The object of the packing materials used is to ensure that the contents, i.e., the book, arrive at the intended destination without damage, but what extremes are necessary?
The dilema facing most online booksellers is to find a sweet spot where the marketplace reimbursements completely cover the costs of packaging and shipping the books they sell. For penny booksellers, the postage margins are really a part of their business model and they rely on making a quarter to fifty cents per book from the postage paid, so packaging is even more important to them.
There are all kinds of ways to reduce your packaging costs, but there are consequences with most that usually mean spending more of your time packaging to save on spending for packaging materials. Some resourceful booksellers have found ways to recycle materials and have no real cost (except for tape) in their packaging of books. I have even resorted to fabricating boxes myself when I was faced with shipping a valuable book that would not conveniently fit into a box I already had, but this usually meant spending fifteen minutes to a half hour custom making a box. Doing this for a $100 book may seem worthwhile, but doing it for a $20 book can mean reducing the value of my time to minimum wage.
Still, there is a lot to be said for being creative and coming up with ways to adequately and efficiently package your books while minimizing your costs.
Back when online bookselling first started, there were buyers that would not accept books packaged in self-sealing bubble pack envelopes; they insisted on corrugated book packs.. Books sent to them in self-sealing bubble pack envelopes were returned. Today, the norm is a self-sealing bubble pack envelope which sufficiently protects most books, but does not suffice for more valuable books and is really deficient for many hard cover books for two principle reasons. First, a bubble pack envelope will not protect the corners of a hard cover book from being bumped, and we all know that once our books are turned over to the Post Office, they are tossed into large containers with much bigger and heavier items like refrigerators, boat anchors, and other well packaged bricks. This inevitably leads to damaged corners on hard backed books. The second reason that bubble pack envelopes do not suffice for some hard backs is that the corners of the book are sharp and they tear through the envelope. This can lead to corner bumps as described above, or worse, continued tearing of the envelope and the escape of the book.
For all of these reasons and scenarios, you need to evaluate each book you sell and determine what the appropriate packaging should be, or you need to take the profit hit and provide boxes/bookfolds for all of your books.
Personally, I prefer to strike a balance that results in the maximum protection for the books with minimal demand of my time. This means that the majority of my books are packed in self-sealing bubble pack envelopes, while the smallest and least valuable books are wrapped in clean newsprint paper and shipped in manilla envelopes and the more valuable and bigger books are put in either a custom fitting box, or a suitable available box.
Another step in preparing your books for shipment that is appreciated by customers and added protection for your book against moisture is thin film stretch wrap. This is much like the clear plastic wrap used for leftover food that stretches and clings to the sides of food storage containers. The cost is probably on the order of a penny per book and you can buy this kind of stretch wrap in three inch widths from most industrial suppliers. I like to wrap all new books with this with the customer receipt on the cover of the book.
When you are making the decisions for your business and how you will package books for shipment, think about how you would want the book to arrive if you were the buyer. If you do not provide the level of shipping protection for your books that your customers expect, you can expect negative feedback, so if you opt to use cheaper shipping materials, make sure you are not cutting too much cost out and giving your customers the wrong impression.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
What are the Best Kinds of Books to Sell as an Online Bookseller?
Many online booksellers like to specialize in a particular type or theme such as, rare books, first editions, or just about any other category you can imagine, but there is definitely a best way to go.
Like any other business or investment, the objective is to make a proft, so the best books to sell online are the ones you can get cheap and sell at much higher prices. This is much easier said than done, which is why some booksellers opt to specialize.
Because the assumed objective of all online booksellers is to turn a profit and find homes for books in need, a better question to ask might be, "Why do some booksellers specialize?"
Of the booksellers that specialize, most do so because they know one type of book better than other types. A popular theme is children's books. If someone has children or spends time with children, they may know which types of children's books are more valuable than other types and they may feel more comfortable dealing exclusively in that category. Still other online booksellers are very good at identifying and locating first editions or rare books. What does seem to be a central theme with booksellers that specialize in one category or another is more knowledge about their category of specialty.
Still, most online booksellers do not specialize, they just find books that will resell at prices higher than what they have to pay for them. This does not mean they do not know anything about specialized categories, it just means they are willing to sell books in any category where there is a profit to be had. There is nothing wrong with taking this approach, as this is exactly what bookstores and even publishers have done for years.
