Q&A: Should I pay extra for USPS Delivery Confirmation at the retail window?

QUESTION: I have a problem regarding USPS treatment of Delivery Confirmation.

Originally I addressed all my books by hand. If the price was over $25, I would slap on a green Delivery Confirmation sticker. The postal clerk would scan it in in front of me at the window. It cost 65 cents for each Media Mail package and 55 cents for Priority.

After postal rates went up in May, I decided I was spending too much on DC. So I switched to online postage via PayPal. It's more trouble, but DC costs only 18 cents, and it's free for Priority Mail). I use online postage only for books that merit DC, i.e. books over $25 or books sent via Priority Mail or Global Priority.

Problem is, they don't scan these in when they receive them. Normally the book will eventually get scanned when it's delivered or at some transit point en route. But today I got an angry email from a buyer. I sent out his book on 6/20. I am in New York, he is in Florida. It should take 4 days; it's been 10 days and it hasn't arrived. I sent him a notification email on 6/20 with DC links, etc. Here's what the DC link says now:

Status: Electronic Shipping Info Received
The U.S. Postal Service was electronically notified by the shipper on June 20, 2007 to expect your package for mailing. This does not indicate receipt by the USPS or the actual mailing date. Delivery status information will be provided if / when available. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later.

In other words, they confirm that I paid for postage for that item, but they can't confirm whether I actually mailed it -- because they never scanned it! It occurs to me that if the Postal Service really loses this book, my DC is USELESS! Amazon now demands tracking as evidence against A-Z Claims, but this DC doesn't help me a bit!

Maybe I should go back to old-fashioned expensive DC stickers -- or just give them up completely!

ANSWER: It's the same sorry state of affairs here in Northern Virginia. I use electronic DC with Endicia. The Postal Service used to be fairly reliable about scanning my packages when they got to the regional sorting center. But now my packages are rarely scanned until they're practically delivered (if then).

It wouldn't be so bad if the "tracking" result the Postal Service gave the customer at least implied that the package was on its way (as far as they know). But with the wording they've got, it makes it look like we've either forgotten to mail it, or we're just lying. A horrible situation.

But I don't think it's worth standing in line to pay 65 cents for DC, though -- even if you do get the scan when you mail.

But all this has forced me to quit giving customers the DC number when I send a shipping confirmation e-mail. There's nothing I hate more than having to pay for something I'm not getting.

Harry Potter first edition fetches $18,000

A Harry Potter first edition sold for $18,000 at auction this week. The winning bidder at the London auction was anonymous.

The publishers produced between 500 and 1,000 copies in the book's first run.

That a book that is relatively new would fetch such large amounts is unprecedented, said Luke Battenham, Bonhams' book specialist.

"The author is still alive, it's a fairly new series ... but by the time there was a third book, you could already see it would be a hit," Battenham said. "It's a phenomenon."

Bonhams auctioneers had estimated the book would sell for between $10,000 and $20,000.

SwapTree lets you trade books, music, videos

If you have some deadwood you need to unload, here's a new service set to launch July 4: SwapTree. It lets you trade books, music and videos.

To use it, you type in ISBNs or UPCs to compile two lists:

• A trading list of the items you want to discard

• A want list of items you'd like to have. You can do this by importing your Amazon wish list or by clicking on things at Amazon directly.

SwapTree then crunches everyone's lists and tries to set up trades. To simplify matters, it assumes you'll give any item on your trading list for anything on your want list. So the person with the item you want doesn't necessarily have to want something on your trading list, they can get it from another member.

SwapTree won't charge any commissions or fees for the trades, you'll just have to pay for shipping. The company plans to make all its money from advertising on the site.

SwapTree is in private testing now. It will be interesting to see if it gets enough users who list enough items to make it worthwhile to participate.

So you want to be a bookseller

Do you have a love of knowledge, and a love for people? All kinds of people? And do people like you? Then watch this short video. You, too, can become a rare bookseller.

Does competition help or hurt sellers of used books?

If you ran the only used bookstore in town, how would you feel if another one opened for business this summer? That's exactly what's happening in Omaha, Nebraska. According to this article, the bookstore owners both believe that having two used bookstores in town will generate more than double the sales volume of the original store. In other words, both of them will supposedly benefit from the competition.

Unlike what often happens when stores selling new books move into a market — as when Barnes & Noble and Borders entered the Omaha market and essentially crushed a variety of bookstores — used-book stores can help one another, Siegel said.

