, they got the impression I had never shipped the package despite what I'd said in my shipping-confirmation e-mail.

After I took a look at those numbers from 2005 I decided to stop giving the DC number in my shipping confirmation e-mail because I decided it was causing more work for me, not less. It's irritating to pay good money for a service (DC) that ends up causing a bunch of extra work for you.

So why am I still using DC? Good question. I've seriously considered dropping it but have just been avoiding the decision. One thing that is hard to quantify: How many customers who might otherwise try pulling a scam are kept "honest" because they assume from seeing the DC barcode that there is certain proof of delivery?

Also, Amazon monitors your refund rate and A to Z claims. Once you get to 5 percent of refunds, you'll be in trouble. But if you're fulfilling your orders promptly, there's not much chance your refunds will reach 5 percent, even allowing for the occasional Postal Service screwup.

Also, I'll add a few words in defense of the Postal Service, despite the aggravation they cause me. Media Mail is very economical and it's the only real choice for booksellers who want to maximize their profits -- especially us used booksellers who are operating on just a few dollars' profit margin on each sale. And it's possible that Delivery Confirmation will show "delivered" even though the buyer doesn't receive the package. For example, anyone walking down the street can swipe a package out of a mailbox.

Amazon will delete shipping information from e-mails next month

Amazon announced it will no longer provide buyer shipping addresses in its "Sold, ship now" e-mails beginning May 21st. Sellers will need to retrieve shipping addresses from the payment accounts or from order fulfillment reports:

On Monday, May 21st, the "Sold, ship now" e-mails will be modified to remove private customer shipping information. These e-mails will only contain the following information:

• Notification that a customer has purchased one of your products.
• The quantity and product titles of the items in the order.

We will no longer include information about the buyer, such as the buyer e-mail or shipping address, or information about the order, such as the order ID or the product ID, in the "Sold, ship now" e-mails. We are making this change to protect the privacy of our buying customers.

If you rely on the order details in "Sold, ship now" e-mails for creating shipping labels and packing slips, you will now need to use one of the following methods to retrieve your order information.

• View your recent Marketplace orders or Search your Marketplace orders in Your Seller Account
• Order Fulfillment Reports (for Pro Merchant subscribers: Reports > Get listing and fulfillment reports)
• The Amazon Services Order Notifier (ASON) application
• The Event Notification Service (ENS)

We will continue to send "Sold, ship now" e-mails to notify you of new orders. However, since e-mail can be subject to delivery problems that occur outside of Amazon.com's systems, we recommend that you also regularly check Your Seller Account for new orders, or use one of the other methods above.

Amazon Marketplace growth stalled during 2006

Although Amazon registered strong sales growth last year, the percentage of sales resulting from Marketplace merchants failed to increase for the first time ever.

A new breakdown of the North American book market published by Morris Rosenthal shows that Amazon's media sales exceeded those of brick-and-mortar giant Borders for the first time. Amazon's sales of books, music and video rose 15 percent last year, while sales at most other retailers were flat.

Marketplace accounted for 28 percent of Amazon's sales during 2006, the same as 2005.

Rosenthal estimates that because of Amazon's overall growth, Marketplace sales rose about 15 percent compared to 2005. But the share of Marketplace third-party sales relative to Amazon's sale of new items stalled, perhaps because of Amazon's heavy promotion of its Super Saver and Prime shipping programs. Last year on Marketplace, Amazon began displaying listings for its own merchandise above better deals by third-party merchants -- unless sellers undercut Amazon by more than the price of standard shipping.

An excerpt:

Amazon failed to grow sales through third party sellers for the first time in 2006, including those individuals and businesses selling through Amazon Marketplace, Merchants and other programs. Third party sales accounted for 28% of Amazon's total unit sales in 2006, no change from 2005, but still more than one in 4 items sold. If you assume that the majority of the third party item sales are books, and that the non-book media vs book ratio continues around 1:2, this would imply that about 1 in 3 books sold at Amazon are actually sold by a third party without even taking the other Amazon merchandise into account.

Q&A: Why is Amazon outlawing Google Base Store Connector?

QUESTION: I sell on Amazon and upload my listings to Google using Google Base Store Connector. But I just received this e-mail from Google:

Dear Google Base Store Connector user,

Our goal with Google Base Store Connector is to make it as easy as possible for merchants to make their inventory searchable on Google. Unfortunately, Amazon is requiring us to remove support for Amazon Stores from Google Base Store Connector. As a result, in the next update to Google Base Store Connector, this feature will be removed. This update will be required for all users.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We are working to resolve this issue and will let you know of any changes or updates that occur.

