by Reesa Turner #124, 30 June 2008

I would like to introduce myself as the official Book Think guinea pig. Reesa is my name and frugality is my game. I've run the gamut when it comes to selling books online, and I'm still running. Mostly I have been running from up-front listing fees. Seriously, I am a cheapskate. Yes, that's me, the petite freak, trying to catch the cheapest bus into seller success. Trends come and go, but the one distinction in my career as a slinger of books has been this - I do not like to pay to play. Give me a selling platform that gives up the goods and asks monetary questions later and I'm on it like Jack London on the work of Egerton R. Young, like H.G. Wells on the work of Florence Deeks, like Martin Luther King on ... well you get my drift. I have a dream ... a very cheap dream.

Several years ago I read about a bunch of free platforms to set up any type of sales you want, and many to sell whatever wares you have available. There was the creation of Wagglepop on the horizon, eCrater, Collector's Book Market, Overstock.com, ChooseBooks, iOffer, etcetera. I checked them all out, used some of them, and realized it would involve a lot of time and really hard work to get started at many of these sites. After much thought on where I was and where I thought I was headed, I bookmarked the pages and went on my merry way using other free-to-list venues that were already familiar to me and quite easier to maneuver. Selling on eBay, Amazon, half.com and Biblio, I really did not feel the need to make more work for myself, though I regret that decision now. Oh, how I regret the time wasted in not building my business further, not having the real vision, sitting back to enjoy family and beer rather than working hard. Okay, honestly, I don't regret it all that much.

Receiving what I perceived to be too many improper blows from eBay, I finally decided to completely throw in the towel there and closed my eBay Stores. Granted, when eBay was good, it was usually very good. I had closed out my half.com specific inventory almost two years before, due to the many problems I encountered with sold inventory being sold again months later, and managing to mysteriously lose huge chunks of "irretrievable" inventory while in vacation mode there.