Book Links

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.

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

Shill Bidding On eBay Explained

Posted by hughlh

A recent article talked about the proliferation of shill bidding on eBay UK. For the uninitiated, shill bidding is when the seller (or a confederate) bids on his own items, thus driving the bid up. The end result is that the final bidder pays a (possibly) higher price than they would have had the seller not interfered.

An example:

You have Grandma’s family Bible in pristine condition and the rent is due, so you put it up on eBay. Because you read my blog, you decide to put it up for bid at $1, with no reserve. It gets quickly bid up to $50, then sits there like a dead rat. You know this book should sell for at least $250 and, what is more, you NEED $250 to pay the rent. You call your mom and have her bid on the Bible, having her place a max bid of $245, so the next bid by anyone will have to be for $250.

In the above example, you and Mom engaged in shill bidding. Mom was your shill, driving the price up artificially.

I am a huge fan of eBay and sell a lot there, so let me be the first to tell you that there are dealers who do this on a regular basis. I know (by their own admission) of 3 high end dealers who do this, and have studied 3 others who I am 99% certain do this. It is a huge temptation, especially for dealers who place items for clients on consignment. You give me a $5,000 book to sell, I put it up on eBay and it is 5 hours before auction end and it is sitting there at $2300. The dealer calls some friends and says “I am about to lose my a## on this book, can you bump it up for me?”. They do, there is a natural flurry at the end, and the dealer gets his price.

I understand why the sellers do it, but I think it is self-defeating for several reasons:

• Word always gets out. Always.
• You never know what a book is going to sell for until the very end.  Sniping is a way of life on eBay. We have had many times when books were way below what we needed to make on them as late as 2 minutes before auction close. I once watched a book of mine jump $2300.00 in the last 37 seconds.
• It would be difficult to explain why the one of a kind book you had for sale last week is up for sale again this week.

While I believe it is self-defeating, the cold hard truth is that it does happen, and is damn hard to prevent. The recent decision by eBay to hide user id’s will only serve to exacerbate the problem. The question begs itself: How can I buy books safely on eBay?

I wrote extensively a while back on the subject of buying books safely online; to that advice I only add that the surest, safest way to buy on eBay is to bid the highest price you are willing to pay, and then forget it. If you are willing to pay $100 and it is currently at $25, bid $100 and then do not look back. This assures you you will never pay more than you had intended for any item, and no amount of shilling will force you to pay more than $100.

When it is all said and done, however, the best advice I can give you is to buy from someone you trust. As I have said before, if you do not know books, you had better know your bookseller.

Selling Books On The Bibliophile Mailing List

Posted by hughlh

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 ABE and Alibris 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.