Books Found: A Bookselling Family's Journal

So it's been awhile...

2009-04-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Hello, anyone still out there?

I know I haven't been around these here parts for some time. So here I am with an update.

Last fall I sold my inventory of books on Craigslist and, after three or so years of active online bookselling, I have moved on to a new business.

What I'm doing now is still applicable to you as an online bookseller so hang on. More on that a minute.

Online bookselling was a great way to get started with earning a living online. But, gradually, I reached the point where I'd have to outsource certain tasks to keep my sanity. Specifically, the packaging of the books and the taking of photos for eBay.

The business had reached the adolescent phase and to get to the maturity phase I couldn't keep doing it all without outsourcing.

Also, I wasn't really feeling the joy in going out and finding inventory anymore. The other day I went to an antique store to look for jadeite plates and it was such a relief to not have to pay attention to the books there. :-)

Another strain was that I found it difficult to crack the $2K per month income ceiling. Which made paying for outsourcing not very tenable. I know, I know, a lot of people would think $2K per month is a great thing, and it was. But I have four kids, my husband was out of work for a while and debts racked up, so I was in need of more income.

Anyway, writing has always been my first love and I discovered freelance copywriting. I now have a steady stream of clients and write for their online businesses. Email copy is my specialty. Essentially I discover and write about the stories of my clients' products and businesses.

The income is much better and doesn't require schlepping to book sales or to the post office.

I now know more than a thing or two about internet marketing and how to create websites. Several of my clients are millionaires and I've paid attention to how they run their businesses and various techniques they use.

This is where you come in.

I know that with the recession going on you might be looking for ways to grow your business beyond just listing books on Amazon and eBay.

Maybe you don't have a website yet. Maybe you've heard of things like Twitter and other social media and wonder if that would help.

Maybe, just maybe, you'd like some passive income in addition to the income from your sales. For example, if you specialize in children's books, you could sell information based on your expertise.

There's no end to what we could discuss about growing your business using the internet. I know there are already a lot of people out there who can tell you which books to look for, the best way to ship them and all that other stuff. But the last time I checked there wasn't any info out there about marketing for online booksellers.

So if you'd like to see posts like that here, please leave a comment. Or send me an email.

In the meantime, feel free to check out my copywriting blog. Even if you don't know the first thing about marketing or copywriting you might find it enjoyable. I tell stories and try to keep things fun and upbeat over there.

One of the biggest bookstores in the country...in the middle of nowhere

2008-07-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

I've written about this used bookstore before and was delighted to find this video:

The bookstore is literally in the middle of nowhere, among corn and soybeans, yet there are one million books.

They do everything wrong from a business perspective:

No website.

No sign at the end of the driveway.

Only open one day per week.

No advertising.

No profit.

Bad location because there is no foot traffic...or any traffic at all. When I first went there Google Maps couldn't give me directions. A bookseller who frequents the store had to give me directions.

Yet in doing everything wrong there's something so right about their business.

Is eBay just a fad?

2008-06-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

According to this Business Week article, it looks like this might be the first year that fixed price sales will surpass auction sales at eBay.

Speaking only for myself, I know I can hardly tolerate bidding on an auction anymore. I prefer Buy It Now items.

Are auctions on their way out?

Do you have backends?

2008-06-10T11:37:00.001-07:00

No, not *those* kind of backends.

I mean the kind of backend (i.e. upsell) that someone who ships products to customers should use.

That someone being you, of course.

Over on a forum I participate in there's a discussion about Amazon and how they could sell even MORE books, if such a thing is possible.

One of the veteran marketers in this forum said that he ordered a marketing book recently and inside the package was a print advertisement for a Harry Potter book. What a missed opportunity, according to him. Why not instead include a promotion for something similar to what he ordered?

It would be far more effective to include a flyer, handwritten note, or a suggestion list for similar books, and offer free shipping or a discount. Maybe even include a prepaid envelope.

When someone opens a package it's always a little bit like Christmas and you have a captive audience for a few moments. A special insert like that will increase your sales and repeat business. After all, it's easier to sell to a person who has already purchased from you.

Amazon does a great job of sending e-mails with book suggestions and luring you with those "customers who purchased __________ also purchased _________" suggestions on their website.

But here's one area where they could improve and where maybe even you could do better than Amazon.

If you use backends/upsells in your business, feel free to discuss in the comments what has worked (or not worked) for you.

Are you boycotting eBay this week?

2008-02-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

If so, I'd love to hear about that. If not, I'd love to hear about that too.

I don't participate in any eBay forums so I'm not as caught up in the drama about this as some sellers are but I do think eBay shot themselves in the foot. They want to make eBay more appealing to buyers but seem to be forgetting that there can be no buyers without the sellers. The sellers are eBay's customers too and should be treated accordingly. If something is ticking the sellers off this badly, I hope they will snap to attention.

Bring on the ebay changes!

2008-02-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Most of my bookselling efforts are now focused on eBay because the types of books I enjoy selling sell best on eBay. Frankly, going to a library sale and standing in front of a stack of books with a scanner and scanning ISBNs does not interest me. Yawn. I focus instead on books the scanners leave behind because they don't have ISBNs.

So I probably should be upset about the eBay changes because they, on the surface, seem to hurt sellers.

But I'm not upset.

Bring on the changes! The more dramatic, the better.

Changes are a good wakeup call and a reminder that placing your inventory entirely in the hands of eBay and/or Amazon is similar to working for a corporation. You have very limited control.

The more changes you as a seller will be forced to endure, the more the more you will realize:

* You have excellent sales skills even though you might be an introvert.
* You know how to treat a customer with respect and good manners.
* You have an excellent working knowledge of e-commerce.
* You might even have learned some HTML basics along the way.

In short, your skills are invaluable and, ultimately, as a bookseller, you don't really need eBay or Amazon. In other words, you rule! :-)

Craig Stark recently said over at www.bookthink.com, a transaction takes place between two people. Trust is at the foundation of this transaction, no matter how many changes take place at eBay or Amazon.

I'll have more to say about this in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the new changes (yep, even the one that doesn't let me leave negative feedback for buyers).

Does anyone ever find books on these top ten lists?

2007-12-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

As you know, BookFinder publishes the top ten out of print books for the year each December. If you haven't seen the 2007 list yet the US list is here and the UK list is here.

These lists are very cool and interesting, of course. What I'm curious about, however, is if any of you have ever found one of these books while out scouting?

Do you carry these lists in your scouting books? Or do you commit any of these titles to memory? If so, have you ever found one of these books while you've been out and about looking for new inventory?

Or have you ever found one through dumb luck, not even realizing it was a valuable title?

Just curious.

I'll dutifully print out this year's list and dutifully carry it in my notebook. Maybe this year will be the year I finally find one of the titles.

For your eBay reading pleasure

2007-12-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine has started selling things on eBay. If you need some entertaining reading, check out her auction for some placemats and a flower art book.

I've seen countless eBay listings over the years and almost never have I seen listings as well done as these. I think booksellers especially tend to be rather uptight in describing their books and making sure to use proper lingo like "first edition, first state, with minor rubbing on the dust wrappers." But hardly anyone understands that lingo anyway. Most sellers, especially those with eBay stores, don't use any lingo at all and you're lucky to get a one line description.

That flower book only sold for five bucks but I looked it up on eBay and see it has a sales rank of four million and sells for $1 over there. So she did a good job of getting it out the door in a week, whereas it would've sat on Amazon indefinitely and would not have sold for as much as $5.00, if it ever sold at all.

She's received a lot of favorable comments about her fun descriptions and at least a few have placed bids just for the entertainment of it all. Way to go!

Perfume for the bookseller on your Christmas list

2007-12-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a perfume for book lovers. It's a unique website with fun copy. Be sure to click on "story" so you can read the full description of the perfume. Their other perfumes look good too and are so different from what you see at the perfume counter at Macy's.

I'm glad that websites aren't laden with perfume the way women's magazines always are but this is one time I wish I could smell samples on a website.

Cool eBay Tool

2007-11-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

Here's an eBay tool that let's you peruse the sold items of an eBay seller. It's easier to view than the completed auctions on eBay and also gives you statistics, such as the percentage of their auctions that sold and how much they spent in eBay fees.

In other words, it's a more efficient way to snoop on your favorite sellers.

The $10K Garage Sale

2007-10-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

We went back to Castle Arkdale last month.