"The more there are, the better it is, because more book people coming through an area will say, 'Gee, it pays to stop,'" even if they're coming from out of town, she said.

I'm not saying this is impossible, but I'd predict one thing: If each store doesn't have strong walk-in traffic and a brisk trade over the Internet, at least one store will be out of business within three years.

One bookseller quoted in the story says:

A lot of people have closed their doors in this business and done the Internet. I really enjoy meeting people and talking to them about books or whatever. . . . Theoretically we'd do better if we closed our door and just put everything online. And we'd spend our days answering e-mails and shipping books.

That's not how I want to spend my life.

How other people unload books

Better World Books got some good publicity here in the New York Times.

Started by some freshly minted Notre Dame graduates in 2002, it collects used books and textbooks from about 1,000 campuses and 700 libraries nationwide.

As an individual, you can donate if you pay for shipping yourself; but you can buy anything off its Web site and shipping is free anywhere in the country.

“It’s like 1,000 sidewalk sales rolled into one,” said a co-founder, Xavier Helgesen. He estimates that his organization receives about 15,000 used books a day and sells about 5,000 daily.

Some of the unusable books are recycled, many of the textbooks are sent to universities in Africa and of all the books that are sold, a certain percentage of each sale — it varies but ranges around 15 percent — goes to nonprofit partners promoting global literacy.

One thing I wish would have been made clear in the article: Some of these "charities" are actually for-profit companies.

Which Amazon feature helps sell the most books?

Do you ever wonder what motivates people to buy a particular books? When you're browsing on Amazon yourself, which features do you use?

Is Search Inside the Book that important? What about Tags? Wikis? How about plain old Categories? I was musing about this today on my other blog, please take a look and add your two cents.

Calling all writers: Upload your stories for chance to win $500

If you're one of the several writers who read this blog:

If you're working on a book, or plan to write one someday, I recommend you check out the EditRed literary Web community, which can put you on the path to being published.

Basic membership is free, and you can upload a story for a chance to win $500.

Here's what else you can do at EditRED:

• Manage Your Web Base. All EditRED members get free Web space and an easy to remember web address from which to promote and showcase their poems, blogs and stories.
  

• Sell More Books. Add up to 5 books (Covers, blurbs, reviews, excerpts) link them with 'BUY HERE' buttons to the retailer of your choice and have them advertised throughout EditRED.
  

• Your Own Reader Group. Build and maintain your own group of dedicated readers to critique and give you feedback on your writing.
  

• Win Awards. Put yourself up for the monthly Choice Awards and the chance to win $500. Edit Red also publishes a yearly short story collection, made up of stories selected from amongst Edit Red members.
  

• Meet and Share. Meet writers from all over the world, share tips and take part in literary debate.

Here's more information on EditRED.

Should hoarding be banned from book sales?

I received this note from Sandra Adamson at Acquired Books and I think it makes a great editorial:

I went to four library sales this weekend, and at every sale there were a couple of teams hoarding all the books.

I think it is high time that we as an online bookselling group begin together to make a united effort to have hoarding banned from booksales.

It is bad enough that some sellers have access to the books before the sales and the sales themselves have been thoroughly picked over, we then have to deal with rude sellers who now have teams and take practically all the books of the shelves/tables.

They are not buying all of them they just want to look through them at their convenience in a corner and removed them so no one else can have access to the books before they can decide if they want the book or not.

The library sales are not private sales and some people pay to get in a preview sale!

If you take a book from a shelve/table you should buy it PERIOD!!!

No taking books and putting them aside or under tables and throwing tarps/blankets on top unless you are definitely going to buy them!

I think sellers should contact their libraries and start asking to ban hoarding. If you have a scanner stand at the tables and scan the books in place and put the books in your bag.

The sales are becoming a place of rudeness and chaos. Is this the image we want the public to have about booksellers in the community??

I would love to see a letter posted here that seller could paste and copy and send to all their local libraries asking to ban hoarding just like pushing for a legislative bill, there is power in numbers!

What do really think about this epidemic?

Thanks, Sandra, I couldn't agree more. I recently raised this on BookThink and posed the question "Will Technology Kill the FOL Sale?" My point was that it's gotten a lot worse out there because of scanners, but the major culprit is simply bad behavior by some dealers who are intent on hogging all the books.

