Cutting of Your Nose to Spite Your Face - Online Bookseller Style

September 2nd, 2010

I have seen frequent complaints recently, on the Amazon seller forums and elsewhere, that “Amazon is expecting us to do their work by uploading images of our books ourselves!”

I find this a very silly point of view: if you want to sell a book, adding an image is one of the best ways to accomplish that. Why not just upload the image, sell the book, and move on?

If you want to see which of your listings are missing images, go to Seller Central Home: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html and look for the Amazon Selling Coach box at the top right

By the way, there are several ways to add images at Amazon. If no image shows in search results you want to be sure to use Method 2; I can almost guarantee that when a buyer searches for a vintage copy of, say, the Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies, the listings that they will click through on are the ones with images in the search results.

Method 1: Share your customer image here. You have to have purchased from Amazon to use this. The image will only appear on the Product Detail Page. Useful, for example, when you have a book with a cover variant.

How: Just follow the Share your own customer images link from the image area.

Method 2: Edit this product. You have to be a Pro-Merchant to use this. The image will appear as the main image on the Product Detail Page, and will appear next to the entry on search. It will not be credited to the uploaders.

How: Select Edit from your Inventory - to the right of the page, you will see a box with this text: “As a pro merchant, you have the ability to contribute information to the product details in your Seller Account.” Click on “Edit this product” and follow the instructions.

Method 3: Add up to 5 offer-specific images to your listing. The best of all! Only available on collectible listings, these images appear with your book. When the listing is closed, the images go too.

How: Add when you create your listing, or go back later and edit it. Because I list Collectible books one-at-a time, I can’t tell you how to do this by bulk upload. If someone knows, perhaps they could post instructions in the BookThink forums.

Karin Isgur Bergsagel,  BookThink News Editor
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eBay: Feedback Extortion Policy

September 1st, 2010

If you sell on eBay, I suggest that you review what eBay does and does not consider to be feedback extortion. It looks to me like they have redefined the meaning of extortion:

Examples that aren’t Feedback extortion:

*A buyer says he or she will leave negative Feedback or low detailed seller ratings (DSRs) unless the seller accepts a return and pays for return shipping.
*A buyer says he or she will leave negative Feedback or DSRs unless the seller gives a full or partial refund for an item.
*A buyer feels the shipping costs are too high and says he or she will leave negative Feedback or DSRs unless the seller lowers the shipping costs.

This, on the other hand, is Feedback extortion:

Examples of Feedback extortion

*A seller refuses to refund the buyer unless the buyer leaves good Feedback or detailed seller ratings (DSRs).

Huh?

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-extortion.html

Karin Isgur Bergsagel,  BookThink News Editor
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Biblio.com Introduces Commission-Free Dealer-to-Dealer Sales

August 30th, 2010

Biblio is a very bookseller-friendly site, and now they have increased that appeal by adding commission-free dealer to dealer sales.

Beginning September 1st 201, here’s how it will work:

http://www.biblio.com/blog/2010/08/introducing-commission-free-sales/

From the beginning, Biblio has strived to find ways of supporting independent booksellers. What booksellers need these days are more orders and fewer fees. To that end, we are proud to introduce Commission Free member to member sales on Biblio!

Booksellers are among the best book buyers. A significant number of the orders placed through Biblio are placed by registered Biblio booksellers buying stock, filling special orders, or just buying books for their private collections (booksellers are also book collectors, of course)! In the past, we’ve offered CashBack on purchases, but we want to do an even better job of increasing bookseller to bookseller sales on Biblio. Effective September 1st, all qualified purchases made by a BiblioDirect Member are commission free!

So what is a qualified purchase?

* As a selling bookseller: You need to offer at least a 5% member discount. This should be easy since Biblio isn’t charging you commission. As long as you are passing some of that commission savings onto other bookseller members by offering a member discount, you won’t be charged commission on orders coming from other BiblioDirect members.

* As a purchasing bookseller / customer. You need to be logged into your Biblio bookseller account when you place your order. When you are logged into your Biblio bookseller account when ordering, you will see the BiblioDirect member discounted price, and the bookseller you are ordering from pays no commission on the sale. Only Biblio’s payment processing fee applies if Biblio is processing the payment on the order.

