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Before I look ahead at the future of bookselling, I'd like to share an experience I had last week purchasing four textbooks for my son's classes this coming semester - well, I'll tell you about the first book I ordered, then invite you to extrapolate similar experiences to the other three.
The first book on my list retailed for a whopping $174.95, and Amazon was offering it new for $130.53. Additionally, there were 84 copies offered by third-party sellers, 16 new from $110 and 66 used from $60. On the lookout for a bargain, I clicked into used copies first. There was indeed a copy listed as acceptable for $60 - "It is highlighted and written in, and outer shelf is a bit worn" - but it was offered by a just-launched seller with no feedback whatsoever. Since my son needed the book inside of a week, I couldn't take a chance.
The next available book was listed as good at $109.26 by a 94% positive seller. What this huge price gap suggested to me was that many other buyers weren't willing to take a chance with the $60 copy either; otherwise, it would've been long gone - and when I looked a week later, it was still there!
SUGGESTION: If you're a new seller with no feedback, I urge you to do something about it ASAP. If you don't know how to get this
done, you can "buy" some pretty quickly by following the procedure
here (which applies equally to Amazon, eBay, etc.).
(which applies equally to Amazon, eBay, etc.).
Okay, back to the second copy listed. Take a look at this description: "Since we sell hundreds of books a week I cannot guarantee that your book will be free of highlighting, will not have bent corners and will have CD. However, we do try our best to catagorize [sp] inventory properly. Our books may have bent corners and minor highlighting. Most do not but some do. We will try our best to make sure you get a good quality book but sometimes a bad one does sneak through."
I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that what I did at this point goes without saying.
The next copy, also listed as good at $109.26 from a 96% positive seller, had this description appended to it: "PROMPT SHIPPING (USPS TRACKING)/ GREAT VALUE!! - Hardcover slightly worn, but text area in great shape"
Do you want to take this one apart, or do you want me to? Okay, I will, and I'll try to be fair. "PROMPT SHIPPING (USPS TRACKING)" - mildly reassuring, I'll concede, that this was mentioned, but ALL CAPS always gives me pause with a seller (probably my aversion to being hustled), and noting that GREAT VALUE!! followed fast on its heels brought this thought to mind: "I'll be the judge of that!" "Hardcover slightly worn" isn't the worst description I've ever seen, but "text area in great shape" means ... what?
Well, since the seller did seem to have the book in possession, I clicked to investigate feedback. Unfortunately, almost all of this seller's sub-5 feedbacks mentioned receiving a book whose condition was worse than expected. Suddenly, "slightly worn" didn't look so slight anymore, and "great shape" could've meant, I don't know, "in one piece"?
Next.
$109.27 with this description: "Inventory subject to prior sale. Used items have varying degrees of wear, highlighting, etc. and may not include supplements such as infotrac or other web access codes."
Moving on.
Next was a $109.95 copy from a 96% positive seller described: "a few hilites good cover" What is it about booksellers who can't spell or arrange a few words sensibly that bothers me? And would this seller take more care packaging my book than he or she took to describe it? Okay, call me a sucker, but I clicked into feedback anyway, and guess what? The first two out of three sub-5 feedbacks mentioned poor packaging and a resulting damaged book.
Onward.
Keep in mind that while this was going on, that $116 for a new copy was looming brighter and brighter in my mind - I mean, at this point, I was thinking, why am I going to so much trouble trying save a few bucks when I could just buy one new and be done with it?
A $110 copy from a seller with 0% feedback over the last 12 months was next. I should've stopped here and gone to the new copies, but I soldiered on in the interest of thorough reportage.
$114.99 with this description: "All books in Acceptable - Good condition. Books may NOT include Online Access Codes (InfoTrac, MyEconLab). Books MAY contain highliting/bent pages."
Hmmm.
$115 by a just-launched seller.
Next.
$115 with this description: "GOOD CONDITION!!! LITTLE TO MEDIUM HIGHLIGHTING AND/OR WRITING!!! READY TO SHIP!!!"
Sigh.
Clicking at last into the list of new copies, I quickly skipped over five more sellers because all had boilerplate descriptions and
far less than stunning feedback. Finally, I encountered a new copy listed at $114.99 by a 100% positive feedback seller who also
mentioned that it was a 7th edition, included InfoTrac, and was listed as "Fulfillment by Amazon." (I should note here that this
was the very first seller I came across who mentioned anything at all about the edition.) I would've preferred to see a brief
condition description, even a single word like "flawless" would have helped, but I had three other books to order and it was almost
dinner time - and actually, the remaining three books were even more problematic to buy!
Ultimately, I ended up buying all new copies either directly from Amazon or fulfilled by Amazon because there was something that gave me pause about every last one of the sub-$116 used copies - and many of the new copies as well. Also interesting to note is that dozens of used copies were listed at prices higher than I bought my new copy for.
It might be instructive to list some of the more common factors that broke deals for me either singly or in combination with other factors:
Oh - and one more: The word "may" anywhere in the description.
It might also be instructive to list a few factors I saw as positives for textbook purchases:
So - what does this true life buying experience have to do with the future of bookselling? A lot, I think. You can't move forward as a bookseller unless you're able to compete effectively against other sellers today. On the basis of what I've presented here, it should be abundantly obvious that you don't have to move mountains to outshine well over 90% of competing Amazon sellers (and of course this number holds up pretty well on most other venues as well). Relatively minimal changes in your descriptions today can have a huge impact on sales tomorrow. If you don't yet have a sense of how important this is, I urge to pick out a few common titles and do some virtual shopping. Count the total number of sellers offering any given book then calculate the percentage of sellers you would feel comfortable actually pulling the trigger on. It might be an eye-opener.
Finally, I'd like to counterbalance this disturbing portrait I've painted with some perspective. Would you buy from an 89% positive seller who received this feedback?
"HORRIBLE SERVICE!!! I WILL NEVER BUY FROM THEM AGAIN! THEY LIED ABOUT THE CONDTION OF THE BOOK, THEY SAID IT WAS USED AND IN GOOD CONDITION, BUT THE SPINE WAS BADLY WARPED AND BUSTED ALMOST INTO 2 PECIES, PAGES WERE FALLING OUT FROM THE BAD SPINE CONDITION AND PAGES WERE MISSING. THERE IS WRITING ALL OVER INSIDE THE BOOK AND THERE ARE STAINS ON THE COVER AND THEY CHARGED ME $90.00"
I buy many books from this seller every month for resale on the same venues. If you want to succeed at bookselling in the coming years, it will help you to identify sellers with potentially valuable inventory who don't at first glance appear trustworthy - and buy from them. There's a price for the kind of bookselling they practice. Make them pay for it.
Finally, if you take nothing else away from this article, take this: The future of bookselling looks bright for the sellers who are best able to communicate a sense of trust.
Part III will address the single most important technical factor that will make you or break you in the coming years. Stay tuned
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