Another question might be whether it is a good idea to exclude particular categories. There are probably as many arguments in support of excluding categories as there are against doing it. Personally, unless I have a lot of time that I want to waste (maybe an hour each year), I avoid romance, cookbooks, book club editions, promotional books (Advance Reading Copies, principally because so many marketplaces prohibit the sale of this type of book) and popular novels. I am sure I have passed over some real gems in all of these categories, but my experiences in the past suggest I will be spending hours going through them only to find nothing of value. However, I know a few booksellers that make a nice living in these categories by finding valuable first editions and/or sets of books by a particular author that can be auctioned for considerable profit.
To be a successful online bookseller, you need only find a sufficient quantity of books that will sell online for a profit and to continue to add to your inventory more books than you sell. What value a book has to you is not really relevant if you want to sell it, the only thing that matters is its demand and what a customer is willing to pay for it. That said, I would encourage you to specialize if there is a category that you know well, but even then, if and only if you can find adequate inventory that will sell. It might be a lot of fun to specialize in a category of interest to you, but if you do not sell the books, you are not an online bookseller; you are a collector building a personal library.
Like any other business or investment, the objective is to make a proft, so the best books to sell online are the ones you can get cheap and sell at much higher prices. This is much easier said than done, which is why some booksellers opt to specialize.
Because the assumed objective of all online booksellers is to turn a profit and find homes for books in need, a better question to ask might be, "Why do some booksellers specialize?"
Of the booksellers that specialize, most do so because they know one type of book better than other types. A popular theme is children's books. If someone has children or spends time with children, they may know which types of children's books are more valuable than other types and they may feel more comfortable dealing exclusively in that category. Still other online booksellers are very good at identifying and locating first editions or rare books. What does seem to be a central theme with booksellers that specialize in one category or another is more knowledge about their category of specialty.
Still, most online booksellers do not specialize, they just find books that will resell at prices higher than what they have to pay for them. This does not mean they do not know anything about specialized categories, it just means they are willing to sell books in any category where there is a profit to be had. There is nothing wrong with taking this approach, as this is exactly what bookstores and even publishers have done for years.
Another question might be whether it is a good idea to exclude particular categories. There are probably as many arguments in support of excluding categories as there are against doing it. Personally, unless I have a lot of time that I want to waste (maybe an hour each year), I avoid romance, cookbooks, book club editions, promotional books (Advance Reading Copies, principally because so many marketplaces prohibit the sale of this type of book) and popular novels. I am sure I have passed over some real gems in all of these categories, but my experiences in the past suggest I will be spending hours going through them only to find nothing of value. However, I know a few booksellers that make a nice living in these categories by finding valuable first editions and/or sets of books by a particular author that can be auctioned for considerable profit.
To be a successful online bookseller, you need only find a sufficient quantity of books that will sell online for a profit and to continue to add to your inventory more books than you sell. What value a book has to you is not really relevant if you want to sell it, the only thing that matters is its demand and what a customer is willing to pay for it. That said, I would encourage you to specialize if there is a category that you know well, but even then, if and only if you can find adequate inventory that will sell. It might be a lot of fun to specialize in a category of interest to you, but if you do not sell the books, you are not an online bookseller; you are a collector building a personal library.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Beware of Increased Fraud During Holidays
The holidays are here and they bring with them some good and bad for online booksellers. The good part is that the holidays normally bring an increase in sales volume, the bad part is an increase in fraud activity.
For most online booksellers that accept orders only through the major marketplaces, e.g., Amazon.com, Alibris.com, Abebooks.com, Half.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc., there is not too much to worry about with respect to credit card fraud, but you should still take some precautions, particularly for those expensive books ordered by overseas customers.
A frequent scam involves the purchasing of expensive books (e.g., law books, medical books, and specialized engineering books) using a stolen credit card. The card is initially accepted, but once the book has been shipped, problems arise.
If you ship internationally and sell valuable books, keep a record of the Customs form number (it is printed on your Post Office receipt) since no other tracking method is really viable for international orders. You could pay for registered or certified deliveries, and they will certainly confirm delivery, but the Customs form will do the same.
Typically, you will be covered by the marketplace that accepts the credit card, but it is wise to keep the record in case there is any dispute.
