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.

Selling books online can be very profitable. When individual sales are quickly glanced at the potential for profits can seem great.  I have bought many books for $1 and sold it for $30 or more many times – very fat profit margins.  The thing of it is that becasue I do everything online I can lose track of my margins.  Managing your bookselling venture like a small business is important. 

I sell my books online and do almost all of the back office business online.  This creates a very simple business to run but because so much of the processes are done online.  My books and envelopes are the only real things I store.  I manage my overall business on a cash basis but keeping track of the details is important.  Here are things that are easy to lose track of in terms of really figuring out what your margins are:

• Marketplace monthly fees – Amazon is straightforward but eBay is variable
• Commissions taken per book by the marketplaces
• Postage – Amazon takes another chunk here
• Cost per envelope
• Monthly fees of Endicia
• Monthly fees of Inventory Management System – in my case The Art of Books
• Cost of books

The list can go on and it becomes depressing how much others make when I sell one book – everyone gets their cut.  So when I sell a book for $10 that I bought for $1 I am not making $9 (or even $8).  This is one reason it is some important to figure out your margins as you can figure out what books are not worth selling.

Keep track of everything, work the numbers and focus on the bottom line and you should see your profits increase.  Regulary shop around for new vendors.  Is your inventory management provider the best for the money.  How about your envelope provider? Ink toner?  All of these eat into profits.  Spend time shopping and save.

If you are an online bookseller you are going to need an inventory management system such as The Art of Books.  What should an inventory management program do?

• Keep a database of all your current inventory and all past sales
• List your books on all the marketplaces you sell on – not all systems work on eBay and other sites
• Help you price your inventory and re-price as needed – this can be a pain
• Allow you to track your cost of goods sold and postage expenses
• Help you avoid double sales by quickly removing sold books from all the markets
• Have responsive customer service
• Use servers that are reliable
• Integrate easily with your shipping software such as Endicia
• Be reasonably priced

I am likely missing a few things but an inventory management system should be robust.  There are many companies which provide these services and the pricing for them is all over the map.  I currently use The Art of Books and have previously used Fillz and Amanpro.  I have looked at other services but found their pricing to be nuts for the amount of books I have listed (approximately 2500).

I think The Art of Books is the best service if you are selling on multiple marketplaces.  Their re-pricing is not the best but I can muddle through it.  I used Fillz but it had many issues integrating properly with eBay and their re-pricing was also not user friendly.  Amanpro is fantastic but it only works with Amazon – it think Amanpro probably is so good is because it is a database that is stored on your own computer.  I loved Amanpro but needed to grow my business beyond what it was capable of offering.

A lot of the inventory management providers have slick web-sites with all sorts of claims and neat flowcharts but nothing on the backend.  The Art of Books website looks amateurish (relatively speaking) but it offers excellent value.  I found their customer service responsive (and helpful!!).  The instructions on how to use it were accessible and not hard to follow – so if you are listing on more markets than just Amazon they are the way to go.

I think ebay is a great market to sell books on once you get over a few hurdles.  The biggest hurdle is getting your books listed on there.  Thankfully,  some inventory management systems have taken away the difficulty of getting your books listed.  The easiest way to sell your books on Ebay is to have your own pro-store there – of course this comes with a montlhy fee. 

Here are the benefits of selling books on Ebay and a quick comparison to sellin books on Amazon.

1.  A large worldwide market.  Once buyers go to Ebay to look for an item they often stay there – they do not navigate out to another site to purchase.  Amazon is similar but I think Ebay keeps people on their site longer.

2.  You can promote higher priced books to show up on the top of searches.  Plus your DSR scores can help your books show up in searches.  Witht the DSR rating system Ebay can actually reward sellers that provide a qulaity experience to buyers.   This is unlike Amazon where books are shown in price order – which drive people to lower their prices in order to show up.  Amazon’s feedback system doesn’t really benefit good sellers very much.

3.  Ebay lets you keep all the shipping fees.  Amazon keeps a significant piece of the shipping costs foro themselves.

4.  Best Offer – this feature is great.  I have “Best Offer” on every book priced over $40.  I get offers all the time and depending on where my cash flow is for the week I accept, counter or decline. 

5.  Prostores – within your store you can further cross-promote your books, have sales and provide info about who you are which can help personalize sales even more.  The Ebay buyer is much more communicative then a buyer on Amazon.

 I will post later about some of the inventory management service that expedite the listing of books on Ebay.  Amazon is still the largest market for selling books online but Ebay is one that should not be ignored.