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.
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:Booksales and the economy,bookselling guide,bookselling inventory,guide to selling books online,how to sell books online,make money selling books,online bookselling,Selling books,selling books on amazon

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