From The Editor by Craig Stark #79, 9 October 2006

As Marketplace has evolved, it's become much easier to sell non-ISBN books on Amazon. Time was our only option was to put them in zShops and wait. And wait. And usually never sell them. (zShops, you may have heard, are being axed on October 24 and replaced with generic stores. Look for Steve Weber's article on this next month.) Fortunately, now that users can create their own catalog listings, any book can be sold on Amazon Marketplace, and investing the time to do this can make sense for books that will likely sell at higher prices. Also, Amazon has recently introduced two new tools - Search Suggestions and tags - that can provide even higher visibility for these same books. Steve Weber discusses these today.

Also up (after a short vacation) is Children's Books Editor Guusje Moore. Today she launches a bookselling-focused series on notable children's books' illustrators, and what better illustrator to start with than living legend Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are.

Finally, my September results using BookHunt. Unlike last month, I devoted a more typical amount of time to the cause and purchased a total of 63 items, 5 of which were book lots. In all, there were 77 books - well, make that 76. One book "arrived" with its package slit open and empty.

Books purchased: 76

Cost of acquisition (final value plus shipping): $1136.18 or $14.76 per book.

Estimated resale value (conservative): $4697.00 or $3560.82 gross profit - and 4 have already sold at expected prices.

Again, this was accomplished using only two search queries, both relatively simple, and BookHunt ran in the background while I worked on other things. If you haven't tried it yet, BookHunt is only $19.99 ($29.99 bundled with the 4-part Gold Edition series on buying inventory online). This price includes free upgrades. Click here to purchase:

By the way, BookHunt developer Ian Ashbury is working on a new version, based in part on user suggestions, and welcomes any additional suggestions in BookThink's BookHunt Technical Support and Discussion forum.

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