Books for Bucks: How To Sell Books on eBay By Frank Fortunato
November 20, 2007
Booksellers, in my opinion, tend to be conservative in their approach, particularly when it comes to change. Veterans in the trade at first disdained online selling as a crass trend destined to fail — until the loss of business to online sellers forced them to embrace the Internet.
The same thing occurred when eBay auctions started taking off as a successful book-selling marketplace. Booksellers liked to crow about the great bargains they found on eBay from unsophisticated sellers who did not know what they were offering, and competing buyers who were equally clueless. But sell on eBay? No way. EBay, the complaints went, was a pop-culture flea market for bottom feeders, its sellers amateurs with no bibliographic skills who did not know how to describe books or even properly pack them for shipping.
The sniffing went on for sometime, until sellers using book listing services began to feel the pinch of book-buying dollars migrating to other online formats — namely eBay. Now the call heard from flea markets to chat rooms is, "I'll eBay it!" From the top-end auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's to the largest antiquarian bookstores and sellers, to the smallest of small fries, eBay book auctions are a major marketplace for new and used books.
The Parallel Universe Paradox While sellers with their own Web sites accrue some business through Google searches and links on listing services that allow it, there are basically two universes to online book selling — the listing services and the auction format. Several years ago I noted how many buyers purchase through one venue without examining the other.
Despite the passage of time, word-of-mouth and publicity, there remains a surprising number of book buyers who will only purchase through listing services without venturing into eBay; just as many eBayers still confine their purchases of out of print books to the site. They either don't know of or care to search for books through the meta-site book search engines or on the listing services. The result is that eBay auctions can afford a fresh, active, book selling platform for those who know the rules of the road. Here we'll highlight some of the pros and cons of book selling on eBay.
The Upside One huge advantage for book dealers who do business on eBay is the quick pace of sales. Waiting for a book to sell on a listing service or a personal Web site can be like watching an acorn turn into an oak tree. By one account, it takes an average of two years for a $100 book to sell on the listing services, five years and longer for tomes $500 and up. In eBay auctions, books sell within three to 10 days, providing a cash flow that simply does not exist for most listing service sellers.
Another positive aspect of eBay selling is that it's fun; it is a serendipitous and impulsive market. Marty Manley ,the CEO of the Alibris book listing service, which at one point kept several large selling accounts on eBay, commented here two years ago, "Buying and selling on eBay is entertaining, which is why eBay has customer frequency and dwell times that are the envy of all e-commerce sites." This remains true. Book buyers using listing service or Google and other search engines confine their searches to specific titles while eBay buyers tend to search by category of interest or keywords, frequently bidding on books they did not know existed.
EBay also, naturally, fosters auction frenzy — the drive toward acquisition, the competition, the thrill of the chase, this can lead to bidding wars that result in sell-through prices on eBay that exceed what the books can be bought for on other online venues, sometimes exponentially.
In terms of listing, "Love comes in at the eye," the poet William Butler Yeats wrote, and that's certainly true on eBay. The majority of books offered for sale on the listing services and Web sites are offered without images, those that are posted with photos are limited to one. EBay affords the seller image capability limited only by the seller's willingness to scan or shoot photos and post them. In selling books or anything else, this is a huge advantage.
Ephemera also comes into play. Pamphlets, brochures, trade cards, post cards, paper "scraps," documents and the like are notoriously difficult to sell on the multi-dealer listing sites because they focus on books and do not have the advantage of eye appeal. This sort of material sells quite well on eBay, thanks in large part to eBay's easy photo-posting format.
Finally, the policies, affiliations and terms of service are volatile on the book listing services, and for years the monthly listing fees have been going up, while prices for common books decline, to the point where a number of booksellers have or are considering dropping out. By contrast, the eBay terms remain stable, the fee increases modest, and despite ever-increasing competition, sell-through performance remains reasonably consistent.
(Continue to Page 2 for selling tips, details on eBay Stores and More)
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