I was going to tell you about it because I was pleased with the small amount of inventory I found there. Then I read about the $10,000 worth of inventory Guusje found at a garage sale. And I've been speechless ever since.

Congratulations Guusje! You deserve it.

Obviously I need to rethink garage sales. I've been burned several times and rarely do I see a garage sale that looks interesting. From now on I will be keeping my eye open for unadvertised sales in garage apartments owned by natural healers.

Unusual eBay Feedback

2007-09-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

I've bought and sold on eBay for seven years but have never seen eBay feedback like this before. Who knew that one could use feedback as a way to crank out funny one liners.

An online bookseller who makes $120K

2007-09-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a work at home mom who sells books online and grosses $120K per year. She sells overstocks and remainders. Here's another post about her.

Forty percent of her sales come from Amazon. She also has an eBay store and a website.

It's tempting to think that I'm in the wrong book business but Christine worked as a bookstore manager for 12 years. That gives her an advantage that I wouldn't have. It's interesting, though, to see what other booksellers do. Maybe learning a bit more about remainders and overstocks could be useful. Do any of you out there sell both used books and remainders?

Book Scouting in the Village that Time Forgot

2007-09-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

Supposedly the main reason we went to the Cooksville, Wisconsin Fall Festival last Sunday was for book scouting purposes.

True, they have 3-4 tables full of used books for sale at the festival. Cooksville is a rural community and the festival isn't advertised in the Madison paper so it means I get the books to myself and don't have to share them with other dealers. Can't pass up on an opportunity like that.

In truth, however, I figured there was a good chance this could be a four hour vacation for me and my four daughters and we needed one. A trip to New England is out of question at this time but a trip to Cooksville is as good as a trip to a New England village.

The village green and mid-19th century homes make Cooksville "a wee bit of New England in Wisconsin." Most of Cooksville is listed in the National Historic Register. It was founded in 1842 before Wisconsin became a state. Its peak population was 200; now it's 67.

Anyway, we arrive and I immediately went to the book tables because I was here to work, right? I didn't find much. A bird book. The children's book Giants Come in Different Sizes by Jolly Roger Bradfield. Not much, but those two books will pay for the lunch and other incidental expenses we had that day.

Speaking of lunch, it was typical midwestern fare served in the church basement: hot dogs/burgers/brats, baked beans and chips:

There was a square dancing performance while the girls decorated cookies and made crafts:

And my favorite part: The village green. It is a large, open green space surrounded by brick and stone homes in the Greek Revival and Gothic Revival styles. No play equipment, no benches, no picnic tables, just wide open space. Aaahhh:

It's hard to narrow it down to just a few photos of the brick houses but I'll try:

The original house built by the two Cook brothers in 1842:

This is the General Store, still standing and in full operation, with a functional gas pump on the front porch. On the inside there is no blaring TV and no blaring radio, like modern convenience stores always have. The only noise was the creaky wood floors:

The children thought it was necessary to purchase Cow Tales candy. It's a vintage candy but I had never heard of it before even though I was raised in Wisconsin:

It would've been extra cool if I had found some rare, valuable book there, but it's nice, at least, that what little we found will pay for the expenses of this mini vacation.

I wonder if this February I could travel to Hawaii and find enough used books there to pay for the trip....

Martha Stewart and Halloween

2007-09-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

I picked up nine 1995 Martha Stewart Living magazines at a book sale this weekend. Speaking of sales, what's with all the scanners these days? I went to three sales and not once did I whip out my cell phone. I pick through magazines and non-scannable books because, well, that's where the fun is, especially when eBay is one of your selling venues. Those that scan spend more time looking at their screens - do they even look at the title of the book? - than the books and it seems so opposite of fun to me.

But I digress!

I looked at completed auctions for Martha Stewart Living magazines today and noticed that the fall and Halloween issues from this era sell well. So there's a tip for you.

Inspired by the lady who wrote the Pokemon Card listing I loosened up a bit while writing my eBay listing for these mags. At least I had some fun. I'm writing 3000 words about venture capital for a client today so writing the Martha listing gave me a break from that.

I refrained from prison jokes and sarcasm. I figure the people looking at the listing are Martha fans. Actually, even though I'm so Not Martha, I've come to not mind her very much. At least she sticks to her niche - domestic perfection - and doesn't try to be all things to all people.

Keeping Hope Alive

2007-09-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today I had hoped to go to Castle Arkdale with my oldest daughter. They are open by appointment only and didn't answer their phone, alas, so we'll try again next week.

This weekend there are three sales to attend. woo hoo! Perhaps the inventory drought will be over. There are two library sales on Saturday morning. There's a library bag sale at 9:00 and then a library sale that starts at 9:30, approximately ten minutes away from the bag sale. It will be rush rush rush on Saturday morning and the children might whine whine whine. But it'll be worth it, I hope.

Then on Sunday is the fall festival at a rural church a half hour from here. We went to it three years ago and it was like walking into an Anne of Green Gables novel; it was almost excruciatingly quaint and charming. There was a cake walk. Classic midwestern food was served in the church basement, where the fixtures and furniture haven't changed in fifty years, I bet. There were several tables of used books outside on tables.

So that's four scouting trips in less than a week (assuming we make it to Castle Arkdale soon). It'll do me good to get away from the computer, blow the dust off my ScoutPal, and scour the shelves.

Leave Your Passwords in Your Will

2007-09-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

We are now in an era where we need to hand down passwords to our relatives the way we once handed down safe deposit boxes, safe combinations, etc. A commenter raised a good point about this yesterday in reference to my mention of Elaine Krieg Smith's now dormant blog.

I've never seen an article or blog post about this so I thought I'd mention it here. If you have a blog, it's ideal if someone could leave a post in the event of a tragic accident or if you otherwise become incapacitated. Even if you don't have a blog, you should consider making a list of user IDs and passwords for sites like the following:

Flickr or other online photo storage site.
Gmail, Yahoo mail or other web based e-mail that requires a password.
eBay.
PayPal.
Banking website.
Your blog, MySpace, Facebook and forum passwords.
Bookselling venues.

Give your list to a family member or other trustworthy person. That person should also check your e-mails. I've asked my oldest daughter to keep my list of passwords in a Google Documents file so that it will always be accessible from any computer. She knows how to use Blogger and she's internet-savvy.

A sad example of this is the late Cathy Seipp's blog. During her last few days as she was dying of lung cancer her daughter took over and wrote blog posts that kept readers informed.

I know Elaine subscribed to my blog's feed so if she's out there I hope we hear from her.

Bookselling Uninspiration

2007-09-02T18:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but this hasn't been a banner summer for finding new inventory. Church rummage sales used to be good to me but not this summer. There aren't any library sales to speak of in the summer. I haven't made a serious effort to use Craigslist to find inventory. I live near a major university so you'd think that would be a gold mine. Someday, maybe, I'll find a way to hit up professors - especially soon-to-retire professors - for inventory. There are undoubtedly many clever ways of finding new inventory.

Rather than be clever I think I will go to Castle Arkdale on Wednesday afternoon. With all those used books to choose from surely I will find things to give a much needed boost to my inventory. Even if I don't, the long drive in the country will be a nice break from the computer.

A side note: Elaine Krieg Smith hasn't updated her blog in six months. Does anyone know what's up with her? I e-mailed her some time ago but she didn't reply.

A final side note: I've added freelance writing to the mix and, as an internet marketing project, and also for personal reasons (my oldest daughter was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes on August 15 and my 12-year-old daughter has had diabetes for seven years), I started a blog about juvenile diabetes. If you know anyone affected by juvenile/type 1 diabetes please feel free to forward the link to them.

If you haven't already, you should take a peek at my recent blog entry for BookThink that describes the best eBay listing ever. Or, alternatively, you can look at a PDF of that eBay listing here. It's brilliant. And will make you laugh.

I hope you have a pleasant (and labor-free) Labor Day.

Looking for Something to Read?

2007-08-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

If you're a bookseller you probably are. Most of us booksellers seem to read less after we become booksellers.

A friend sent me an invite to Shelfari so I went ahead and created a profile. Shelfari is where you put your favorite books on your shelf. You can see what your friends are reading and get ideas for your reading list.

The last thing I probably need is another social networking site. I'm on MySpace and Facebook and use Twitter to post things on Facebook. But what the heck, this looks fun and takes very little time. It's also useful for helping you remember your favorite books.

