Though this time of year is great for building your inventory it sure is lousy for selling it.  The average number of books I am selling is on the decline as it always is after Memorial Day.  Thankfully some big ticket items are selling (just sold a $1,000 partial set of the Encyclopedia Judaica).  The New York Times reported in today’s business section that book sales are down across the industry.  Publishers and retailers all report fewer sales.  Now this time of year is always slow for your typical online bookseller since we generally do not sell the hot beach reads.  Couple that with an industry is off then what is one to do.

• Hopefully all you booksellers plan ahead for slower summer sales and take some of the higher earning from December-February and allocate it for these months so you can keep up with buying inventory.  Both Microsoft and Quicken offer free accounting software that you can use to help with planning ahead and managing your financials. Quicken’s software is the standard that most people use but both are fine.
• Cull your inventory – going through it and de-listing the stuff that has dropped too low in price.
• Re-price more often and more aggressively if cash flow is an issue. 
• Re-visit your expenses – check all your subscriptions and services – shop around some of their competitors may offer the same services for less.  Look around for deals on shipping supplies etc.
• Branch out – if you are doing this from home – there are a myriad of ways to make money online – start doing some research but do not dive in head first in something new.  I wrote an guide about selling books online to help add some monthly revenue (you can sign up for a coupon for it in the upper right of this blog).  In a future post (coming soon) I will talk about some other ideas for branching out.

I recently had a buyer go bonkers on me in an email.  They were irate that the book they bought had a tear on the dustcover.  They buyer of the book threatened to report me to Amazon for fraud basically start some sort of boycott against me because I was lying scum and a sleazy seller.  The only problem was that the buyer did not read the item description and even glance at what condition the book was listed under.  They saw the price of the book and click on the buy button.  The book was listed in “Good” Condition with an item description that said “clean text & tight binding.  Dustjacket has tear at top of spine.

Ah yes – the pleasures of customer service.  My initial reaction to receiving this rant brings me to my rule #1 when dealing with customers which is:

1. Pause when agitated – I really wanted to lay into the guy for all his accusations but I didn’t.  I walked away from the computer for a few minutes instead and took a few deep breaths and then responded to the email.

Here is what I wanted to write back to the buyer upon reading their email to me:

Dear jackass,

I assume your are literate given that you purchased a book from me and were able to write such an informed email to me.  Your email gives me pause though  – I thought this person can read and write yet they cannot comprehend what was written in the description of the book - is there something wrong with them? is their email to me a cry for help?  If not then maybe you are just a moron who is too lazy to read a book description that clearly states that the book had a torn dustjacket.  Of course why would you bother to read it – just make accusations that I have committed some great fraud against you (yes – the $5 profit i got from selling you this book has put me over the top to buy a Senate seat).  Anyway – among other thing you can do to yourself I hope one will be to seek the help you need.

Regards

Well-  I simply wrote there must be a mistake and gave them the item description and the link to it on Amazon.  I also sympathized with them that sometimes the item descriptions were not clear enough and if that was the case with mine please let me know.  I then said if they wanted to return the book for a full refund to please do so. 

Writing a professional (or even semi-professional) response can be hard when someone is so obnoxious but do NOT respond in kind.  Just go about your business calmly and pause when agitated.

Friends of Library Sales are starting to peak now (with the exception of this weekend).  If going to book sales and elbowing people is your thing now is the time to map out your calendar – check out www.booksalefinder.com – to find your local sales. 

I don’t go to book sales much anymore but you can slowly build up your inventory by going to them.  The downside to Friend of Library sales is that they are overrun with other booksellers with their scanner many of whom work in teams.  I would often see people running into the sale and indiscriminately  scooping up armfuls of books  and putting them into bags then running to a blanket where there partner is and doing it again.  There would be no selection process – just a mad rush which would mean if you were not on of the first on line you find many books gone (and piled up on someones blanket).

I remember one sale where someone had hundreds of books piled up on a blanket after they had run like crazy through the sale – at the end of it they had hundreds of discards left laying on the grass in a pile after they had scanned them all.  Me – I would be happy to leave with 30 good books.

I hate having to get to the sales 90 minutes early to get a decent place online.  When you get in there is barely any space to move let alone put your books down.  God forbid if the place where the sale was used air conditioning too.  Also – many sales will cherry pick some titles out and put them online themselves.

This has turned into a big gripe on library sales but let me back up and restate that you can find books at them and often find some treasures at them that make it all worthwhile.  I found some rare physics texts that sold for hundreds of dollars at one sale.  These books were sitting there well after the intial mad rush but had been bypassed because they were old  (from the early sixties and pre-isbn)

Anyway – if Friend of Library sales are your thing then Good Luck and Good Hunting.

I am always looking for ways to grow my business without changing my business model (working from home).  My book business is steady and my inventory is at a manageable level.  So, a while back, I decided to see what other was I could grow and tried out dropshipping. 

Dropshipping is basically where you sell other peoples inventory.  Here is how it works – a dropship supplier may have 100 copies of a book which they have listed for sale at $10.  The book would typically sell for $14 on eBay.  You list it and sell it on eBay for $14 plus shipping. You then give the dropshipper $10 plus shipping (and the shipping info) and they ship it to the buyer. 

I have used dropshippers to sell new computer and console games (not books) at my eBay store – thus using my existing store to sell more products.  I sold a bunch but did not think it was worth the profit.  The above example where you make a potential profit of $4 does not factor in fees and making sure the shipping collected is correct.  There is also the extra step of contacting the dropshipper and then hoping they ship it out on time. 

Relying on the dropshipper for the shipping was the biggest drawback for me as it took the customer service out of my control.  I had one person who received a game that was not correct (it was the right game but not the right version).  Nothing negative came of it but I do not like having my feedback score exposed to the service of another business.

It is not hard to tell that I am not a strong proponent to using dropshippers as a secondary business.  I know there are people out there who do very well using them and if you do your product research you can find some great deals.  If you do consider using dropshippers I would consider going through a company like Worldwide Brands or SaleHoo.  Both of these companies do the heavy lifting of finding legitimate wholesalers and dropshippers saving you a lot of time and headache as there appear to be a lot of iffy wholesalers out there.  Whatever you do – do not buy a wholesale list or something like it on eBay.

How Do Penny Book Sellers Make Money?  I am not sure if they do – if they do make a profit it is minimal a few cents at most.  Lets break down a penny sale on Amazon and see how it works.  Lets assume the seller is a Pro Merchant on Amazon and pays the $40 monthly fee.

Let’s assume the book weighs less than 1lb for shipping purposes

$4.00 – is the amount collected by Amazon – this is the $.01 plus the $3.99 standard shipping charge.

($1.35) – is the amount Amazon takes out of the shipping leaving $2.65.

($2.38) – the amount to ship a book that weighs 1lb or less via media mail as of today.

Potential profit $.27.  Twenty-Seven Cents - not factoring in other expenses such as labels, envelopes, internet, time spent listing and shipping and all the other subscription fees that make up your overhead.  So lets say a penny seller can make $.20 on each sale.  You would need to sell 500 books a day to make $100 a day at that rate – which means you are going to have to have someone help you prep all those books for shipping further eating into your profits. 

 Does this make sense as a business model – not to me.  Understand though – this is their business model – penny sellers are not by accident.  So they must be ok with those lousy margins.  Maybe the penny sellers do not value their time properly and are ok with stuffing 500 envelopes with books for $.20 each.

Sellers of books for a penny are the worst – they clutter Amazon with the junk listings with no descriptions but they do make money and so does Amazon.  Remember – Amazon makes $1.35 for every penny book sold.