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).

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.