What do you think?

Eeking out a profit at brick-and-mortar bookstores

Here's a good follow-up to the recent post about opening brick-and-mortar bookstores. The San Francisco Chronicle points to Oakland's Diesel bookstore as an example of "what it takes to make a small bookstore succeed in today's era of chain megastores."

Independent bookstores have been squeezed over the past 15 years by a combination of this new competition and rising rents. The number of independent booksellers nationwide has fallen from about 4,000 in 1990 to less than 2,000 today.

Local casualties have included large, prominent stores such as A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco, the Telegraph Avenue location of Cody's Books in Berkeley, and Kepler's in Menlo Park, which closed in 2005 but reopened with help from its customers.

Diesel, meanwhile, managed to generate profit of $138,000 on sales of $1.8 million last year, a margin of 7.5 percent.

In the bookselling world -- where the average independent bookstore had a net loss of 1.15 percent in 2005 -- that is considered wildly successful.

Clearing $138,000 a year is "wildly successful"? And that's the entire take -- the bookstore owners don't draw a salary.

Growth in online book sales slowing, NY Times says

Growth in online sales of books and other merchandise has slowed dramatically, according to a report in today's New York Times.

Online online book sales will rise an estimated 11 percent this year, compared with nearly 40 percent last year.

EBay reported that revenue from Web site sales increased by just 1 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year.

Other highlights:

In response, a so-called clicks-and-bricks hybrid model is emerging, said Dan Whaley, the founder of GetThere, which became one of the largest Internet travel businesses after it was acquired by Sabre Holdings.

The bookseller Borders, for example, recently revamped its Web site to allow users to reserve books online and pick them up in the store....

Barnes & Noble recently upgraded its site to include online book clubs, reader forums and interviews with authors. The company hopes the changes will make the online world feel more like the offline one, said Marie J. Toulantis, the chief executive of BN.com. “We emulate the in-store experience by having a book club online,” she said.

Amazon weakens A-to-Z Guarantee protection for sellers

Every day, it seems, Amazon does something to make it harder to make an honest buck selling books. Yesterday the company revised its A-to-Z Guarantee, making it much more likely that sellers will forfeit funds when buyers claim nondelivery -- even if tracking shows the book was delivered!

The bottom line is this: If your buyer is a scammer, they're going to get your money and your merchandise, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

Amazon posted the new policy on its "Seller Success" board last night. Here's the first part that gives me heartburn:

... If tracking information does not show expected delivery in a reasonable timeframe, the claim will be granted and the seller will be held liable. This will apply to packages lost in transit as well.

"does not show expected delivery in a reasonable timeframe"? What the heck does that mean? Invariably, when customers complain about delivery, the book has been sent via Media Mail, and the Postal Service hasn't made a Delivery Confirmation scan since the time of shipment (and often, they didn't bother to scan it then either).

But here's the part of Amazon's new policy that's simply unbelievable: If tracking/Delivery Confirmation shows the item was delivered and the buyer claims nonreceipt, sellers can still be held liable:

If no receipt is confirmed, the seller may still be held liable for lack of fulfillment -- Amazon will not cover service errors, including loss, theft, or postal/shipping issues.

Yet again, Amazon has made major policy changes to its selling agreements with no apparent consultation with sellers or consideration of the consequences.

Here's the full statement from Amazon.

What do you think about this new policy? Feel free to leave a comment here, then don't forget to give Bezos and company an earful.

Survey: Most booksellers are over 45, highly educated

ABE.com polled nearly 2,000 of its member booksellers, and found:

• 79% are aged over 45 – more than half have a degree or a higher qualification;
• Most sellers had left white-collar careers to become booksellers – the most common previous professions were jobs in teaching, libraries, sales, and management;
• 11% work between 51 and 60 hours per week, and 9% are working more than 60 hours a week with the online cataloguing of books being the most time-consuming task;
• 25% will increase their online book inventory by between 10% and 25% in 2007;
• 21% plan to launch their own e-commerce website;
• Sellers acquire books through a large number of sources - many of which require time on the road - including library sales, estate sales, private sales, and auctions. 26% had traveled up to 100 miles to buy a book and 9% had gone abroad to buy books;
• Many sellers also sell through other online marketplaces and 74% had set up their Internet selling operation without outside IT assistance;
• 60% of sellers polled operate purely online – the others had bookstores or showrooms;
• 64% of the sellers offer mostly out-of-print books and most specialize in a number of genres - history, fiction and children’s books are the most common;
• 68% list falling book prices as their biggest fear for the future but 38% are also concerned that fewer young people are reading books now;
• Despite their long working hours, 33% read between five and 10 books per month.