Thirty Day Challenge Update

2007-08-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

Two readers of my last post about the Thirty Day Challenge wrote to me and said they have signed up for the challenge. The three of us are part of a team. Go team! It's not too late to join us.

For those of you who are interested in the challenge but don't have time, you might be interested in my daily summary of each day's teaching over at my MySpace blog page. Or if you are in the challenge but fall behind, feel free to read my summaries. You can also put the feed to my MySpace blog in your feed reader. Just paste in the link after you open the blog page.

If you are a bookseller perhaps you are like me and don't have a website for your books and rely exclusively on eBay, Amazon, etc. for your marketing. That's fine if your inventory is general stock and you don't have a bookselling niche.

There are, however, many niches about books which appeal to you, even if you don't actually sell those books. Perhaps you have a strong interest in certain science fiction authors, for instance. You can create information products and a website about that particular niche. Even an extra $200/month can be a tremendous boost, especially during the slow season for bookselling.

If you aren't a bookseller obviously this opportunity exists for you too. The internet has created almost endless opportunites for extra income. Job security no longer exists and in the bookselling world there are certainly challenges that face us in the future, such as electronic books. Bringing yourself up to speed about internet marketing and Web 2.0 is a good investment in your future. The investment in the Thirty Day Challenge and/or my humble little MySpace blog is free.

Thirty Day Challenge

2007-07-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

You already spend a lot of time in front of the computer, right? You might want to consider signing up for the Thirty Day Challenge and learn how to make your first $10 online without spending a cent. And without selling a used book.

Ed Dale made $5 million a few years ago selling a group of domains. He started the first Thirty Day Challenge two years ago as a way to help others learn internet marketing.

The emphasis this year is on Web 2.0. I've signed up and so has my 14-year-old daughter. A lot of kids participate too. There's a forum and a blog with daily instruction. Listening to Dale's Australian accent is certainly a perk.

The challenge officially starts August 1 so it's the "pre-season" right now. The things I've learned so far about Firefox add-ons have been life-changing.

When you earn part of your living selling used books online it certainly can't hurt to learn more about the Web 2.0 world. Did I mention it's free?

$30 for Shipping or $0 for Shipping?

2007-07-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

Apparently thousands of people opt for the $30 option each month when they purchase Weight Loss Cure by Kevin Trudeau directly from his website.

You can purchase Trudeau's book on Amazon for $13.72 and pay only $3.99 for shipping. You could order all three of his books in hardcover for $49.96 and pay $0 for shipping.

If you prefer you can go to his website and pay $19.95 for the book and $9.95 for shipping. You can get his other two books for "free" as long as you pay the shipping charge of $9.95 per book. The total of the three books is $49.80. The same price as Amazon, basically, although you'd think that, psychologically, people prefer paying a smaller shipping fee. I guess the thought of getting a "free" book is more powerful.

The Amazon sales rank for his book is 24. As a bookseller I know how buyers hate to overpay for shipping. I naively assumed that the majority of his books sell through Amazon or local bookstores.

Wrong.

This month 199,244 books sold through infomercials at $29.95 each for a total of $5,967,357.80 according to the data card for his book. Sixty five percent of the buyers are women. The majority of his sales are through infomercials.

I used to think that Amazon was the big enchilada but today I learned that if you really want to sell a lot of books you need to use infomericals or direct mail. The internet is still a bit player in comparison.

I wonder how many of those 199,244 buyers who were sucked in by the infomercial this month are people who turn around and complain about paying $3.00 for media mail for a book they buy on eBay.

According to Wikipedia Trudeau has spent a fair amount of time in court and paid fines for FTC violations, so there's a downside. I think I'll stick with my humble little online book business.

4 Hour Work Week for Booksellers?

2007-07-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine jetting off to Europe for a few months with no interruption in your bookstore's cash flow? Timothy Ferris's new book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, attempts to make you think about just that.

Call it extreme outsourcing, if you will. Online bookselling would not seem to lend itself to outsourcing. There's Fulfillment by Amazon, of course. This program allows sellers to ship their entire inventory to an Amazon facility and Amazon processes and ships the orders. I have yet to hear of a seller who actually uses this service, however.

If your life depended on your bookstore functioning in your absence for three months what would you do? This is the question Ferriss tells readers to ask themselves whenever they think something is impossible.

Ferriss does an excellent job of describing how to set up a business and then eventually remove yourself from the picture. For the employees out there he gives advice about how to arrange a telecommuting situation with your employer.

Ferriss also gives good practical tips for handling business e-mail and a bookseller would do well to heed them.

He goes on at some length about mini-retirements vs. vacations. A person should have several mini-retirements per year (i.e. spending several weeks in a foreign city learning something new) rather than saving it all for the last 20 years of your life, he says. A nice concept but maybe some of us are content with stability and, say, spending time at a cottage a few hours from home - or even staying home - rather than constantly traveling the world. Not surprisingly, Ferriss is single and 29-years-old.

Even if this book does not appeal to you, treat yourself to the My Outsourced Life essay by A. J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire. Outsourcing to India never sounded so good.

Book Mooch: Training Ground for Future Booksellers

2007-07-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

A month ago First Daughter discovered Book Mooch. This site is a book swap site and is a way to unload of books that have worthless resale value.

Now, suddenly, she is interested in bookselling tasks that have never been of interest before. She has learned that it's a bother to fill out customs forms and learned the hard way that it is much too expensive to swap books with someone overseas.. She knows about the wonders of the Priority Mail flat rate envelope. She even knows how to package a book in b-flute and volunteered to package some of my orders. She designed her own shipping labels and, for cost-effectiveness, has decided to ditch the b-flute in favor of wrapping them in paper bags (they are cheap paperbacks).

Now I know what it's like to be on the other end. I have made trips to the post office and stood in line because she needed to ship books, not because I needed to ship anything. It's tedious. She dragged me to a library bag sale on Saturday - a sale that I would not normally attend. I wandered aimlessly and got bored and was ready to go home much sooner than she was. Just like my kids when I'm at a sale and engrossed in the task of finding inventory.

The amount of book clutter in the house is much reduced now, thanks to her efforts. She's starting a collection of books in a particular niche and Book Mooch packages arrive almost daily.

She doesn't seem ready to take the Amazon plunge yet and look for books with at least a $10 resale value. Someday, maybe, she'll be assimilated. For now I'll enjoy having someone to complain to the next time I have to fill out a customs form. And who knows. Maybe I'll start book mooching too.

Made a Bundle with BuyBundle

2007-06-27T07:52:00.001-07:00

Well, maybe not a bundle, but $45 in one day.

I had completely forgotten that I signed up for BuyBundle last fall as a way of effortlessly uploading my inventory to Google Base (I had tired of uploading it myself because it took much too long). BuyBundle takes your Amazon listings and lists them on Google Base for you. If someone does a Google search for your book they have the option of buying it directly from you through Google Base and not bothering with Amazon.

BuyBundle is a free service and there is a ten percent commission on sales, plus the PayPal fees. You don't have to do updates after the initial upload because it automatically updates your listings when you update them in Amazon.

Not surprisingly, Amazon announced a couple of months ago that Amazon Stores inventory could no longer be listed on Google Base. Google Base and BuyBundle fell off my radar screen as a result. I hadn't ever received a Google Base order anyway.

But yesterday I received two BuyBundle orders. The buyers payed with PayPal. I deleted the PayPal receipts, figuring they were spam because the e-mails said "BuyBundle" order and I didn't remember what BuyBundle was. Then I saw the e-mails from BuyBundle and it eventually dawned on me that these were legit orders.

If you're looking for more exposure for your inventory it couldn't hurt to consider listing your books on Google Base through BuyBundle.

Harlan Coben

2007-06-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

This might turn out to be one of those book series to read and to sell.

I haven't read Harlan Coben's books yet but after reading the recent Atlantic article about him I intend to read one because I enjoy the occasional mystery novel.

I also read the article from a "what's in this for me as a bookseller" perspective. Coben is a bestselling author but I hadn't heard of him before, which means he isn't hypercommon. I did some research on eBay and was happy to discover that lots that contain all eight of the books that feature detective Myron Bolitar fetch almost $5 per book for mass market paperbacks.

Not surprisingly, hardcover editions of his first book, Play Dead, fetch three figures. Any of his hardcovers are worth running through ScoutPal. I don't know yet how plentiful his books are at sales and thrifts.

