Is there an app on the iPhone that can take the place of your pda book scanner and book scouting software? Almost but not quite yet though it is clear the capability is there. So do not cancel your book scouting subscription and throw away your PDA yet. Hopefully the day will come soon when you can.

There are several apps for the iPhone that try to replicate a scanner by taking a photo or video of a barcode and transmit back price info. These scanning apps will often have trouble reading a barcode and the info they give back isn’t all the info booksellers need. Amazon has their own app that when you take a photo of an item it emails you back the info – this is a bit slow if you are at a library sale but okay if you are just out at one of your book buying haunts. SnapTell is another app that is pretty good and like the Amazon app it is free.

If you have an iPhone it is clear the capability is there to provide an application that will be able to integrate with the Amazon database and provide Amazon sales rank info, book conditions and price info. At the very least the app would enable you to download the database and be able to get the info you want from it the catch is going to be getting the isbn’s entered into the iPhone quickly.

The camera on the new iPhone has been improved and hopefully we are close to seeing the potential uses for booksellers come to fruition.

I recently wrote about some of the tools Ebay provides to sellers and one of their best is the ability to allow buyers to put out “Best Offers” on items. I wanted to highlight this feature and how it comes into play using Amazon Sales Rank.

Yesterday I sold two items using Ebay’s Best Offer. Both were sold for less than the current lowest price the item was listed for on Amazon but based on each items sales rank I accepted. Here are both items:

• Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images (CD Rom) – listed for $89 with a Amazon Sales Rank of #1,643,176.  The CD was listed for sale on 12/18/08. I accepted a Best Offer on Ebay of $50.  My cost was $4 to buy the CD.
• UVB Instrumentation and Applications-  listed for $68 with a Amazon Sales Rank of #3,783,937 .   The book was listed for sale on by me on 10/13/08.  I accepted a Best Offer on Ebay of $50.  My cost was $3 to buy the book.

Did I leave some money on the table?  Possibly – especially with the Photoshop CD but look at those sales ranks.  When would be the next time I even get interest in them?  The UVB book could sit in inventory for a couple of years before it sells.  Remember over time the price of your books will likely drop in terms of other sellers under-pricing you which is to say that you may not ever get your asking price anyway.

This is why I always use Best Offer because of the flexibility it gives me.  I do not have to accept the first offer.  Many buyers likely expect you to counter with a higher offer so it makes sense to do so.  For the two books above I saw a quick $100 in sales with some monster profits on slow selling inventory so I just accepted the offers.

What would you have done?  Let me knw

Many online booksellers wonder about the mysteries of the Amazon Sales Rank.  These booksellers ponder the deep philosophical questions of what is the Amazon sales rank – how is it calculated, when is it calculated and what does it all mean and when will my book sell.

The bottom line on the Amazon Sales Rank is this – the lower the number the faster the book should sell.  What this means that if you have a book with a 40,000 sales rank and another with a 600,000 sales rank the one with a 40,000 rank is in higher demand.  Does this mean the lower rank will sell first? Not neccesarily – you need to factor in supply, your price point  and the books condition.  The lower ranked book likely has many more of them for sale on the Amazon marketplace so your copy needs to be priced to move as other copies are going to be listed after yours  and they will likely beat your price. 

 I recently got a copy of Tom Dorsey’s book Nuclear Jellyfish (I still have it unfortunately).  I listed it on Amazon to match lowest price for its condition and expected it to sell in a day or two given that the book had just been released.  Weeks have gone by and the book is still on my shelf because the price dropped on it almost immediately and I am terrible at repricing my books with any regularity.  There are, of course, dozens of copies of the book for sale and it is likely heading to penny seller territory soon enough.  Its sales rank at the time I listed it was below 10,000.  Usually the book sells quickly but sales rank alone is not a guarantee.

I have had books with high sales ranks (in the millions) go immediately.  This is often books that are out of print and there are no other copies for sale or the copies that are listed are prohibitively expensive.

Amazon Sales Rank is predominately a buying tool for me.  Sales Rank and price are the two main factors in considering what books I buy.  If it has a high resale value I will generally buy a book regardless of sales rank.  The lower the resale price the lower the sales rank needs to be.  Generally any book that sells for less then $5 I will not bother with regardless of rank.  Between $5 and $10 the sales rank needs to be very low and above $10 I am willing to have books be between 400k and 800k in rank.  Above that the book needs to be at least $12.  All of this is fluid and depends on how much inventory I have and how sales are.

So does it matter how Amazon calculates sales ranks? No.