That’s all there is to it!

To make this possible, we are phasing out fulfillment discounts and cashback purchasing incentives. Since the largest fulfillment discount that any bookseller could earn was only a few dollars per billing period, it wasn’t enough to be meaningful to most booksellers. Cashback incentives were effective, but weren’t as effective as we felt they could be. Instead of rebating a small percent of each purchases, we will simply be not charging you to begin with! By offering Commission Free Member to Member sales, we expect that Biblio booksellers will all see more orders and greater savings offered via the BiblioDirect Member Discounts.

Karin Isgur Bergsagel,  BookThink News Editor
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Amazing Survival of a Signed First Edition

August 30th, 2010

WKYT in Lexington Kentucky has an inspiring story about a local bookstore owner:

http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/101682198.html

“At a glance, The Morris Book Shop in Lexington looks like any other small, independent book store. But like the thousands of volumes that line the stores shelves, this place has a story to tell. It’s one of triumph over tragedy, and the bond between father and son.

“My Dad was an attorney, just a consummate professional and a really great guy. In his young life he liked to write sort of old fashioned, boys life adventure stories and that sort of thing and that really colored his reading tastes later in life.” Back in 2006, Wyn Morris’ father, Lexington attorney Les Morris and his wife Kay had planned a vacation to Alaska. Just before the trip, the elder Morris eagerly sought an autographed copy of ‘The Messenger’ by Daniel Silva when the author made a stop here in the Bluegrass.

“I had not really known my father in quite some time to take such interest in meeting and speaking with an author but he had really, really sort of recently discovered Daniel Silva.” Les Morris never got to the chance to read ‘The Messenger’; he died with 48 others when Comair Flight 5191 crashed at Bluegrass Airport on August 27, 2006.

“When we were kind of faced with the task of going into the house and kind of collecting things up, I found the jacket to ‘The Messenger’, the book that I knew he has with him.” Months after the crash, Morris received a catalog of crash victim’s personal effects that were aboard the ill-fated flight. While flipping through it, he made a stunning discovery. Inside was a photo of Les Morris’ personalized signed copy of ‘The Messenger’ completely intact. Through the mangled wreckage and intense fire that followed the crash, the book emerged virtually unscathed.

“It just felt really good to bring it home in a sense, this thing that I knew was special to my Dad, that he had had with him, and just to have it back felt like having a piece of him.” For Wynn Morris, the book not only represents a tangible link to his late father, it also symbolizes a boyhood dream.

“Using his father’s passing as a wake-up call, Wyn did something that he had put off for years. He took a chance, made a dream come true, and opened his south Lexington bookshop in 2008. “Everyday could be your last day, accidents happen and it is kind of a wake up call to stop screwing around and stop talking about what you want to do someday. Whether it is travel, or get a motorcycle, or fly in a hot air balloon, or God forbid open a bookstore.”

Karin Isgur Bergsagel,  BookThink News Editor
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RIP: The OED in Print

August 29th, 2010

Say it ain’t so!

My readers know that I am a fan of digital media, but even I feel a stabbing pain in my heart at this newsflash from the AP this morning:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g6CldEyTFyTcI6HxFN0tBwFhr_WgD9HT3MIG0

Internet wiping out printed Oxford Dictionary

LONDON — The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary says waning demand for printed versions means that the authoritative guide to the English language may only live online in the future.

The Oxford University Press says Sunday because of the increasing market for the dictionary’s online version, the latest edition of the dictionary will only go to print if there is enough demand for the printed volume when it becomes ready.

A team of 80 lexicographers are preparing the third edition of the dictionary. The current edition of the dictionary — 20 volumes costing 750 pounds ($1,165) — was printed in 1989 and has sold about 30,000 sets.

The publisher says that 2 million entries from the online dictionary are viewed each month.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

My university years would have been very different if I had not been able to while away hours flipping through the pages of the 20 Volume OED in the Reference Room at the Robarts Library.

Sigh.

Karin Isgur Bergsagel,  BookThink News Editor
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