Selling Books on Ebay is a little different than selling books on Amazon.  One of the great things about selling books on Ebay is the flexibility you have over promoting your listings.  I have an Ebay Seller Store (not a ProStore) and here are some of the tools I use to maximize it:

  • Flexible Shipping Costs – for my expensive books I provide Free Shipping.  This might catch a buyers eye and help with the seller scores Ebay has plus it does not really eat into profits.
  • Sales Tool – I use the markdown manager to offer discounts on certain books (up to 250 at one time).  Again the listing reflects that the book is “on sale” and might help get the potential buyer to actually buy.
  • International Shipping – is much easier on Ebay then the other marketplaces since you can charge the actual shipping cost and not just a flat fee like Amazon.  I allow for international shipping for most of my books on Ebay.
  • Photos – Many of my older books do not have stock photos.  I can’t say a photograph them all and upload them to my listings but I do provide photos on request.  You can also state in your listing that you will provide them
  • Best Offer – This feature is the best.  Everyone loves getting a great deal and Best Offer allows them to.  Best Offer helps sell some of my more expensive inventory or some of my more esoteric academic/religious texts.  I find students always use Best Offer.  This provides me flexibility to either wait for the full asking price or if I want to sell for the lower offer if I want the cash flow.  There is no cost to offering Best Offer.

The only major concern I have with Ebay is the monthly costs which can add up with the per book fee.  I do not list my full inventory on Ebay because of this and I still find how they charge sellers to be difficult to follow. 

Also – the inability to leave neutral or negative feeback to a buyer makes no sense.  I have never left either for a buyer but it was nice to know I could if a buyer was being completely unreasonable.

Textbook Season Ending & Return Season Starting
There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns - most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon's A-Z policy). I keep my return policy simple. The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting). Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers. Continue reading
Amazon Charge When Shipped (Amazon CWS)
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. Continue reading
Is the Amazon Kindle bad for Online Booksellers
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. Continue reading
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