The article is also interesting from a writing and marketing perspective. He understands that writing is a business and is successful because he brands himself and has a niche. If you have a wish to be published someday his story might be of interest to you. I admit, though, that I did have to work hard to suppress the urge to covet his seven figure advances and large Victorian home. Bookselling doesn't tend to be as lucrative. Alas.

There's a first time for everyone

2007-05-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget that buying used books online isn't the norm for everyone. This recent feedback comment by an Amazon customer reminded me of this:

"I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly my book got to me. I was wary at first to buy from an outside seller, but I was proven very wrong!"

Anxiety makes a lot of buyers hesitate. And when they hesitate they tend to ask questions. Ebay sellers in particular sometimes complain about this tendency. Someone on a forum said that there is one eBay seller who blocks buyers from bidding if they've asked a question.

You wouldn't ignore a customer if she was standing in front of your cash register and asking a question; you should speak to your potential online customers with the same courtesy. I admit that the questions are tedious. They'll ask for a photo of a $10.00 book. They'll ask you to double check and make sure the book has no marks. They'll want to know the copyright date.

Anxiety is at the root of most buyer questions and all they need is reassurance that you, the seller, are a real person who is attentive to their concerns. More than a few times I've received emails from buyers whotold me that they've had a bad experience with a previous seller and they just wanted to make sure they could trust me.

The next order you receive could be your customer's first online used book purchase ever. Make it a pleasant one.

Top Five Reasons Why Church Sales Are Better Than Library Sales

2007-05-21T10:27:00.001-07:00

Every Thursday morning I check the classifieds and hope a church sale will be there. I can hardly be bothered with garage sales anymore. Not even garage sales by retired school teachers. I've been burned too many times. But church sales? I'm there. They tend to be better than library sales too. Here's why:

1. The incidentals. When you go to a church sale you can also replenish your stock of Coca Cola glasses, tacky plastic floral 1960's plates, cereal bowls and Tupperware. Throughout the winter these items tend to break or melt when placed inadvertently on a hot burner so the summer church sales are my chance to stock up again. We are probably the only family with a mug shortage because of all the breakage and, trust me, church sales are also an excellent source of mugs. Because of the incidentals my children happily come along when I go to church sales. Even if I walk away with no books I've spent a nice time with the children as they happily pick out junky toys that cost no more than couch change.

2. The books. People give it up for their church. They'll bring in their grown son's complete collection of science fiction paperbacks that has been sitting in their basement for twenty years. Or they'll finally decide to let go of the 100+ International Collectors Library books with the gold gilt edges that they never read anyway and won't fit in their new assisted living facility. Maybe they even part with a lifetime's collection of 1940's and 1950's vintage mystery paperbacks. Pastors and scholarly folks will donate theological books. I've had many of my best finds at church sales.

3. The people. The volunteers are always friendly and they often serve snacks and coffee.

4. The lack of people. Book people, that is. I almost always have the books to myself and don't have to deal with the pressure of other book dealers hovering nearby. There was a church sale in my neighborhood this past weekend. I showed up on Saturday, not realizing it started on Friday. I thought the books would be picked over, but no. There was a box of 1949 Childcraft books, all 14 volumes, and a few antique Mrs. E. M. Holmes books and some other things.

I went to a church sale the weekend before last and there were four high school yearbooks (2001-2004). I know you are always supposed to pick up yearbooks and park them in your eBay store at $40 a pop but I didn't have the heart to do so in this instance. Why did this girl ditch her yearbooks already? Is she unhappy? Is she deceased? I did not wish to dwell on these things so I refrained from purchasing them.

5. The prices. Ten cents. A quarter. Fifty cents at the most. Sometimes there are no prices at all and the church accepts donations instead. Of course I always end up paying more that way but at least I feel good about it.

Can a library sale top any of these things? I think not.

MySpace Marketing

2007-05-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night the BookThinker newsletter will announce the new BookThink MySpace page. Yours truly is in charge of this page.

What does MySpace possibly have to do with bookselling? Look at the blog entries over there and find out. Yes, I'm in charge of the blog over there too.

And, yes, I have my own personal MySpace page. I started my page a year or so ago to network with other online booksellers. Sometimes it gets a little lonely, sitting at the computer all by myself, listing books. It's nice to find other booksellers with whom to connect and exchange tips. It's kind of like having co-workers but without actually having to share cubicle space with them. And there's no boss to complain about.

Feel free to send me a friend invitation if you have a MySpace account.

Ahhhh, AAUW

2007-05-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

The annual AAUW (American Association of University Women) sale was on May 5. For me, this is the beginning of spring in the bookselling world here in Wisconsin. For the next six months there will be garage sales, church sales, and library sales to go to most every Saturday morning.

AAUW sales are always very pleasant. As I stood in line I thought about the recent BookThink forum exchange in which a bookseller revealed that he had been physically threatened by another bookseller at a library sale. The sale volunteers had to intervene and they came within a mere edge of calling the police.

Nothing close to this has ever happened to me at a sale. As I entered the AAUW sale another bookseller held the door open for me, letting me enter ahead of him, even though he had arrived before I did. This is far more typical of the behavior of other booksellers in my area.

I was under a time constraint and I had to work the sale quickly but the pickings appeared to be slim this year. I had a modest haul but left content because the experience was pleasant. The volunteers admired my Trader Joe's reusable grocery bag and admired the books I purchased. The aisles were hard to navigate but people were always kind enough to move out of my way. It felt good to be at the beginning of another spring bookselling season.

If there are AAUW sales in your area you should attend them. I travel to a couple of other AAUW sales throughout the year and they are always worth the effort.

Speaking of business cards

2007-05-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Here are some very clever business cards.

One of them has this title: "Director of Possibilities." I like that.

Having fun with clip art

2007-05-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

Do you have an eBay store or a website? If so, you're probably interested in driving traffic to it. One simple and effective marketing tool is business cards. You should include one with each order.

If you are a Powell's Books then a plain-Jane black on white thermographed business card will be more than adequate. The rest of us should put some effort into creating something that isn't boring. There's nothing like a little clip art to get the creative juices flowing (I'm, um, not a computer graphics artist and apologize for the excess white space below):

And the back:

If the cards are printed on premium 15pt. card stock with glossy U/V coating they will stand out from 99 percent of the cards out there. OvernightPrints.com is an excellent source and the prices are reasonable.

If you don't have a website or eBay store and only list on fixed price venues such as Amazon then business cards aren't necessary. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun with clip art. Sending a postcard like this to a few neighborhoods in your community might result in some new inventory.

The front:

And the back:

This postcard isn't professionally designed, ahem, but something like it could possibly stand a chance of being affixed to a refrigerator or kept in the pile of bills rather than thrown directly into the trash.

I'll discuss more marketing techniques in the future such as Myspace. Eek, did I just say Myspace? I did. You'll see why, soon.

A library sailing we will go. Or maybe not.

2007-04-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's time to start thinking beyond library sales.

One reads more and more about the restrictions library sales are placing on dealers. No scanning (which is fine with me, frankly). Higher prices. Cherry picking by volunteers.

These things aren't happening much in my area yet but most of the time now I view library sales simply as sources of books to sell as group lots. That is, books that are worthless individually (and passed over by the scan monsters) but do OK if grouped together as a collection and sold on eBay as a group lot. It tends to be more profitable for me than looking for the needle in the haystack. This is fine but I find myself pondering the alternatives to library sales.

There are the more obvious options like Craigslist, classified ads, letting everyone you know that you sell books and buy inventory. The acquisition of a personal collection of books can keep one happily occupied - and away from library sales - for months. Church sales and AAUW sales tend to be consistently good.

But what about less obvious alternatives? I've never heard of anyone doing this but for some time I've considered sending direct mail postcards to 100 homes in my community. I haven't run the numbers but the postage would cost around $20.00. I'd design and print the postcards myself. There's the cost of the mailing list, which might be around $20.00.

Have you considered or tried any unusual ways of acquiring inventory?

Top 70,000 Amazon Reviewer

2007-04-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

I've lamented before that since becoming a bookseller I go through long stretches of not reading books. From what I hear this is a common problem among booksellers. It's sort of ironic, is it not? To be surrounded by books and not read them?

I think I have found a solution to this problem. I've started writing Amazon reviews (you can take a look at them here). Writing a review helps me remember what I've read and helps me pay better attention as I'm reading. Reviewers are ranked by the number of helpful votes they receive. I have 70 helpful votes so far and a rank of 69,103. Receiving helpful votes is motivating. Somebody is actually reading my review! I hope to add freelance copywriting to the mix someday, in addition to the bookselling, and the Amazon reviews help transform my portfauxlio into a portfolio, which is another motivator.