A mistake that many new online booksellers make is responding to the offers of buyers asking to purchase from you through an off-site payment service like PayPal. If you do this, you risk having your marketplace account suspended for circumventing the marketplace, and if the off-site purchase indicates the sale is not covered by seller protection, you risk losing the book, the shipping fees, and a credit card chargeback fee if the card turns out to be stolen.
I am not suggesting that you not accept international orders during the holiday season, I only want to make sure you are aware of possible fraud. In five years of online bookselling, I have not been stung by a fraudulent international order, and I don’t want you to be either.
For most online booksellers that accept orders only through the major marketplaces, e.g., Amazon.com, Alibris.com, Abebooks.com, Half.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc., there is not too much to worry about with respect to credit card fraud, but you should still take some precautions, particularly for those expensive books ordered by overseas customers.
A frequent scam involves the purchasing of expensive books (e.g., law books, medical books, and specialized engineering books) using a stolen credit card. The card is initially accepted, but once the book has been shipped, problems arise.
If you ship internationally and sell valuable books, keep a record of the Customs form number (it is printed on your Post Office receipt) since no other tracking method is really viable for international orders. You could pay for registered or certified deliveries, and they will certainly confirm delivery, but the Customs form will do the same.
Typically, you will be covered by the marketplace that accepts the credit card, but it is wise to keep the record in case there is any dispute.
A mistake that many new online booksellers make is responding to the offers of buyers asking to purchase from you through an off-site payment service like PayPal. If you do this, you risk having your marketplace account suspended for circumventing the marketplace, and if the off-site purchase indicates the sale is not covered by seller protection, you risk losing the book, the shipping fees, and a credit card chargeback fee if the card turns out to be stolen.
I am not suggesting that you not accept international orders during the holiday season, I only want to make sure you are aware of possible fraud. In five years of online bookselling, I have not been stung by a fraudulent international order, and I don’t want you to be either.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Promote Your Book and Build Customer Confidence
There are many "How To" books that cover just about everything under the sun, so what can you do to build customer confidence and promote both understanding and continuing education of your customers?
Once you have completed your book and it is in the marketplace you cannot sit back and hope the sales will be great, YOU must promote it. So, what can you do to boost customer confidence and promote additional sales? There are the traditional promotion tools like advertising, blogging, exchanging banners with other websites that have themes your book can enhance, etc.
You can also publish a newsletter; this a very popular way of supplementing the information that your book already provides, but it is still just you talking to your customers, i.e., it is still one-way. To involve your customers, you need a venue for them to both participate and contribute, whether it be by them just asking questions, or by sharing their experiences and you providing validation of their efforts. This is difficult with a newsletter because customers do not want to submit questions or share an experience and then wait until the next publication to get your response. They also like the idea of participating in near real-time. If you decide to blog and allow both customer and reader comments, you may learn that customers are apprehensive because there is no privacy to their post and their post itself is subject to public rebuttals. After trying both, I found very little interest on the part of customers to contribute or to supply content to share with other customers.
One thing I did find that is really appreciated is to set up a message board that has access restricted to customers only. This seems to be popular with customers for several reasons, including:
1) It gives your customers a place they can communicate with other customers to discuss the various topics of your book.
2) It allows customers to share experiences with each other as they work through what you have conveyed in your book.
3) It gives you a venue for sharing follow-up explanations or additional information that you may not want to share with the world by posting it on your website.
4) It gives customers a place to ask questions that you can answer.
5) With access being restricted, your customers get a sense of the message board not only being a special place for them, but a place where they are protected from the harassment and intimidation associated with open message boards.
6) When many customers ask the same questions, the message board allows you to answer the question once and all customers can access the same answer. This eliminates a lot of time on your part spent sending email answers to each individual customer.
In addition to being a way of establishing credibility, providing your customers with a message board for is a great way to say "Thank You" and to let them know that you are interested in making sure they are able to implement what your book teaches. You will also find out, and very quickly, that your customers will teach you some things with respect to the topic you wrote a book about. This is a good too because by learning from your customers and acknowledging that you do not know everything about the subject gives your customers a feeling that you are genuinely interested in listening to them.
You could also consider inviting other experts on the topic to join the message board. This will adds to the content of the board and it shows your customers that the intent of the board really is to help them.
If you opt to give this concept a try, and let your customers know before they purchase your book that the board is there for them, i think you will find the entire scenario to be a win-win situation.
