If you sell books online then you know that back to school season is a great time for us.  Students are always looking for a bargain.  I have hundreds of academic books and a decent amount of current textbooks so I sell my fair share this time of year.  Now that we are at mid-September the textbook season is winding down and textbook return season is starting up.  This is the time of year when I have the most returns. 

 Students drop classes or buy the wrong edition or no longer want their books for any number of reasons.  So this time of year is is important for us to cintinue to implement excellent customer service when handling returns.  If somebody buys a book and there is something “wrong” with it and they want to return it I accept it and provide a full refund (including shipping).  If a person decides they no longer need the book I accept a return and refund the purchase price but not the shipping.  This is my simple policy and I have never had an issue with a buyer. 

There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns – most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon’s A-Z policy).  I keep my return policy simple.  The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting).  Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers.

Amazon Charge when Shipped is their newest change to their marketplace.  Amazon CWS does what it says – which is that the buyer of your book is not charged until you confirm the book has shipped.  This is somewhat similar to how Alibris handles their marketplace.   I am not going to go over the whole terms of Amazon’s CWS as there is a comprehensive overview at Amazon but there are a few things worth pointing out.

What does CWS mean for us booksellers?  Not much.  You will not have your account credited until you ship a book.  If you use The Art of Books or a similar inventory management system Amazon should be automatically updated when the book is shipped.   There are a couple of downsides to Amazon’s Charge When Shipped – you do not get to send your own confirmation email to the buyer and the buyer can still leave feedback on a canceled order.

I like sending out my own confirmations.  They promote my “brand” (nominally) and provide a more personalized experience.  Also I ask that buyers contact me directly with any issues before going to Amazon and filing feedback or a “A to Z” claim.   The sample confirmation email that Amazon has provided does not include seller contact information.  Many times I  have been contacted by unhappy buyer (mistakenly of course since I am perfect lol) who has an issues with the condition of the book.  Though it turns out that they didn’t read the book description closely or their idea of what a bumped corner (or similar damage) is different then mine.  With direct communication with the buyer I can resolve these issues to the buyers satisfaction quickly. My guess is that neutral or negative feedback will increase with less direct communication with the buyer.

Hopefully, Amazon CWS will go smoothly but I am concerned that Amazon is going to cause problems for a lot of sellers given how their feedback system works.

Amazon announced their earnings and stated that book (and all media) sales were flat but they are back-logged on Kindles.  Does this matter to us small online booksellers given our scale is so much smaller then Amazon’s?  Long term I think it matters if the Kindle really becomes an option for people.

People who buy Kindles are either gadget heads who just want the latest thing or they are avid readers who love having a portable library.  The avid readers are likely avid book buyers so the transition of their book sales to electronic form will have a long-term negative effect on online booksellers.  Will this happen soon – not likely but it does not bode well. 

One of the issues with the Kindle is that Amazon is pricing titles on it less than they are a regular copy of a book.  This can have the effect of havingo nline booksellers trying to beat the Kindle price on books.  I am not sure if the inventory and scouting services are showing Kindle prices yet but maybe they should.

Lets not forget that the Kindle is not the only device out there – Sony also makes one and you can even put books on your iPhone.  Sales of the Kindle are one thing but it remains to be seen if people are actually going to adapt to using it as their primary way to read – as we have seen with Amazon recenlty deleting Orwell titles there are several issues with the Kindle that will effect its popularity.

Electronic reading devices are going to have to become a whole lot more popular for online booksellers to throw in the towel

The question isn’t if you should collect sales tax because that is impossible to do on most sites except eBay.  Trying to collect sales taxes would kill sales if you are the only one doing it.  Now – I am not a lawyer or accountant so I will simply tell you what I do – which is to pay my states sales taxes.

Some states do not require you to pay sales taxes on online business but I know where I live requires it.  So I pay the few hundred dollars a year.  I hate doing it (though my wife handles figuring out what I owe which is the most frustrating part).  I don’t do it to be moral or anything but I do it because I am running a business and do not want to jeopardize my bookselling business by cutting corners.  I don’t do mental gymnastics over this decision – I just keep it simple and cut the check to the state and I have no worries.  I did my research about whether I need to pay and that was that.

If you sell books online check with your accountant ( if oyou have one) or go to your states website and start doing your research – or just ignore it and hope you have no reason to be concerned

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.