At first I did not realize that there could be any other perks involved in writing reviews. Then today I read this Forbes article about Top Ten Reviewer Donald Mitchell:

Reviewing has its perks. "People are always inviting me to go on trips with them," he says. "If I have reviewed a travel book, they'll invite me to go to that place with them." He gets frequent dinner offers (which he accepts "occasionally"), and after mentioning in a review that he had never played on the Yale golf course, a reader invited him to play there. He accepted.
Writers regularly court Mitchell. He receives up to 40 books a day and hears directly from the author "80% of the time." He says that Jamie Lee Curtis sends him notes when he reviews her children's books, and Jack Canfield--of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame--contacts him before releasing a new book. After he reviewed Spencer Johnson's book Who Moved My Cheese?, Mitchell says, Johnson called him to discuss his criticism and incorporated his suggestions in later editions.

Mitchell has earned $20,000 writing Amazon reviews and has donated it all to Habitat for Humanity. Whoa, one can make money writing reviews? He used to charge $25 for a review of a book he wouldn't normally read; now he charges $600. Apparently the Top Ten Reviewer designation carries some weight. The #1 Reviewer is speed reader Harriet Klausner who seems to attract a lot of criticism on the Amazon review forum. Not surprising, I suppose.

I don't suppose I'll get any offers to play golf for free at Yale but, if nothing else, writing reviews will serve as another distraction from the chore of listing books.

For the newbies out there

2007-04-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me for advice for someone thinking of becoming an online bookseller. After reading my e-mail she said I should post it as a blog entry. I also included some things I recently wrote to a new reader. Here goes:

First, I would direct her attention to my blog, which has all the answers about online bookselling . There are categories in the sidebar like "bookselling tips."

Next, I would tell her to purchase Steve Weber's book about online bookselling called The Home-Based Bookstore.

Third, I would tell her to go to BookThink and read back issues of the newsletter and sign up for the free weekly e-newsletter. There's also a forum, where everyone is exceedingly helpful and polite. The forum also has a section for newbies. The bookselling community is full over overwhelmingly kind and helpful and smart people.

Once she's done some reading then the very best thing to do is go to library sales and grab any book she thinks might be saleable. Book Sale Finder lists all the book sales in the area every week. The more books you handle the more quickly you learn what's saleable and what's junk.

Now, where to list these books? In the beginning it is easier to list on Amazon and not deal much with eBay, until you get more experience, because eBay is time consuming. You can probably list 20 books or more on Amazon in the time it takes to list one book on eBay. Amazon has so much traffic and getting a lot of easy sales early in your bookselling career is encouraging.

Just because you (probably) won't list many books on eBay in the beginning doesn't mean you should avoid it. You should go there everyday and do research. This is as valuable as physically handling the books you find at sales. Look at the completed auctions in a particular book category. Study the auctions that sold for $30 or more. Look very very closely at the books that sold for $30+ that you would've passed on by at a book sale, not thinking they'd be worth anything. This is the best education of all. You will eventually stumble across the same eBay IDs over and over again, and you should study the listings of those sellers.

Now, go forth and sell.

Plugging Steve's Book

2007-04-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

If you are an online bookseller then you probably already know Steve Weber. He's the author of The Home-Based Bookstore. His new book is about online marketing for authors. If you are an author, or want to be an author, this book is essential reading.

I'm not an author but the book interested me anyway because his tips about blogging, Myspace and websites apply to anyone marketing anything. I think one of the reasons Steve's bookselling book has been successful is because he has a a blog that supports it and allows him to interact with readers. He's extremely accessible. It's tools like this that allow authors to keep their book before their potential audience. He says that publishers aren't good about promoting books; it falls on the author to do that and the author shouldn't assume the publisher will do it all.

This book will also give you a much deeper understanding of Amazon and the importance of sales ranks, reviews and other techniques Amazon uses to boost sales. Steve tells the story of a novelist who used Myspace to create buzz for his book, which helped get his book published. So using these techniques before your book is even published is helpful too. I gave my copy of the book to a friend because her husband has recently published a book; they've already started implementing many of Steve's suggestions. This stuff works.

Happy Spring

2007-03-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today's balmy 70+ degree weather motivated First Daughter to make a new banner for the blog. Peonies are perhaps my favorite spring flower. She intends to post more peony graphics on her computer graphics blog.

If you have a blog and would like a really, really inexpensive banner, let us know. She'd be happy to make one.

Using bookselling skills to find healthy reads

2007-03-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

There is no shortage of health and diet books at library sales. Most aren't worth selling, of course. I like reading these kind of books, however, and use bookselling skills to find the worthwhile books.

I found out about The Doctor's Heart Cure by Al Sears from a newsletter. It caught my attention because it's actually written by a physician. Heart disease is the number one killer of women so I was interested in reading more about heart disease prevention. Before buying the book I first checked the Amazon sales rank and resale value. It was published four years ago and has a sales rank of 10,749. Pretty impressive. The resale value is $10.00 for a $16.00 paperback. Not bad. It has held its value and is still a strong seller so the content is probably decent, I concluded. The customer reviews were favorable, too.

Like ~~Dr. Fatkins~~ Dr. Atkins, he emphasizes protein. He says that the animal protein must come from grass-fed beef and dairy, however. The strength of this book is that he describes in detail how grass-fed beef has nutrients and enzymes like CoQ10 that help with heart disease prevention; corn fed beef lacks these important nutrients. He also describes an interval training exercise regime that only takes 15-20 minutes and is better for your heart than long punishing workouts. But of course I had no difficulty embracing that idea. (By the way, he met Dr. Atkins a few weeks before his fatal fall on the ice and said he wasn't very overweight. It was the steroids that he was given after his accident that puffed him up.)

Protein Power Lifeplan is also written by a physician and it also emphasizes protein and interval exercising. Good. More affirmation for short workout sessions. Resale value of $3.45 for an $8.99 paperback and a sales rank of 46,014. Not bad for a book published six years ago.

The authors say that most heart attacks occur during sudden bursts of activity, such as lifting a heavy box or shoveling snow. Sudden bursts of activity are not uncommon in our daily life. Unless you are Audrey Hepburn being chased by Cary Grant in the movie Charade, your daily life isn't likely to ever require long stretches of strenuous activity. This is why marathon runners get heart attacks. Their hearts are efficient for endurance exercise but their hearts aren't any stronger than a sedentary person's for handling those sudden bursts. The best part of the book is the protein chart. It tells you which foods, or combination of foods, will give you 20 grams, 27 grams, 34 grams, 40 grams, and 46 grams of protein.

Body for Life by Bill Phillips was published in 1999 and continues to sell, sell, sell. Even though there are over 400 used copies for sale, a used copy with a dust jacket will fetch $4-5 and sell before the end of the day because the sales rank is 345, even after all these years.

Why? The photos are the books greatest asset, perhaps. There are before and after photos. And photos of the exercises. He, too, gives specific details of interval training in short sessions. Interval training means that you vary the pace of your workout. For the first 2-3 minutes you walk a moderate pace. Then you sprint or walk hard at an incline or some other extreme exercise for up to a minute. And so on. The point is for your heart rate to go up and down (within a range of 120-180) for the duration of the exercise, thereby strengthening your heart so it can handle those short bursts of exercise that our daily life sometimes requires. He also has a chart for simple meals but I like the Protein Power chart the best.

Thanks to these books I've been doing interval training since January. I can only sprint for 30 seconds at a time and I do five sprints during an 18 minute workout (if you want 30 seconds to feel like a really, really, really long time then you should sprint). I hope to gradually progress to one minute sprints. It's not like I'm ever going to be chased by Cary Grant so what the heck.

But sometimes e-mails are like this. Alas.

2007-03-02T05:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish e-mail programs had a "courtesy word" check in addition to spell check. That is, it would scan for courtesy words such as "please," "thank you," "appreciate," "sorry," "have a good day," and prompt the user to use at least one if there were no courtesy words found in the e-mail.

On Wednesday I had an unpleasant e-mail exchange with a website owner. I've played Scrabble at a certain site with a friend for several years. In recent weeks our games would sometimes disappear before they were finished. I sent a polite inquiry to the owner of the site. He told me that made up words "debases my intelligence" and "abuses my game."

