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.

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).

Abebooks – I don’t get them and now they do not get me as I have closed my seller account with them.  Their fees and commissions are nuts for the average seller of books.  Maybe they think they are Amazon or eBay and can get away with the higher fees.  After the monthly fees and the per sale commission coupled with low volume they were getting closed to 50% on every book sold. 

Abebooks doesn’t seem to care either.  Some sites try to get traffic and sales – I must get two emails a week from Alibris offering a 10% coupon on their site.   I guess the main problem with Abebooks is their monthly fee schedule relative to the little traffic they get (at least for me).

Biblio does right what Abe does wrong.  Biblio seems to understand that they do not have the sales volume to charge a high monthly fee and they provide options that are reasonable to list a few thousand books on their site.  I have about 2500 books listed on Biblio and maybe get three sales a month from them but that is fine as they do not charge for listing my books there but only take a commission if there is a sale.  Makes sense – they get my inventory and I get access to their market.

Abebooks charges you for access to their market which just isn’t worth it.  If anyone is having success selling on Abebooks I would love to hear about it but also are you making money on those sales after all the fees and commissions?

The holiday season through the end of January is the busiest time of year for most booksellers.  I would say late August/early September is the second busiest (beginning of school year).  Last year my book sales spiked in December and were even higher in January.  Like many retailers, whether online or brick & mortar, we depend on this time of year.

The holidays are the biggest factor for the sales spike in December but what about the increase in book sales in January?  I think there are several factors to help explain January sales:

1.  Another school semester generally starts in January so all the students are buying their books online

2.  Customer Returns – many people are returning items to Amazon and using the credit to buy books

3.  Gift Cards/Cash Gifts – People receive these for Christmas and redeem them in January.

Hopefully the economy does not lessen the impact of items #2 & #3.

I would suggest that you still have time to increase your inventory to take advantage of this online buying season.  I have approximately 600 books coming from one of my sources next week to be ready for the season.  Library sales this time of year are few and far between so if they are your primary inventory source you will need to look elsewhere.  You will also need all the shipping supplies to meet the new demand.  Last year I was filling anywhere from 35 to 55 orders a day during these two months.

If you need help with finding alternative book sources for the holiday season I recommend several in my bookselling guide which can be purchased here www.booksellingguide.com.

No matter what  – prepare now for the online bookselling high season so you can actually enjoy them rather than running around looking for inventory.

Selling books online can be a rewarding business.  There are a few major pitfalls in starting a business selling books online.  I wanted to share some that I have made in order to help out others and I would love to hear from others about some of the mistakes you have made.

The below is an edited excerpt from my eGuide called “An Insider’s Guide to Selling Books Online” which is available here www.booksellingguide.com.

·    Too vague in my book descriptions – call a tear on the dust jacket a “tear” and not something else such as “light wear”.

·    Not being careful enough in examining books for underlining/highlighting then listing and selling them as having “clean text”.

·    Attach the mailing label to the wrong package – make sure what you print comes out in the right order.

·    Losing inventory – I have sold a few books then torn up my office looking for it because god knows where it is.  I end up with a refund and a lost book

·    Entering an ISBN and for some reason it is recognized as a title different than the book I have.  ISBNs are sometimes misprinted on the back of a book or on the copyright page.  The mistake here is I don’t catch the mix-up until after I have listed the wrong title and sold it.

·    Listing a really heavy book and accidentally allowing expedited shipping or international shipping.  You can lose a lot of money shipping really heavy books this way.  I once had to spend $34 to send a book to Australia of which Amazon only gave me $5.64.

·    Not updating the price info on my scanner.  I try to do this every week but sometimes I forget and I scan books that seem like winners only to list them and find out their prices have dropped.  Prices can drop quickly on books that have great sales ranks.

·   Taking feedback to personally.  If a customer is not happy with the book it is their privilege to comment.  Do not respond to negative feedback when you first read it and are upset.  Contact the buyer and try to work it out but be professional.  Do not post a response until you contact the buyer directly.  Empathize, apologize and offer a refund if you feel their complaint is legitimate.  I try to recognize that they are upset and then gently prod them that it is more productive for them to contact you directly rather than post negative feedback.  Request that they remove their feedback (which can be done on Amazon) and when they do provide them their refund.  These situations can be uncomfortable so be calm and do not make it personal.

·    Not re-pricing my books.  Many of my books are high value and high sales rank which means they do not sell frequently but there is a lot of profit.  I do not ever get wed to the idea of how much my inventory should sell for.  This is a market and prices fluctuate.  If the book does not sell because all the competition has lowered their prices to make mine the most expensive then I need to re-visit my price.  Never price my books to be the lowest – I will match the lowest price at times but never set the lowest price.

·    Using cheap, unpadded mailers – I had a stack of cheap unpadded mailers that my wife had left-over from something she did.  I thought I could use them for my smaller paperbacks and save money (and make some more profit on the shipping).  I had to refund two buyers because the books got damaged in the mail.  Don’t get so driven to make a profit that you skimp where you should not. 

Do not let your mistakes stop you from enjoying this business.  Learn from them and get back online and sell more books.