Let me start by stating that eBay is a terrible place for booksellers to buy inventory (great for selling books though). BUT… if you are desperate there are potentially a few ways to get inventory on eBay.

Arbitrage – there are certain titles that regularly sell for hundreds of dollars (even $1,000′s) on eBay such as Margin of Safety by Seth  Klarman.  I have bought this title for a few hundred bucks and listed for $1050 and sold it at best offer for $900 a few times – making a decent profit after commissions.  Plus it generally sells fast.  This works if you have the cash to tie up in one book.  There are likely dozens of more books that you can arbitrage if you do your homework.

Bulk Lots – Be very careful here.  Do not buy books by the pound or anything like that.  Don’t buy boxes (or gaylords) of books that are “unsorted” any decent bookseller could fill up one of these without sorting the books.  You can find people selling their online inventory and closing up shop.  These sellers will have spreadsheets of their inventory available for you to review – if they do not then take a pass.

You can have eBay send you emails of your favorite searches – I have them send me an email every time Margin of Safety comes up for sale.

There are also certain sellers who have pristine feedback that often have large (dozens of boxes) for sale and these lots really are “unsorted” but I do not like the randomness of it.  You will have to do your homework here.

This is not going to be  a long post because eBay just does not provide great opportunities for booksellers to find inventory – though if you slog through it you may come up with some winners.

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

Selling Books on Ebay is a little different than selling books on Amazon.  One of the great things about selling books on Ebay is the flexibility you have over promoting your listings.  I have an Ebay Seller Store (not a ProStore) and here are some of the tools I use to maximize it:

• Flexible Shipping Costs – for my expensive books I provide Free Shipping.  This might catch a buyers eye and help with the seller scores Ebay has plus it does not really eat into profits.
• Sales Tool – I use the markdown manager to offer discounts on certain books (up to 250 at one time).  Again the listing reflects that the book is “on sale” and might help get the potential buyer to actually buy.
• International Shipping – is much easier on Ebay then the other marketplaces since you can charge the actual shipping cost and not just a flat fee like Amazon.  I allow for international shipping for most of my books on Ebay.
• Photos – Many of my older books do not have stock photos.  I can’t say a photograph them all and upload them to my listings but I do provide photos on request.  You can also state in your listing that you will provide them
• Best Offer – This feature is the best.  Everyone loves getting a great deal and Best Offer allows them to.  Best Offer helps sell some of my more expensive inventory or some of my more esoteric academic/religious texts.  I find students always use Best Offer.  This provides me flexibility to either wait for the full asking price or if I want to sell for the lower offer if I want the cash flow.  There is no cost to offering Best Offer.

The only major concern I have with Ebay is the monthly costs which can add up with the per book fee.  I do not list my full inventory on Ebay because of this and I still find how they charge sellers to be difficult to follow. 

Also – the inability to leave neutral or negative feeback to a buyer makes no sense.  I have never left either for a buyer but it was nice to know I could if a buyer was being completely unreasonable.

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.

I recently had a buyer go bonkers on me in an email.  They were irate that the book they bought had a tear on the dustcover.  They buyer of the book threatened to report me to Amazon for fraud basically start some sort of boycott against me because I was lying scum and a sleazy seller.  The only problem was that the buyer did not read the item description and even glance at what condition the book was listed under.  They saw the price of the book and click on the buy button.  The book was listed in “Good” Condition with an item description that said “clean text & tight binding.  Dustjacket has tear at top of spine.

Ah yes – the pleasures of customer service.  My initial reaction to receiving this rant brings me to my rule #1 when dealing with customers which is:

1. Pause when agitated – I really wanted to lay into the guy for all his accusations but I didn’t.  I walked away from the computer for a few minutes instead and took a few deep breaths and then responded to the email.

Here is what I wanted to write back to the buyer upon reading their email to me:

Dear jackass,

I assume your are literate given that you purchased a book from me and were able to write such an informed email to me.  Your email gives me pause though  – I thought this person can read and write yet they cannot comprehend what was written in the description of the book - is there something wrong with them? is their email to me a cry for help?  If not then maybe you are just a moron who is too lazy to read a book description that clearly states that the book had a torn dustjacket.  Of course why would you bother to read it – just make accusations that I have committed some great fraud against you (yes – the $5 profit i got from selling you this book has put me over the top to buy a Senate seat).  Anyway – among other thing you can do to yourself I hope one will be to seek the help you need.

Regards

Well-  I simply wrote there must be a mistake and gave them the item description and the link to it on Amazon.  I also sympathized with them that sometimes the item descriptions were not clear enough and if that was the case with mine please let me know.  I then said if they wanted to return the book for a full refund to please do so. 

Writing a professional (or even semi-professional) response can be hard when someone is so obnoxious but do NOT respond in kind.  Just go about your business calmly and pause when agitated.