Once you have completed your book and it is in the marketplace you cannot sit back and hope the sales will be great, YOU must promote it. So, what can you do to boost customer confidence and promote additional sales? There are the traditional promotion tools like advertising, blogging, exchanging banners with other websites that have themes your book can enhance, etc.
You can also publish a newsletter; this a very popular way of supplementing the information that your book already provides, but it is still just you talking to your customers, i.e., it is still one-way. To involve your customers, you need a venue for them to both participate and contribute, whether it be by them just asking questions, or by sharing their experiences and you providing validation of their efforts. This is difficult with a newsletter because customers do not want to submit questions or share an experience and then wait until the next publication to get your response. They also like the idea of participating in near real-time. If you decide to blog and allow both customer and reader comments, you may learn that customers are apprehensive because there is no privacy to their post and their post itself is subject to public rebuttals. After trying both, I found very little interest on the part of customers to contribute or to supply content to share with other customers.
One thing I did find that is really appreciated is to set up a message board that has access restricted to customers only. This seems to be popular with customers for several reasons, including:
1) It gives your customers a place they can communicate with other customers to discuss the various topics of your book.
2) It allows customers to share experiences with each other as they work through what you have conveyed in your book.
3) It gives you a venue for sharing follow-up explanations or additional information that you may not want to share with the world by posting it on your website.
4) It gives customers a place to ask questions that you can answer.
5) With access being restricted, your customers get a sense of the message board not only being a special place for them, but a place where they are protected from the harassment and intimidation associated with open message boards.
6) When many customers ask the same questions, the message board allows you to answer the question once and all customers can access the same answer. This eliminates a lot of time on your part spent sending email answers to each individual customer.
In addition to being a way of establishing credibility, providing your customers with a message board for is a great way to say "Thank You" and to let them know that you are interested in making sure they are able to implement what your book teaches. You will also find out, and very quickly, that your customers will teach you some things with respect to the topic you wrote a book about. This is a good too because by learning from your customers and acknowledging that you do not know everything about the subject gives your customers a feeling that you are genuinely interested in listening to them.
You could also consider inviting other experts on the topic to join the message board. This will adds to the content of the board and it shows your customers that the intent of the board really is to help them.
If you opt to give this concept a try, and let your customers know before they purchase your book that the board is there for them, i think you will find the entire scenario to be a win-win situation.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
PDA & Database or Cell Phone?
Which is Better, a PDA & Scanner or a Cell Phone Lookup Service?
Online booksellers traditionally used their cell phones, an Internet connection, and a third-party lookup service to determine the value of a book before purchasing it for their inventory. Now, there is a new critter available that requires no Internet connection, and some online booksellers are in a quandary with respect to which type of service to use.
It was only about a year ago that online booksellers had but one high-tech solution to look up book values; they could subscribe to wireless lookup services to gain a competitive advantage using an Internet enabled cellular phone. Recently some creative third-party service providers figured out how to put everything into a database so that there was no reliance on an Internet connection. Now online booksellers that are just getting started in the business face deciding on which type of service is best for them to use.
There are definite advantages to both systems. An Internet connection and cell phone will assure you of having the latest and greatest information available for a specific title, but you have that cell phone connection leash to deal with. If you plan to attend a large book sale and do not have the experience to be comfortable with choosing the gems to buy, you probably want some sort of service to help you. However, if you intend to use a cell phone service you will be left in the dust by others that use a database service to look book values up at a rate of ten or more times faster than you.
The database services require a PDA (or possibly a radically enhanced cell phone) with sufficient memory to store a database of book values, usually on the order of 200MB or less. With one of these devices, you can enter an ISBN (either via a keyboard or laser scanner) and get an almost immediate display of the book's value and its sales rank. Some of the services even have other features that allow you to set threshold values for the books you are scouting so that you can wear an earphone to hear a cash register ring for the books you want to buy and some other not so cheerful tone for the firewood you want to pass on. The biggest disadvantage to the PDA and database system is convenience. Book values change dynamically and this means you must regularly update your database by downloading a new database from the service provider. There is also the issue with respect to books that do not have an ISBN because this is the means of lookup for the PDA and database system. This means you have to pass on all books without an ISBN, take your chances and buy some, or have an Internet lookup service too.
The cell phone lookup system, using a third-party lookup service is much slower, but if you have the Internet service on your cell phone, you can go to multitudes of other websites to look up books that do not have an ISBN.