Well. Yes, sometimes we use made up words because it's a fun and creative thing to do. I did not appreciate his tone so I wrote back and gave him a mini lesson about how to communicate with customers. He completely ignored my lesson and used the phrase "heaps of rubbish" in regards to made up words and once again informed me that I had been "abusing" his site. There wasn't a single courtesy word in his three e-mails.

How hard would it have been for him to instead write: "I can appreciate how made up words add to your fun but I kindly ask that you refrain from doing so as it taxes the site's resources. As always, I appreciate your patronage. Thank you and have a good day."

It's easy to forget that our customers are, well, customers, as this man did. Sometimes we view them as irritants instead of as people who help pay the bills. When I receive an e-mail from a potential customer asking me a question about a book that requires that I actually get up from the computer and walk to the shelves to retrieve the book I sigh. Work! Ugh! Or when a customer orders a book and sends it back because he changes his mind and I have to spend several minutes crediting his account, reshelving it, relisting it, etc. I grumble inside. But I do take care to make sure my e-mails never ever reflect this irritation.

It's a two way street. Buyers need to use courtesy words too. The worse customer e-mail I received was from someone who purchased a Miles Davis jazz CD from me on Half.com. This CD was an earlier pressing, from the 1980's, and not the recent digitally remixed version. I made this very clear in my description. His e-mail was laden with typos and abbreviations and went something like this: "why U send me this piece of crap CD from 1987. U suck." Talk about "heap of rubbish" and "debases my intelligence." This e-mail certainly scored on both of those counts.

In a situation like this I intentionally use more courtesy words than I normally would, to stifle my frustration. I immediately refunded his money and told him he need not bother returning the CD. "Obviously you are a jazz aficionado," I said. He wrote back and this time there was some semblance of grammar. I think he even used the courtesy word "thanks." Eventually he even gave me positive feedback.

Customer e-mails have the power to literally make or break a person's day. Put some thought into them. Read Strunk & White's The Elements of Style if writing and grammar isn't your forte. (When I find that book at sales I always pick it up so that we have several copies readily on hand at home.) Above all, please use courtesy words, as they are so powerful they can even cover over a multitude of typos and grammar mistakes. Thank you and I hope you have a good day.

If only all e-mails were like this

2007-02-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a customer was kind enough to send me the following e-mail:

Dear Ms. Ashland:

I received the book, "A Castle and Sixpence", on Saturday, Feb. 24. It came just one day before my sister's birthday. It is everything I hoped it would be. Thank you for a beautiful book.

My sister and I read this story when we were small, and reading it now takes us back to our childhood years.

Thank you again.

Sincerely,

[name withheld]

P.S.: We read this story in an album called "Bounty Book for Girls". If you should ever get a hold of that album with this story in it, please let me know. I would very much like to buy it. The album had many illustrated British stories in it, and it was published probably around the early 1960s.

An e-mail like this says a lot about a person, doesn't it? I wish I would've read that book before selling it. If any sellers out there have Bounty Book for Girls in stock hit the e-mail button in my sidebar and let me know. It sounds like a sure sale.

Of blizzards and Stepahnie Plum

2007-02-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

So there was a blizzard last weekend. This gave me extra time that I could have used to list books on eBay. I dutifully took the photos and set then set the camera aside because one must pace oneself. To take photos and immediately go to the computer and upload them and create listings would feel too much like work. A day later I picked up the camera but the battery cover was missing and the camera is inoperable. Oops. I tried to blame the children but could not; I was the last one who touched the camera (although I did manage to silently blame my husband, figuring he must have thrown it in the trash while doing clean up). Happily I found a battery cover for it on eBay.

This gave me more extra time than I anticipated so I picked up a copy of One for the Money by Janet Evanovich and began reading. I realize I'm rather late to the game because there are already twelve books in the Stephanie Plum series.

From a bookselling perspective, her books are like Sue Grafton's. A complete set of paperbacks will sell as a lot for about $2 per book. The books are plentiful at sales; just reach out and grab. First edition hardcovers can be worth something if you know how to spot them.

The content of the books is similar to Sue Grafton's too. Both feature a happily single young woman without much of a personal life (or money) who spends her days pursuing criminals. Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter who lives in New Jersey and, as a result, the book was grittier than the Kinsey Millhone books I remember reading several years ago. The books are funnier too. Is it possible to read the scene where her grandmother accidentally shoots the chicken on the dinner table and not laugh out loud? Perhaps not.

Each time I have a book lot I'll probably let myself indulge myself in a few more Stephanie Plum adventures. Let myself get lost in the lot for a day or two before listing it.

If only all library sales were this well organized

2007-02-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

After a few weeks of cold and snow, which followed nearly two weeks of illness, I decided it was time to leave the house. And the city. And the state, even. I decided to go to the Palatine, Illinois library sale with First and Second Daughters last Friday.

Thanks to Book Sale Finder I knew that there would be 15,000 books, all of them donated, so I figured it might be worth it. Palatine is two hours away and not exactly a fantasy February travel destination so we decided to whoop it up and stay spend the night at a hotel after the sale. I was confident that the books that we would find would more than cover the cost of the trip, which, of course, wasn't purely for business. Even if the sale had been full of Reader's Digest books and microwave cookbooks it would have been worth it because Third and Fourth daughters were not with me, they stayed home with my husband. Aahhh.

The library has a parking garage and an entire room full of DVDs. After wandering around a little bit in awe we got into the line, which was already 30-40 people deep. I forgot our bags in the car and therefore probably didn't look at all like a dealer. Like I always do, I looked at the other people in line to see if I could tell who the dealers were. Even if all of them were dealers, if you divide 15,000 by 30 there should still be plenty of books for everyone.

After a five minute wait we entered the sale. I entered the children's area first. There were no dealers in that room, which is often the case when I attend a library sale. That's fine. More books for me that way. Plus all the children's books were priced at 25 cents, which is usually the case at sales. I plucked a few gems from that room, including the Christmas Book published by Whitman in the 1950's. It's worth $40.00 and I've sold it before.

I headed into main room but it didn't feel crowded. I noticed about six other dealers there, all with scanners on their smartphones, and First Daughter was jealous. I only used ScoutPal once (see, who needs scanners, I told her) and scooped up several items for book lots on eBay, such as Wildlife Fact Files and Sue Grafton paperbacks.

My muscles didn't get the usual workout because there were tables where one could place one's boxes of books. This enabled me to relax more because I didn't have to worry about people rummaging through my boxes, thinking my books were fair game. A volunteer would add up the books and attach a paper with the final cost. I didn't even have to go stand in line to pay. I just handed the money to a volunteer and, to my surprise, she put the boxes on a cart and wheeled them to the door. She showed me where to pull up my van and after I pulled up an elderly gentleman wheeled the cart to the van and insisted on loading the books for me. Book Sale Finder said this was a well organized sale but never did I expect this royal treatment. I can't count the number of times that I've carried partially ripped bags of books and overflowing boxes to the curb, hoping no one would tamper with them while I ran off to get the van.

Kudos to the Friends of Palatine volunteers. If you're near Palatine it's a sale worth attending. When it's February and it's cold and there aren't a lot of orders it's nice to give the inventory a boost and also give the morale a little boost by letting yourself be treated so kindly by these volunteers

Google Off Base?

2007-02-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

I've decided I've had it with Google Base. Amazon can rest easy because I doubt Google seriously wants to make a dent in the bookselling market because it takes too dang long to upload books to Google Base.

The only time I was successful in uploading my entire inventory to Google Base it took 15 hours. During those 15 hours I could have written down each title by hand and sent the list by carrier pigeon to the Google headquarters. I could have uploaded the inventory 10,800 times to Amazon and the other venues (it takes five seconds to do uploads to those sites). My computer has a wireless connection so, occasionally, the connection breaks for a few seconds, thus I'm unable to let the computer run for the 15 hours necessary to do the upload because it freezes at some point. Grrr.

Yesterday I thought I outsmarted Google Base by uploading the inventory to BuyBundle. Now, no one is going to buy a bundle of books from me on Buybundle. The whole point in listing books with Buybundle is that they list the inventory on Google Base for you. It took mere seconds to do the upload. Groovy. Except only half of my inventory appears on BuyBundle. Huh? So, heck with Google Base. I've heard many booksellers squawk with glee over Google Base because they think it increases sales. But surely Amazon and eBay listings can appear on Google without benefit of Google Base?

