Wisconsin bookstore will liquidate

If you're close to Wisconsin, you may want to check out the sale next week at J.W. Beecroft Books & Coffee. The 5,400-square-foot store's inventory will be sold off starting Nov. 5 at 50 percent off and continue through the end of the year.

Beecroft opened 10 years ago in Superior, Wis., and its passing leaves northern Wisconsin's biggest city without a single bookstore. Except for us, of course.

eBay tests jury system for disputed feedbacks

It's been a long, long, time since I've heard an original idea about how to resolve feedback disputes. Now AuctionBytes reports on something that just might work -- a new eBay program being tested in the UK called "Community Court."

It works like this: eBayers who want to contest a negative feedback rating can let a jury of 100 eBay peers decide the case. If 70 jurors agree with the seller, eBay removes the feedback. Otherwise, it's a hung jury and the feedback remains.

eBay has obviously put a lot of time into developing Community Court rules, and I hope it works well and migrates to the U.S.

I'll bet most of the people who bother to participate in something like this will be sellers. They know what's at stake, and will tend to give other sellers the benefit of the doubt. But I don't think jurors will automatically let bad sellers off the hook when they receive a legitimate negative feedback. Otherwise feedback is meaningless and doesn't help buyers or sellers.

The only way I can think of that Community Court might be abused was if unethical sellers were able to stack the jury with their cronies. Surely eBay has thought of a way to prevent this ...

Harry Potter First Edition sells for $41,000

A copy of the first Harry Potter novel sold at auction this week for nearly $41,000. The copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," published in 1997 and signed "Joanne Rowling" was sold to an anonymous private bidder for $40,326 at Christie's.

The book was published by Bloomsbury with an initial print run of about 500 copies. It was published in the U.S. in 1998 as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Book dealers urged to abandon Amazon, eBay and AbeBooks

Guy Weller over at the Bookshop Blog has some advice for those who use Amazon, eBay and AbeBooks to list their used and rare books: Take a hike!

These megasites are "dictating far too much to us as to how we should fashion our listings, and how we should list on their sites ... This we need to turn around, in our favour."

If independent booksellers don't do something soon, "we are likely to find ourselves doomed as an industry segment" Well says.

What's the answer? Booksellers should develop their own Web sites and forge partnerships with networks that will produce direct sales without charging commissions.

"We actually hold the power instruments in the game," Well concludes. "We are (collectively) more powerful than Amazon, even, with all its $billions of 'turnover.'"

Four textbook sellers busted for selling international editions

Four big online booksellers, threatened with lawsuits from textbook publishers, agreed to quit selling international editions on eBay, Amazon, ABEbooks and Half.com.

The sellers -- Walbooks, 123textbooks.com, Low Price, Reliable Book Service, and Ram Kishore, were accused of unauthorized importation, promotion and sale of non-U.S. versions of textbooks from Pearson Eduction, John Wiley & Sons, and Cengage Learning.

The sellers also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the publishers and forfeit books they had in inventory.

According to the publishers, the sellers misled their U.S. buyers by obscuring the text, title and copyright information showing that the books weren't authorized for sale in the U.S. Also, the sellers "falsely advertised" the international editions by using pictures and ISBNs of the U.S. textbooks, the publishers said.

"This settlement essentially shuts down a number of organizations involved in the unauthorized importation and sale of textbooks in the United States," said Georges Nahitchevansky, a lawyer for the publishers. "The pursuit of these organizations should serve as fair warning to others that publishers will pursue legal action against those who engage in unlawful reproduction and sale of their intellectual property."

Amazon, eBay and Half.com prohibit international editions but ABE encourages their sale.

Q&A: Should I buy from a seller who accidentally priced too low?

QUESTION: I listed a rare cookbook for sale on Amazon at the lowest price, $35. A competing seller matched my price almost instantly. Every time I lowered the price, he kept matching it. Eventually I got mad, and dropped my price to $1.79. To my surprise, the competing seller matched my price again. So I bought the book from him for $1.79.

I know what I did was unethical. But was it illegal? I'm not proud of doing it, but I don't want to break the law.

ANSWER: I don't think what you did is illegal -- or even unethical. You didn't change the other seller's price -- he or she did. If the other seller doesn't want to sell at $1.79, then it's their responsibility to prevent their software from going that low.

Of course this bargain could still generate problems. What if you don't get the advertised book? What if the other seller cancels the sale? Sure, you could leave negative feedback (or at least threaten to do so) and teach the seller a lesson. But your time spent feuding with the other seller would be better used finding inventory the old-fashioned way -- going to book sales, etc. The potential headaches aren't worth $20 or $30, if you ask me.