Thank you.
The Google Base Team

WHY would Amazon drop something that drives traffic TO Amazon?? This ranks right up there with the elimination of our neat, orderly zShops and giving us the resulting mess that is currently an Amazon store -- a mess that is impossible to categorize or sort usefully, which just shows a morass of listings that are useless to a buyer. Why is Amazon trying to kill potential sales??

ANSWER: Wow! Thanks for letting me know about this. I'm registered with Google and didn't get the e-mail.

I agree with you, Google Base is an opportunity for Amazon to make its wares more visible to more people on the Internet and make more sales. But apparently Amazon sees risks here. I would guess Amazon is worried about two things, and these are purely guesses on my part:

• Google Base is potentially a way for Amazon sellers to make sales without paying any fees to Amazon. Of course sellers are free to list their inventory wherever they want, but I guess Amazon doesn't want to make it too easy for people to export their listings. For example, if sellers are using something like Buybundle.com to manage their Amazon listings on Google Base, it's possible for buyers to use PayPal instead of Amazon Payments, and Amazon would receive no commission.
  

• Amazon may see the potential for security weaknesses or outright fraud -- that unsuspecting customers *think* they're buying from Amazon when actually they're not. I'm not saying necessarily that anybody is doing anything untoward, but this could be an argument that Amazon is using.
  

It's very interesting that eBay seems to be behind this 100 percent (they encourage Store owners to export their listings) while Amazon is not.

UPDATE: After writing an e-mail to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the original poster received this reply:

From: resolution-sellers@amazon.com

[mailto:resolution-sellers@amazon.com]
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 8:04 PM
To: xxxxx@yahoo.com
Subject: Your Amazon.com Inquiry

Greetings,

My name is Nathan, and I am an Escalation Specialist with the
Amazon.com Seller Support team. Your message to Jeff Bezos was forwarded to me
for my review and reply. I will include Jeff's office with this correspondence.

Google has removed support for Amazon Marketplace from the Google Base
Store Connector application because there were problems with Google’s
original implementation of Amazon Marketplace support. We are working to find
the right solution to this issue.

We appreciate your patience.

Best regards,

Nathan S.
Amazon.com Seller Support

Alibris revamps commissions but hasn't decided on postage increases

The Alibris bookselling network said it will revamp its commission structure next month but hasn't decided whether it will increase shipping credits when the Postal Service raises rates May 14. According to an e-mail sent to sellers:

Shipping credits for US sellers still pending
We are aware that the United States Postal Service has approved a rate increase that will take effect on May 14, 2007. We are still conducting research on shipping rates within the industry, are carefully considering all options, and will announce our position concerning this issue as soon as possible.

Minimum retail price will be reduced
We will lower the minimum retail price allowed on Alibris (www.alibris.com) from US$2.95 to US$1.99. Prices on Alibris U.K. (www.alibris.co.uk) will automatically convert to reflect the new minimum price in foreign currencies. We expect this change to increase sales volume for our sellers on our retail sites.

Commission changes to be implemented
Alibris will set a minimum sales commission of US$0.50. This means sellers will then pay either 15% or US$0.50, whichever is greater, on each sale received on our retail Web sites.

We will also create a new, reduced-commission structure for high-value items. Items priced greater than $500 will be subject to the following commission rates on our retail Web sites:

• US$499.99 or less: 15%
• US$500.00—599.99: 10%
• US$600.00—699.99: 8%
• US$700.00—799.99: 6%
• US$800.00 & higher: 5%

We currently charge a 10% commission on all items priced greater than $500.00. We expect that these reduced-commission rates will benefit our longstanding collectible and antiquarian sellers and will encourage other sellers to list their pricier items.

For our business-partner channels, sellers currently pay commissions of 15% to our partners and 5% to Alibris. The new structure for these programs will require a minimum Alibris commission of US$0.25 on all partner sales. In other words, sellers will continue to pay 15% to our partners and either 5% or US$0.25, whichever is greater, to Alibris.

Introducing a per-transaction fee option
Shortly following the implementation of the changes explained above, we will introduce a new fee option for our booksellers with less than 1,000 items and all music and movie sellers. This new fee option will enable such sellers to pay US$1.00 per transaction instead of a flat monthly fee. The transaction fee would be assessed in addition to the commissions Alibris and its partners will charge on each sale. This option will allow our qualified sellers to "pay as they go" for their sales rather than worrying about the sales volume necessary to cover a flat monthly fee.