While I'm ranting I might as well wonder if anyone out there has ever successfully sold a book to an international customer through Choosebooks? Every time I receive an international order it says that the buyer wants to pay on account. I'm an American and I don't play that game. Show me the money and I'll show you the book. I send an e-mail requesting PayPal payment but never ever receive a response. A waste of time.

IOn a more upbeat note, f you, like me, need a break from uploads, or the cold weather, you might enjoy this series of mysteries, based on the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy characters from Jane Austen. Sadly, there are only three books in the series so far, but they are giving me reason to endure the cold and adding a fun element to my evenings, and I'm grateful.

Viral Plague

2007-02-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

My daughters and I were afflicted with the viral plague for oh so many days, thus the light posting around here. Thanks to the laptop I was able to keep an eye on things while I was bed-ridden.

Auctions that I listed before the plague sold, including a $300 set of books. That was encouraging. The night all the books sold it seemed unthinkable to me that I once had the energy and ability to list books. I looked at the listings in disbelief. "I made those? I took photos? I wrote descriptions? How?" Bookselling seemed like a distant memory and I wondered if I'd have the strength to do it again someday.

While I was bed-ridden eBay announced its fourth quarter earnings and it looks like overall eBay had a great year: $6 billion in revenue, up 31 percent. I guess those fee increases didn't hurt them. Maybe it's time to buy some eBay stock. Amazon had $10.7 billion in revenue last year and forecasts $13 billion in revenue this year. Amazon and eBay are here to stay. Job security for us, I guess.

Happily, many of the eBay store items that have had watchers for many weeks and months have been selling. I haven't created any new listings for at least a couple of weeks and when you don't have new listings sales are supposed to slump. The book business has been taking care of us even though I haven't been able to mind the store. I also appreciate how, thanks to the internet, a customer will buy a $300 set of books from you even though you are bed-ridden and look miserable and have almost no strength to package the books.

Better Than Black Friday

2007-01-17T09:05:00.000-08:00

Our MLK day sales exceeded Black Friday sales, much to my surprise. It looked like some students were making some last minute orders before classes resume. I hope you enjoyed good sales on Monday, too, and have had a strong January overall.

Did you see this Forbes article about the ten most expensive books in 2006 (thanks to the Bookselling Online Blog for the link)? It looks like atlases, maps and books of photography are hot niches. Thanks to computers, visual content is as important as literary content these days.

If I'm good I'll finally get around to creating some eBay listings this week. It's been a month since I've listed anything on eBay; I need to pick up the pace. It's like exercise; once you get out of the habit it's hard to get back into the rhythm. I have a $300 set of books to list so you'd think that would motivate me.

Many thanks to BookFinder.com Journal for linking to me yesterday. I read that blog faithfully and, of course, BookFinder.com is an indispensable tool that I use daily.

OK, off to list some books on eBay. Yes, really, I am.

Customer Service: It's About Removing Obstacles

2007-01-15T13:34:00.000-08:00

Because every business is, ultimately, a Customer Service business, regardless of the product or service that is sold, I enjoy reading books written by entrepreneurs because there's a chance I'll learn something new about Customer Service. You Call the Shots by 22-year-old Cameron Johnson fits the bill.

Johnson started 12 online businesses - each one lasting a year or so - before age 21. That alone is interesting and any teen who is remotely interested in business or frustrated with traditional schooling should read his story. It's a painless way to learn about venture capital, public speaking, public relations, surrounding yourself with mentors and finding business ideas that don't require start up money. The appendix is loaded with helpful resources as well as a link to his website where there are yet more resources.

For me, the most interesting part of the book was the chapter about his work experience at his father's Ford dealership, Magic City Ford, in Virginia . The dealership has been in his family for four generations. His favorite part of high school was his part-time job as the internet sales person at the dealership, even though he was making a ton of money from his online businesses. When he was 19-years-old the General Manager promoted him to General Sales Manager, leap frogging him over adults who had worked there longer than he was alive. Yes, he was that good. In 2004 their sales were double what they were the year before even though most other dealers in the nation had reduced sales that year.

How did he do it? He was innovative. He stopped advertising in the newspaper and used that $200K per year to create bonuses and incentives for the sales force. Most of all, he was successful because of superior customer service. "One of the most important things I've learned about selling -- no matter what you're selling, whether it's a Ford Explorer, a start-up to a VC firm, or tomatoes to your neighbor -- is something my father taught me: what you're really doing is helping people remove all their obstacles." So, if a customer said he couldn't make a decision until he talked to his wife, Johnson would offer to drive the car to her right then so she could decide. If a customer said he really wanted the car but wished it had a six-disc CD changer, Johnson would offer to install one for free. If a customer didn't want to put $500 down Johnson offered to make the down payment for him.

This applies to online bookselling, too, of course. It's likely that a buyer isn't looking at your eBay or Amazon listing because he is idly browsing. He wants to buy the book. Have you placed any obstacles in his way? I see obstacles all the time when I'm a buyer. Inflated shipping charges (oh how I hate that). "Buyer must pay in three days" or other threatening lingo. Unfair prices.

Flexibility sweeps away a lot of obstacles (do you accept multiple forms of payment and offer expedited and international shipping?). Well-written descriptions also alleviate buyer anxiety. If a seller moves past your listing it is, we hope, for reasons beyond your control.

In a few years I'll have to purchase a new mini van and will now have high expectations from the sales person. If I am unsatisfied locally, who knows, maybe I'll find myself buying online from Magic City Ford.

Prison Microwave Cookbooks?

2007-01-13T09:58:00.000-08:00

Is this a new niche market?

I periodically look at the search terms people use to find my blog. "Prison microwave cookbooks" was a recent search phrase. Huh? Microwave cookbooks are among the most worthless books out there and are an inside joke among online booksellers. Are these books in demand at prisons? Should we start shipping all those worthless microwave cookbooks to the nearest prison and get them out of circulation?

I typed that phrase in Google and was amused to discover several articles about Martha Stewart. This is what she learned in prison, according to a CNN article: "I learned a lot about patience. I also learned how to microwave cook. You could actually make creme caramel."

Here's a quote from a BBC article: "Ms Stewart is said to have cooked up meals in the prison microwave, and to have gathered dandelions and wild greens from prison grounds as ingredients." This article also says, "There is also scope for prison-related cookbooks, with advice on eating on a budget."

Will Martha publish a microwave cookbook? Maybe it will increase demand for other microwave cookbooks, forcing BookThink to have to publish a 50/50 list for the hottest selling out-of-print microwave cookbooks. If anyone can convince more than a few people that a microwave can be used for more than reheating leftovers and making popcorn I suppose Martha can. Creme caramel with dandelions, anyone?

Our Fees at Work

2007-01-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

It's always interesting to find out what eBay does with our fees. Rumor has it that eBay will soon spend $300 million to purchase StubHub, a website where fans buy and sell tickets to concerts and sporting events.

And, say, what has happened since eBay dropped $1 billion (!) on Skype? Is that purchase paying off? How many sellers use voice software in their auctions anyway? I think talking auctions are annoying in the extreme. Has Skype brought anything to the table other than the omnipresent Skype ads on eBay's home page? According to BloggingStocks shareholders are still miffed that eBay purchased Skype.

Well, if I'm able to someday purchase U2 tickets as a result of this StubHub thing, maybe it'll be worth it.

The new iPhone: Small Really is Beautiful

2007-01-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

I have looked at these photos of the new iPhone. A lot. To borrow the language of my teenager: "Me wanty."

I have only owned a smartphone for four months and it took me at least that many months to work up the courage to buy it. I used to blink uncomprehendingly when I would hear that the cell phone is the car on the information highway. But now I understand. Now I blink uncomprehendingly if I'm sitting at the play place at the mall and my smartphone battery is low and I can't go to Google Reader.

I justified the purchase of my smartphone (a Motorola RAZR) by saying I needed it so I could use ScoutPal while book scouting and that's true. ScoutPal has been invaluable. I certainly do not need to upgrade to an iPhone to continue to use ScoutPal, however, so I would need a different excuse if I were to purchase an iPhone. I haven't purchased an iPod yet and perhaps that procrastination has paid off. With the iPhone I'd have the iPod, camera, movie player and internet browser in one tiny device with no stylus, no keyboard. Such efficiency.

Small really can be beautiful.

Sick of fee increases? Maybe this will cheer you up.