I've sold too low myself a few times. I remember the first month I was selling, I accidentally priced a book at 9 cents, while it was worth $9. Of course it sold immediately. I was tempted to back out of the sale, but I shipped it anyway.

It makes you wonder though -- could a seller earn good money if they were really skilled at finding underpriced items from other Amazon or eBay sellers? You'd need a separate buying account. Sellers who realize they've sold too low are double irritated when they realize the buyer is going to profit at their expense.

eBay's new feedback system could hurt small sellers

If you're an eBay seller, you should check out Skip McGrath's blog Make Money on eBay.

Skip is taking eBay to task for its new feedback design, which allows buyers to rate sellers anonymously on four criteria: Item as Described, Communication, Shipping Time, and Shipping & Handling Charges.

These eBay "detailed seller ratings" are similar to the "optional questions" that Amazon customers are prompted to complete while submitting feedback in response to Amazon's 21-day reminder e-mail. With Amazon, the optional questions don't figure into your feedback score. But on eBay, not only are the detailed ratings reflected in a star display, there's no way for the seller to find out which customers dinged their ratings.

Soon this will be a huge deal because, as Skip points out, in 2008 eBay will begin sorting search results by these detailed seller ratings. Sellers with the best ratings will be on top, and searches won't be filtered by auction ending time anymore.

If you get lots of feedback, your positives will cover up the occasional negative. But low-volume sellers who get dinged once or twice take a big hit:

This seller, for example, had one or two buyers unhappy with the delivery time. But the seller has no way of knowing who, and no way of resolving the problem or misunderstanding. If there really was a problem with delivery, perhaps the seller could refund the shipping fee. On the other hand, maybe the buyer didn't read the shipping terms. There's just no way to know (and nothing to prevent competitors from sabotaging your detailed ratings).

My own eBay feedback has been dinged on "Shipping & handling charges" even though I charge a flat $3.49. What do these buyers want -- free shipping on everything?

How a veteran bookseller survived the chain bookstores

On the eve of his 25th anniversary as a bookseller, here's a great profile of Books & Books' Mitchell Kaplan. In the Florida Sun-Sentinel:

"If you had asked me in college, I might have harbored ambitions of becoming an author or being creative in that sense," Kaplan says, sitting in the cafe at Books & Books ... "But I probably never had the patience or the talent. Somehow, acting as a conduit between authors and readers assuages the creative urges I have."

His is the last major independent bookstore in south Florida. He started it in a 500 square-foot space, and now he has branch shops in Miami Beach, Bal Harbour, Coral Gables, and (coming soon) in the Caribbean on Grand Cayman island.

There are interesting nuggets in the article about how Books & Books has thrived despite invading bookstore chains, but Kaplan doesn't have much to say about the Internet or e-books.

eBay launches social-shopping 'neighborhoods'

eBay is allowing users to create "neighborhoods" organized around certain types of merchandise. This is just getting started, but it seems to have vast potential.

Here's one for Stephen King fans. As you can see, the neighborhood page pulls together listings, book reviews, guides, blogs, and discussion posts related to King books -- and you could create one for any other niche.

It's a pretty neat "social shopping" idea, and you can probably see how seller could tap this feature for free advertising. For example, if you were selling a first edition signed by King, you could come right to this neighborhood and post your details to the discussion board. And since the eBay members congregating here are King fans, your free exposure here would probably be more valuable than a listing on eBay's home page -- and without the listing upgrade fee!

The possibilities for using this Neighborhoods feature are endless. Are you an expert on Agatha Christie books? Start a neighborhood about it. Boom, you're in business. So far, there are only a few book categories.

Kudos to eBay for rolling out a feature that makes it easier for shoppers to find stuff to buy. Here are more details.

Autographed books are more valuable if the author is ... DEAD!

Here's how one creative author is promoting his book. Now playing on YouTube: HOW TO MAKE A KILLING IN THE BOOK WORLD



The author, Eric Meeks, is also a second-generation book dealer, and online bookselling is key to his plot:

... The Web giants of Amazon and eBay masked a new technology over the world of mom and pop bookstores as one of their own decided to leap into a foray of deep dark passions of guile and commerce.

Xanthe Anthony, owner of CelebrityBooks.com, is mistakenly accused of being involved with the grisly deaths and bountiful harvest which selling the signed works of murdered authors provides. He must find the killer and clear his good name before the next author signs his final book.