Why these changes are happening
We do our best to accommodate the varied needs of every individual seller. We hope you find this new structure to be both flexible and favorable to your business.

Kind regards,
Alibris Client Services

And here is Alibris' current fee structure.

I'm curious to hear what Alibris sellers think of these changes.

Will the Postal Service sink online booksellers?

Well, here's a new shipping problem that hasn't gotten much attention yet: Next month the Postal Service will eliminate its international version of "Media Mail," which has traditionally been called "surface." This mode of economy shipping is called "surface" because the packages are shipped literally on the "surface" of cargo ships going overseas.

"Surface" mail is certainly slow -- it can take six weeks or more to arrive -- but it's far cheaper than airmail service, and so it's the only option for sending large, heavy books overseas. But it won't be an option anymore next month.

The timing on this really hurts, because:

• The Postal Service is jacking up rates across the board, including Global Priority airmail. On May 14, rates will rise from $9.50 to $11.00 (except for Canada or Mexico, which currently cost $7.50 and will rise to $9).
  

• Marketplaces such as Amazon apparently are expecting sellers to absorb the increased shipping rates. Amazon hasn't announced any plans to increase shipping credits, which are $9.98 for international salees.

This issue got some attention in today's New York Times:

Many thousands of smaller used- and rare-book merchants say they will suffer, since they rely on foreign demand.

"If postage costs as much, if not more, than the book, it'll be hard to sell books," said Rob Stuart, owner of FrenchboroBooks.com, a seller of rare and antique books in Frenchboro, Maine. "And maybe 25 percent or more of my books sell internationally."

"We're already competing with the special deals the Postal Service does with Amazon, eBay and the big book purveyors that get cut rates on postage because of volume," Mr. Stuart said. "So when they drop economy international shipping, they're playing with a model that talks about economies of scale -— one that's balanced by a few huge operations, and wipes out the little operations."

Yvonne Yoerger, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said customers aren't yet aware of other options. She said "customized agreements" for surface mail are being developed for higher-volume shippers that will be enhanced over the next several months to address the needs of small businesses. "The Postal Service has a longstanding commitment to small businesses and is working to accommodate customers' needs as the international mail changes take effect," Ms. Yoerger said.

Jordan Gordon, who oversees AbeBooks’s North American bookseller operations, said that from the roughly 8,000 American booksellers who list books on his site, 20 percent of the orders are from foreign customers. “These guys will definitely lose sales, because about half of the international orders they get are shipped at the surface rate,” he said.

Booksellers who specialize in hard-to-find titles will be more heavily affected, Mr. Gordon said. “The Da Vinci Code” will ultimately sell domestically, but there are only a few people in the world interested in, say, an obscure book on medical ethics. And at vastly elevated prices, that book simply will not sell.

Craig Berman, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment about possible changes in shipping reimbursement policies or on how the new rates might affect Amazon’s business.

Q&A: How far would you travel to a book sale?

QUESTION: I live in Colorado and there always seems to be library sales in bordering states. Is it worth traveling to a sale?

Now obviously, I wouldn't go to a sale that was advertising only 6,000 books. My question is, have you traveled a few hundred miles to go to sales? Is there a criteria you set, such as a sale must have at least 60,000 books?

ANSWER: I've traveled up to 250 miles for a sale, and my experiences have been all over the map. Some of them have been super, and I've gotten tons of books, and other sales have been an absolute waste of time.

Book scouting is somewhat like antique-hunting: Sometimes the biggest, most heavily advertised opportunities are a bust, but you strike gold in a well-hidden spot nobody else discovered.

The worst sale I've ever been to was one of the biggest (and, ironically, very close). This is an annual, heavily promoted charity booksale right here in my backyard in Virginia. In retrospect, I figured the reason they had so many books was they are still trying to sell the duds that haven't sold in previous years.

Books don't grow on trees, so if you're going to be a full-time bookseller it's essential to travel a bit. We've got to seize the opportunity when it comes; there are only so many sales. I've never had a firm requirement of how many books the sale needs to have, but I do like to know there's going to be at least 10,000 books available, going by the listings on Book Sale Finder.

My typical book sale trip is only about 15 miles. Most of the good sales are on Fridays or Saturdays, usually at the same time. So I try to hit all the sales happening during my area on a weekend. Nowadays I reserve my long-distance trips for weekends with no good local sales. The grass isn't always greener somewhere else, but ...

I'm always on the lookout for books, even while on vacation. It's great if you can write off part of your travel costs as a business expense. If you're interested in book-finding road trips there's a great little book about it called Bookstore Tourism.