Amazon Charge when Shipped is their newest change to their marketplace.  Amazon CWS does what it says – which is that the buyer of your book is not charged until you confirm the book has shipped.  This is somewhat similar to how Alibris handles their marketplace.   I am not going to go over the whole terms of Amazon’s CWS as there is a comprehensive overview at Amazon but there are a few things worth pointing out.

What does CWS mean for us booksellers?  Not much.  You will not have your account credited until you ship a book.  If you use The Art of Books or a similar inventory management system Amazon should be automatically updated when the book is shipped.   There are a couple of downsides to Amazon’s Charge When Shipped – you do not get to send your own confirmation email to the buyer and the buyer can still leave feedback on a canceled order.

I like sending out my own confirmations.  They promote my “brand” (nominally) and provide a more personalized experience.  Also I ask that buyers contact me directly with any issues before going to Amazon and filing feedback or a “A to Z” claim.   The sample confirmation email that Amazon has provided does not include seller contact information.  Many times I  have been contacted by unhappy buyer (mistakenly of course since I am perfect lol) who has an issues with the condition of the book.  Though it turns out that they didn’t read the book description closely or their idea of what a bumped corner (or similar damage) is different then mine.  With direct communication with the buyer I can resolve these issues to the buyers satisfaction quickly. My guess is that neutral or negative feedback will increase with less direct communication with the buyer.

Hopefully, Amazon CWS will go smoothly but I am concerned that Amazon is going to cause problems for a lot of sellers given how their feedback system works.

Amazon announced their earnings and stated that book (and all media) sales were flat but they are back-logged on Kindles.  Does this matter to us small online booksellers given our scale is so much smaller then Amazon’s?  Long term I think it matters if the Kindle really becomes an option for people.

People who buy Kindles are either gadget heads who just want the latest thing or they are avid readers who love having a portable library.  The avid readers are likely avid book buyers so the transition of their book sales to electronic form will have a long-term negative effect on online booksellers.  Will this happen soon – not likely but it does not bode well. 

One of the issues with the Kindle is that Amazon is pricing titles on it less than they are a regular copy of a book.  This can have the effect of havingo nline booksellers trying to beat the Kindle price on books.  I am not sure if the inventory and scouting services are showing Kindle prices yet but maybe they should.

Lets not forget that the Kindle is not the only device out there – Sony also makes one and you can even put books on your iPhone.  Sales of the Kindle are one thing but it remains to be seen if people are actually going to adapt to using it as their primary way to read – as we have seen with Amazon recenlty deleting Orwell titles there are several issues with the Kindle that will effect its popularity.

Electronic reading devices are going to have to become a whole lot more popular for online booksellers to throw in the towel

The question isn’t if you should collect sales tax because that is impossible to do on most sites except eBay.  Trying to collect sales taxes would kill sales if you are the only one doing it.  Now – I am not a lawyer or accountant so I will simply tell you what I do – which is to pay my states sales taxes.

Some states do not require you to pay sales taxes on online business but I know where I live requires it.  So I pay the few hundred dollars a year.  I hate doing it (though my wife handles figuring out what I owe which is the most frustrating part).  I don’t do it to be moral or anything but I do it because I am running a business and do not want to jeopardize my bookselling business by cutting corners.  I don’t do mental gymnastics over this decision – I just keep it simple and cut the check to the state and I have no worries.  I did my research about whether I need to pay and that was that.

If you sell books online check with your accountant ( if oyou have one) or go to your states website and start doing your research – or just ignore it and hope you have no reason to be concerned

My book sales are slow as usual for this time of year. Even though I know they will slow in July I still get demoralized.  I am going to set up a sale on my eBay listings and hopefully get a little uptick on sales.  If you have a eBay store (not the Prostore which is separate) you can use the markdown manager that is provided.  In the markdown manager you can give your sale a name and pick the titles and how much you want to discount the titles by.

The maximum number you can put for sale is 250 titles – and I think I will be using the full amount.  You can offer free shipping which I recommend as it improves your best match search results.  When offering free shipping inside the markdown manager you have to make sure you are not also offering insurance as an option as this causes some sort of conflict and none of your  books will get added to the sale. 

When I have a sale I generally provide a 10% to 20% discount on my 250 highest priced titles.  I may tweak this formula this time and only pick the titles that are below $40 and see if I get more sales as I already provide “Best Offer” on everything above that.

There are lots of ways to get your inventory moving during slow times – just don’t get to demoralized.

We are less then a month away from one of the busiest times fo the year fro online booksellers.  All the college kids are going back to school soon and looking to save money on books (for more beer maybe).  If you have not alreay – now is the time to stock up on shipping supplies.

If you sell remainders (there are some that specialize in universtity presses) the text book season is when they move – so you could find some titles to buy in preparation for the school year.  Try Great Jones for academic books – the margins on these are not great but if you can find a good title to buy in bulk in might be worth it.

Also – be prepared for lots of questions if your listings are not complete.  Make sure you properly list what edition text book you are selling and if it has highlighting, underlining or margin notes – I make it the first thing in the item description.  Do not sell international editions (or if you do be prepared to be banned by eBay and Amazon as it is against their terms).

More on textbook season soon