To make his video, Eric used an old Canon camera that had sat idle for two years. This summer, when he got the inspiration for the video, he finally read the owner's manual and taught himself to use its editing software.

Video-making is key to Eric's marketing plan for the book. He has an appearance lined up at a local bookstore, and to generate publicity, he's promising that everyone who attends the signing will get to witness a "real live author murder."

"Somebody from the crowd will get to 'kill' me with a retractable blade knife," Eric says. "At least I hope the blade retracts. Otherwise I'll be doing only one signing."

Borders tests bookselling site

Borders is beta testing its new bookselling site here.

It's a nice-looking site. But of course the fancy features don't help shoppers much. Here's a good, detailed review.

The first thing I noticed was the “Magic Book Shelf” and immediately got my hopes up for something really cool and useful. Unfortunately, it’s a Flash object consisting of a static set of books, movies, and music that scrolls through 2-3 pages of 5 books per page. There was no way of going deeper beyond the initial set of chosen books and navigation is unintuitive to say the least.

The new Borders site won't support e-commerce transactions until January. But the company claims the site is already driving $2 million of transactions into its brick-and-mortar stores every week. That's pretty hard to believe, if you ask me. The site got less than 1.75 million visitors last month. To generate $2 million in weekly sales, one of every two people who visited the site had to schlep into a Borders and spend about $10. If they can prove that really happened, I'll eat a moldy Readers Digest condensed book for breakfast tomorrow.

For the past five years, Borders.com has been a branded front end for Amazon. Now that they're striking out on their own, will Borders develop their own third-party selling platform? Time will tell.

Q&A: Should I charge extra postage when buyers give the wrong address?

QUESTION: I just have to vent about these people who order something without checking the address. I usually don't hear from them until a few weeks later.

I think the fault lies with 1-Click on Amazon, because it doesn't give people a chance to confirm the shipping address. So many of them send the item to a previous address or a relative. I get several packages a week returned to me, and sometimes the customers are quite irate. Today I had a guy respond: "I don't know where you got that address." Like I'm just sitting here in my basement, making up false addresses to amuse myself (and lose money).

What is the proper policy on extra shipping charges? I'd like to ask the customers to reimburse me for the extra costs of re-shipping the book. But I'm risking bad feedback because they're already annoyed and seem to think the fault lies with me.

ANSWER: You're right, 1-Click checkout is the culprit. It's amazing how many people don't bother to check their address. With Media Mail, of course, the problems can snowball. Media packages aren't forwarded, even if the carrier has a new address on file -- so it can be four weeks or more before it's returned. And believe it or not, I've had several "undeliverable" packages that didn't turn up again for more than a year.

The frequency of this has declined a bit in the past year since Amazon inserted a 90-minute delay before orders are forwarded to sellers. So some of the buyers who read the order-confirmation e-mail they receive from Amazon have plenty of time to correct the address.

Whether to charge buyers for your extra postage costs is a delicate issue, especially when the customer is already irate. You've got to convince them that it's their fault -- without insulting their intelligence. During my first few years of selling, I demanded the extra postage money every time, and made a special zShops listing to collect it. But it probably wasn't worth the time and aggravation. Since zShops was phased out, I've been eating the extra postage costs and just chalking it up as a cost of doing business.

Another issue: As you may know, the Postal Service is supposed to charge you for each returned Media Mail package. In other words, if your package with $2 of postage is returned undeliverable, your mailman is supposed to collect $2 in postage due when the package comes back. Many carriers don't bother collecting it, but some do. And I know there are some sellers who insist on the buyer paying those postage-due fees too. In this case, buyers might end up paying for shipping three times -- to the incorrect address, back to the seller, and on to the correct address.

I have a standard response for buyers who accuse me of screwing up their address. I simply say, "If that's not the way you ordered it, then someone must have hacked into your Amazon account -- and therefore you should notify Amazon and your local police so they can investigate." I never hear another peep from them. This also works wonders with those buyers who insist "I never ordered this book!"

Amazon offers same-day delivery to Prime customers

Here's a new wrinkle Amazon is introducing today for its Prime shipping program today, and I'm going to love it as a buyer but hate it as a seller, since it makes my listings less competitive than ever compared to Amazon's merchandise.

I buy lots of books, so I'm already a heavy user of Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day shipping and discounted overnight delivery for $80 a year. Now Amazon is launching same-day delivery to Prime customers for $5.99. Apparently they're rolling it out now in the Northeast, and only certain items in the catalog are available. Here's the e-mail I just received (click to enlarge):

"Local Express Delivery" is what they're calling it. They started it in Seattle in August.