From my perspective, if you are looking to get into online bookselling as a prime source of income or just to remain competitive and make efficient use of your scouting time, it is probably best to have both. On the other hand, if you just want to be an online bookseller for a supplemental income, or if you just want to try online bookselling without making the investment in a PDA/scanner combination, the Internet enabled cellular phone lookup service will suffice for most book scouting adventures.
The questions you really need to ask yourself as an online bookseller are:
Do I want this business to grow into a full-time source of income?
Do I have the time to spend scouting and waiting for an Internet enabled cellular phone lookup service?
Can my online bookselling business justify the expense of a PDA and possibly a scanner, as well as a database lookup service?
Do I really want to jump in with both feet and make an investment in the best tools for my online bookselling business, or should I start on a shoestring until I know whether this business is for me.
There is a lot to be said for having all the right tools for success, but you do not need to own a hospital to dress a scraped knee.
Michael E. Mould is the author of "Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips," [Paperback ISBN 1427600708, CD-ROM ISBN 1599714876] and the developer of "Bookkeeping for Booksellers" [CD ISBN 1427600694], you can learn more about online bookselling at: http://www.online-bookselling.com .
Online booksellers traditionally used their cell phones, an Internet connection, and a third-party lookup service to determine the value of a book before purchasing it for their inventory. Now, there is a new critter available that requires no Internet connection, and some online booksellers are in a quandary with respect to which type of service to use.
It was only about a year ago that online booksellers had but one high-tech solution to look up book values; they could subscribe to wireless lookup services to gain a competitive advantage using an Internet enabled cellular phone. Recently some creative third-party service providers figured out how to put everything into a database so that there was no reliance on an Internet connection. Now online booksellers that are just getting started in the business face deciding on which type of service is best for them to use.
There are definite advantages to both systems. An Internet connection and cell phone will assure you of having the latest and greatest information available for a specific title, but you have that cell phone connection leash to deal with. If you plan to attend a large book sale and do not have the experience to be comfortable with choosing the gems to buy, you probably want some sort of service to help you. However, if you intend to use a cell phone service you will be left in the dust by others that use a database service to look book values up at a rate of ten or more times faster than you.
The database services require a PDA (or possibly a radically enhanced cell phone) with sufficient memory to store a database of book values, usually on the order of 200MB or less. With one of these devices, you can enter an ISBN (either via a keyboard or laser scanner) and get an almost immediate display of the book's value and its sales rank. Some of the services even have other features that allow you to set threshold values for the books you are scouting so that you can wear an earphone to hear a cash register ring for the books you want to buy and some other not so cheerful tone for the firewood you want to pass on. The biggest disadvantage to the PDA and database system is convenience. Book values change dynamically and this means you must regularly update your database by downloading a new database from the service provider. There is also the issue with respect to books that do not have an ISBN because this is the means of lookup for the PDA and database system. This means you have to pass on all books without an ISBN, take your chances and buy some, or have an Internet lookup service too.
The cell phone lookup system, using a third-party lookup service is much slower, but if you have the Internet service on your cell phone, you can go to multitudes of other websites to look up books that do not have an ISBN.
From my perspective, if you are looking to get into online bookselling as a prime source of income or just to remain competitive and make efficient use of your scouting time, it is probably best to have both. On the other hand, if you just want to be an online bookseller for a supplemental income, or if you just want to try online bookselling without making the investment in a PDA/scanner combination, the Internet enabled cellular phone lookup service will suffice for most book scouting adventures.
The questions you really need to ask yourself as an online bookseller are:
Do I want this business to grow into a full-time source of income?
Do I have the time to spend scouting and waiting for an Internet enabled cellular phone lookup service?
Can my online bookselling business justify the expense of a PDA and possibly a scanner, as well as a database lookup service?
Do I really want to jump in with both feet and make an investment in the best tools for my online bookselling business, or should I start on a shoestring until I know whether this business is for me.
There is a lot to be said for having all the right tools for success, but you do not need to own a hospital to dress a scraped knee.
Michael E. Mould is the author of "Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips," [Paperback ISBN 1427600708, CD-ROM ISBN 1599714876] and the developer of "Bookkeeping for Booksellers" [CD ISBN 1427600694], you can learn more about online bookselling at: http://www.online-bookselling.com .
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