NO .  Online booksellers have access to the largest websites in the world – sites like Amazon and eBay so you think you will put together your own store and sell your inventory there.  The logic of having your own website is that somehow you will save on all the fees & commissions the other sites charge you.  Of course you will need to get your website set-up (fee) find a webhost (monthly fee) and get people to visit your site (advertising costs) all to save the commission that Amazon would charge you. 

If you average selling price for a book is between $10 and $20 the commission from Amazon would be $1.50 plus the cut of the shipping they take.  So you could save almost $3 a sale.  That is pretty good economic sense to having your own website but that assumes you can charge the same as Amazon.  People like Amazon because their brand is strong, the selection is tremendous and their customer service is excellent.  Your webstore – people have no idea.  So why buy a book from you if they can get the same book (possibly yours) from Amazon.  Maybe you will get sales on your website if you offer lower prices and cheaper shipping thus ruining the economic argument of having your own site.

Pricing aside you may want your own site because you deal in a very specialized inventory – be it first editions, signed books, or a niche topic.  You want to be able to distinguish your books from your competitors by offering fuller descriptions and more info on the provenance of the book – these are all thing a webstore can do – but so can ebay.  Here though the economics offer more benefit given that first editions and other collectibles sell for more. 

Setting up your website and getting your inventory on it is not that diffucult.  Amazon, eBay and Chrislands all offer to set up site for you.  I think eBay’s Prostores are the best.  The hard part is making sure the buyer has a good experience and that you are building your brand as a quality bookseller.  This takes content.  Don’t just list your books – tell your story, tell about the books, the authors, talk about different genres – anything that will get people coming back to your site.  All of this is time consuming and hard work but neccesary.  Throwing your inventory up on your own website will be a waste of time and money if you do not do it right  which may mean spending even more money to hire third parties to help.

Once again – if you are just starting out in online bookselling do not go out and set-up your own webstore.  Start on Amazon, then Alibris , then eBay and slowly build up your experience.  Check ot my guide for more info – the link for it is over on the right column under products I recommend (it is the bookselling guide).

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
Tags:bookselling inventory,guide to selling books online,how to sell books online,make money selling books,online bookselling,prostores,selling books on amazon,selling books on ebay

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