Book Links

Book Terms, or Learning Proper Terminology

Posted by hughlh

It matters what you call things, especially at the higher levels. Your customers expect you to know the difference between a hinge and a joint, between unopened and uncut.

If you do not know, or you are not sure, now would be a good time to brush up on your terminology. Two good links are:

http://www.ioba.org/terms.html

http://www.abaa.org/cgi-bin/abaa/abaapages/glossary

The best all around book on the subject is Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. Currently in it’s 8th edition, it is still the best in the business.

Selling Books on the Biblio List

Posted by hughlh

[This is a repost from my previous blog. I have had several people ask me to preserve it on the new site]

Have you ever thought about what the perfect venue for selling books would be like? I often have, and my dream list looks something like this:

1. Very low fees
2. High sell through rate
3. Heavily shopped by other dealers
4. No communication barriers between you and the buyer
5. You could post your want lists, and people would actually read them.
6. Would allow you to have total control over the format in which your offerings are displayed.
7. You would have complete control over the payment methods you accept or your other terms of sale.
8. Virtually no penny listings
9. No “posting ID’s”, in other words, you know exactly who you are dealing with when you buy or sell.
10. You could also use this venue to advertise your business generally, to announce catalogues, to hire employees and to drive traffic to your auctions.

Yes, Virginia, there is such a place where books are bought and sold on a daily basis. That place is called the Bibliophile Mailing List.

From their website:

The Bibliophile Mailing List is maintained for the benefit of sellers and/or collectors of rare, out-of-print, scarce books in all subject areas. Our subscribers include librarians, students, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds. Participants will find books offered from a few dollars to many thousands of dollars.

Let me give you a recent example of the power of the list. I recently had a late 1800’s book on Guatemala come in over the transom; it was beautiful- decorated cloth, fold out maps, the works. This could sit on the shelf here in the shop forever before a buyer would walk in and none of my regular customers are candidates for such a thing. In the old days, this would have been a candidate for the wonderful world of eBay, and still might be, but now I had some other things to try first.

There is one dealer on the list who often posts wants for books on Latin America. On Friday I email said dealer directly and offer him the book, complete with dealer discount. On Friday night I get an email back, saying he appreciates the offer, but he has now restricted his buying a bit, so the book would not be a fit for him, but would I please keep him in mind for ____, ____, and any ____ books. No harm, no foul, and now I have 3 more wants to add to my file.

I then offer the book to the list as a whole, again with just a simple email, no pictures. This was Saturday. Sunday afternoon I got an email asking if I still had the book and asking if I ship to Oceania. I did and I do, so by Tuesday, I had money in my account and the book was on the way.

Gross sales, almost $100. Fees to the site, Zero.

You can do this all day long. I would estimate I sell about half of everything I offer to the list; some sell much more, others much less. For me, there are months it surpasses abebooks.com and Biblio together for gross sales. Like all other sites, quality, price and dealer reputation go a long way. This is not a place to sell your paperbacks for $00.01 with $5 shipping. However, there are people who have listed and sold a lot of 15 paperbacks for $20 and gotten takers.

I have used the list to get an employee who was moving to North Carolina an interview in a bookshop out there, I have used it to drive traffic to my eBay auctions, I have announced wants and had offers within 4 hours that were spot on. I have used the list to determine which edition of Leaves of Grass I had, and to learn the points for the French First Edition of Planet of the Apes. In short, it makes my life easier and helps me sell more books.

If you have subscribed to other mailing lists and left disappointed because everyone was ranting because of what George Bush said or because someone called someone else a poopypants, then have no fear, because this is not that sort of list. It is moderated by the Grand Poohbah of Bibliotenango, Lynn Deweese Parkinson, who both owns and operates the list. Lynn is quick to jump in if a fracus starts up and has been known to suspend violators with swiftness and extreme prejudice.

All good things cost, and this is no exception. There is a two-week free trial to the list, at the end of which, should you decide to stay you will owe $30 for a one year subscription. For less than $3 a month you can sell as many books as you want. As my Grandfather was known to say, “You cannot beat that with a stick“.

For more information on the list, see the official rules, posted here. To join, go here.

What Does It Really Cost To Sell on eBay?

Posted by hughlh

I have always maintained that selling on eBay is a great proposition assuming two things:

1. An above average sell through and
2. The item you sell is of high enough value.

Sell through rate is basically the percent of items you put up for auction that end with someone buying them (Say you put 5 auctions up, 4 of them end with someone buying the item, You have an 80% sell through rate).

The item we sell should have an average closing price above $15.00, $20.00 is better.

Thanks to this little tool here, you can see exactly what it costs to sell an item on eBay.

For example, all day long you see people put auctions up for $9.95, the end at $9.95 and then the buyer pays with PayPal. The tool tells us that the cost of that transaction is $1.62, or more than 15%.

Thought it was a pretty cool little tool.

Easy Way To Track Those Books You Ship

Posted by hughlh

I found this great website:

 http://isnoop.net/tracking/

Very simple form, enter the tracking number from UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL/AirBorne and it will let you know where the package is.

Also very cool is it will generate an RSS Feed for the number, so you can be updated real time when changes occur.

News Roundup 7-5-07

Posted by hughlh

Heritage Bookshop NOT closing because of the internet
(Book Porn- Check out the slide show) 

 Bob Weinstein,  The Book Baron (and brother to the owner’s of the Heritage Bookshop), calls it quits

Used Bookshops in Nigeria doing great!
No, really. They are.

The Camel Bookmobile: Swapping for books in Africa

London Book Project Giving Away Thousands of Books in the London Underground
Mind the gap!

Goodwill Bookshop to offer Rare Books
They seriously mean this, too.

 Used Bookstore Owner Wants More Competition, Not Less

News Page Added

Posted by hughlh

Our homepage is now contains links to the top news stories about books, the used book trade, and other items of interest to readers, sellers and collectors. [Edit: Nope. Decided to do it in the form of regular posts, as there was no way to tell whether the site had been updated or not.]

Like most of this site, it will only grow, so bear with us as we develop sources for the various news items. If you know of news we have not linked to, if you have a tip on unreported news, or if you just wish to chat, please drop me a line. (We will never reveal you as the source unless you give us explicit permission in your email)

Auction Ads - eBay Affiliate on Steroids

Posted by hughlh

Most of you reading this have some sort of web presence. Further, many of you sell on eBay and have links from your site to your auctions. Most of us are upset about the way eBay has made change after change, with every change further hurting the seller. One way to fight back is with eBay’s Affiliate Plan.

Until Recently, eBay’s Affiliate Program Sucked!

For years, eBay has had an affiliate program: if you send someone to their site and they either register, use buy it now, or win an auction in 7 days, you get a percentage of what eBay makes off that transaction. Honestly, however, it was an awful small percentage. And until very recently, you could make nothing on referrals who bought your items.

Enter Auction Ads

AuctionAds is, for want of a better term, a middle man in the eBay Affiliate process. One major problem with eBay’s affiliate program was that it was tiered, so you made a small percentage until you hit a breakpoint, and then you made a larger percentage. Auction Ads is a registered affiliate, so the combined referrals of all their members count toward that breakpoint, so you are getting a larger percentage than you could qualify for based on your own referrals.

The possibilities are endless. You can use Auction Ads to make a link, or you can highlight your own auctions in a window, or you can highlight auctions related to a theme (such as I did with book-binding tools in the window to the right). And thanks to a change in eBay policy, you can now get credit for referring people to your own auctions.

Overall it is quite neat, and another way you can make money with eBay.

Other places that have talked about it:

AuctionBytes

OpenAds