Read more here.

List of valuable ISBNs for sale on eBay

Now here's something interesting: A list of valuable ISBNs up for auction on eBay.

The description says the list includes 50,000 book ISBNs that sell for $25 or higher on Amazon. It's being sold by DirectTextbook.com. The list has a starting bid of $100 and will be auctioned a maximum of three times during the next month.

Here's an example of one of the books on the list:



Here's the blog for DirectTextbook, which gives contact information.

Amazon restores some order details to "Sold, ship now" e-mails

After receiving many complaints from sellers, Amazon is restoring several order details to "Sold, ship now" e-mails including:

* Listing ID
* Condition
* Condition note
* Buyer's price
* Amazon commission
* Shipping Credit
* Your earnings

But Amazon isn't restoring buyer shipping or e-mail addresses. Here's the full announcement.

Q&A: Should I open a real store to sell my books, CDs and DVDs?

QUESTION: I'd like to open a used bookstore. I live in the Atlanta area, and there are no used book stores within 15 miles of me. There is a Barnes & Noble and a Borders a couple of miles away, but no place to buy, sell and trade. I've been selling online for two years, and wonder if I should open a store for used books, CDs and DVDs.

Should I go for a highly visible storefront by a highway, or somewhere a little less traveled and cheaper so I could afford to advertise?

ANSWER: There are so many disadvantages to having a brick-and-mortar store. The rent, insurance, employees, shoplifters, government red tape -- it goes on and on. The one big plus with a real store is the walk-in trade, where people bring you merchandise. But that' s only if the public discovers your store.

Honestly I don't now much about promoting a physical store, but I've read that you've got to have visibility from a busy highway or foot traffic to have a prayer of success these days.

And I hate to be so negative, but I think there are reasons why we see so few used bookshops around these days. To give a personal anecdote: A couple of years ago, I decided to visit every used bookshop (and all the thrift shops that advertised books) in my local area in Northern Virginia. I had about 25 shops on my list from researching the Yellow Pages. What a huge disappointment it was -- two-thirds of the time, when I got to the store, there was nothing there. The store was vacant or another business had replaced it. All those bookshops had gone bust; they didn't move to a larger building because business was gangbusters.

Maybe one of the reasons all those stores went out of business was because they didn't have an online component. Perhaps the stores that are still surviving are doing well because they have the walk-in trade plus online buyers. I've heard several booksellers with a store remark that their online revenue "pays the bills" and if it wasn't for that, they'd be bankrupt.

I remember a few years ago on the Amazon Sellers discussion board, someone asked for advice about opening a brick-and-mortar store. Several people who operate stores chimed in, and almost all their comments were extremely negative about the challenges of making a profit with a walk-in store.

Another more thing: Prices for used CDs and DVDs are just terrible these days, except for the collectible items. On the other hand, if you could source those items cheaply online and sell them to your walk-in traffic, I suppose it's possible to build a business that way.

Sorry to be so negative about your plans. It is a cool idea to have a thriving walk-in business, and I guess a lot of us wish we could have a real store.

Comments, anyone? Is it still possible to run a brick-and-mortar bookstore without being part of a mega-chain?

On YouTube: Amazon book pages are crammed with junk

Amazon's top book reviewers are still angry about the new design for product pages.

As noted here earlier, reviewers believe the new design gives short shrift to book reviews, especially recent reviews.

The new design is being rolled out during the next two weeks. I case it hasn't hit you yet, Amazon Top Review Daniel Jolley gives a rundown in this video. He's clearly given a lot of thought to the layout of Amazon's book pages, and believes that most of it is unnecessary.

Know when your favorite author is coming to town

Do you ever wonder when or where a well known author will be in your town for a book signing or lecture? A new Web site, AuthorsTrack, enables you to keep tabs on those sorts of events you might be interested in.

If you want to boost the value of one your books, it doesn't hurt to get it signed by the author.

AuthorsTrack seems to be well populated with events, and I'm sure it will become richer as the site gets publicized. The site isn't limited to book signings, it covers all sorts of events, including lectures.