2007-01-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, Bill Cobb announced yet another eBay fee increase today. But the House Small Business Committee had their first session of the year today and Chairwoman Nydia M. Velazquez said the goals of H.R. 46 and H.R. 41 are to reduce the paperwork for home businesses and provide more flexibility in filing taxes. "The bottom line here is that there is a great deal of work to be done to provide much-needed relief to entrepreneurs, and open doors to opportunities that will enable small businesses to move forward as the nation's main job creators."

So it would appear that she's on our side, anyway.

Ten Things I Love About Online Bookselling That Start With "L"

2007-01-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

I'm adapting this meme to bookselling. I drew the letter "L" from a Scrabble bag so here goes:

Listing books. When I sit down to this task I don't generally feel euphoric, unless I've just arrived home from a sale and am excited about the books. Once I've entered a few books and have established a rhythm I enjoy it. It makes for a nice late night activity.
Library sales. Not all sales are equal but I enjoy suiting up and going to them and seeing the other dealers.
Learning. There is always something new to learn in this trade and I visit the links on the sidebar regularly, as well as the BookThink forum and I subscribe to BookThink newsletters. This year I want to learn more about buying inventory online and spend a little time each day at this task.

Lifting books. It's great exercise. If I've gone more than a few days without lifting a box or bag of books I know it means I haven't devoted enough time to culling or adding to the inventory.

Loading books. When I'm loading books into the van it means I'm going to the Post Office, which I enjoy, because I get to chat with my favorite PO clerk and exchange important information with her, such as my recent discovery that DKNY Soho jeans are the most comfortable jeans ever, or it means I'm leaving a sale or thrift shop with the day's haul.

Lucre. The reason I'm doing this, after all.

Loneness. Not having to rub shoulders with co-workers or a boss each day is a bonus. I like the solitude of it.

Looking for books. I can't help myself, I scan bookshelves everywhere I go, even the grocery store. You just never know where the next gem will be.

Liberty. I can work a little, rest a little, am not confined to a set schedule. This is supposedly how our ancestors worked, according to a recent study by Rockefeller University: "Throughout much of the hunter-gatherer epoch they worked about 25 hours a week...our ancestors worked till the job was done, and then they stopped and rested. Later on, when they needed to acquire/achieve something else, they worked again. This is becoming increasingly more possible with today's technology." I guess online bookselling is a modern day version of hunting and gathering.

Laptop. My most indispensable bookselling tool. It surpasses even the Motorola RAZR and DKNY jeans in terms of indispensability.

Booksmelling

2006-12-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

Vintage paperbacks have a smell that is mellow and satisfying. Sales are not brisk this week so I had time yesterday to stop wrestling with b-flute and cull our fiction section. Third Daughter saw me sniff each vintage paperback and was intrigued and wanted a whiff. She, too, thinks the scent is pleasing and says it is reminiscent of an "old lady who sells books."

I have a couple dozen vintage paperbacks that I've culled from the inventory and think I'll list them on eBay tonight as a lot. A tip: for group lots of vintage paperbacks, when you add the words "cover art" to the eBay title along with "1950's, 1940's", and then list the names of the cover artists in the description, it seems to help drive more traffic to the listing. A week from now, when the auction ends, it will be three days after Christmas. People will probably have some time to putz around on eBay next week so I think I'll list a couple more lots. I have enough Landmark hardcovers to sell as a lot and also enough Modern Library books. Whenever I can pick up a Sue Grafton paperback for fifty cents or less I do and throw it in a box until I have a complete set. When sold as a lot her books will fetch around $2.00 each. I don't think I have enough Graftons for a lot so I'll hold off on that tonight.

I stopped by a thrift store today and looked for the books on the top ten list of out of print books compiled by the Bookfinder Journal. I didn't find any, of course, but it helped to cement the titles in my mind. The shelves were fairly well picked over. This isn't the week for shipping books or acquiring new books, apparently. That's OK. I'll create those eBay listings tonight and tomorrow I'll get to work on culling the children's books. Then I'll close up shop, so to speak, until after Christmas and brace myself for the January sales. Happy Holidays.

Alternate Uses for B-flute

2006-12-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

While I wait for the upcoming BookThinker article that will explain how to use b-flute for packaging books, my two youngest daughters have already figured out how to use b-flute:

- As a fort.
- As a runway for doll fashion shows.
- As a table for tea parties.
- As a chair.

B-flute is single corrugated cardboard that, according to BookThink, is the cheapest and most secure way of packaging books. I bought a roll from Pac-N-Seal along with 1000 of the 9 x 12 plastic bags. I've packaged several books this way so far and...it took a long time.. and way too much tape...because I haven't purchased an Extra Heavy Duty Bostich stapler yet, because I'm waiting to see if the upcoming BookThinker article still recommends the stapling method or if he thinks Impulse Sealers are now the best method (sounds dangerous, though, because that involves heat). What I do know for sure is that next time I will purchase 10 x 13 bags instead of 9 x 12 because I ship a lot of oversized children's picture books.

B-flute will also work well for wrapping Christmas presents. It will require less wrapping paper because I'll be wrapping less air; b-flute snugly fits around the book or clothing item or CD or gift certificate. I'm sure we'll find more alternate uses for b-flute. If you know of any that I haven't mentioned please let me know.

Is a smartphone necessary?

2006-12-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

My article about smartphones is now posted on Elaine's blog. There's a nice lively discussion going on in the comments. Feel free to dive in.

Bye Bye Bookie

2006-12-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

You'd think a monthly library sale near an affluent neighborhood would be a Can't Miss item on a dealer's calendar. It was, until a year or so ago. Dealers used to line up at the door.

Not anymore. The stock has dwindled considerably. An annual sale would probably be a better option for this library but I suspect that maybe the lady that works at the sale each month enjoys it very much.

I dragged myself to this sale in November because I hadn't visited this sale for many months. The library sale lady recognized me, even without my entourage of children. As I expected, the inventory was about as exciting as the book selection at the grocery store. I Scoutpaled a few items, not because I thought they might truly be worth something, but so I could feel like I wasn't totally wasting my time.

Then I spotted this book on a high shelf. It had the original price tag of $125.00, which was promising. The publisher was obscure and it had a very specific and alluring title: Spiritually Moving: A Collection of American Folk Art Sculpture. I figured it was worth hauling the eight pound book off the shelf in order to Scoutpal it. The cheapest copy on Amazon was $76.00 and the sales rank was somewhere in the six figures. Woo hoo. The library was asking $15.00 for it but even at that price I knew I'd easily surpass the Rule of Three (selling a book for at least three times what you paid for it) and figured there was a chance it would sell before Christmas. This is the situation where Scoutpal is especially invaluable. I decided to list it in our eBay store in addition to Amazon and it sold on eBay a few days ago.

It was the only salable book at the library and I wondered how it got there. Did a husband in the nearby affluent neighborhood - tired, perhaps, of picking out jewelry and cashmere sweaters year after year - buy it on a whim as a present for his artistically inclined wife one Christmas? The book is very oversized and cannot fit on a normal bookcase. I displayed it on a living room table like a piece of sculpture until it sold. There are only so many times one can page through a book like this and maybe the woman tired of the book taking up so much space and, in a fit of generosity, donated it to the library. It is now on its way to Indiana where, I suspect, it will be given as a gift once again and, once again, someone will have to find a way to store or display this book. I'll close with my favorite photo from the book, one that I appreciate as a resident of America's Dairyland:

Quicken Dependency

2006-12-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

I count on Quicken to such a degree that, well, I don't ever have to count. Quicken does it for me.

In the late 1990's I threw away my paper checkbook register and started using Quicken, a personal finance software program. It balances the checkbook and it can download transactions directly from the bank's website into the checkbook register.

When I started to sell books online I opened a separate checking account for the book business and use Quicken (the basic version) for the record keeping. Each month I print a register report from the checking account to show the expenses and income. I make sure each transaction has a category, such as "office supplies" or "postage." The register report gives subtotals for each category. It takes less than five minutes to crank out one of these reports and I save it on the computer and also put a dead pulp version in a binder.

I don't use QuickBooks, a software program specifically for small businesses, because it's $200.00 and I don't have employees and payroll taxes and all that. Quicken is more than adequate for a sole proprietor. It's only $50.00 and I already owned it.

Because Quicken takes care of these tedious tasks I can focus on the type of counting that is much easier for me: counting the number of books that have sold in a day. Counting the books I'm buying at a sale. Counting the money for the day's bank deposit. Counting the number of peanut M&M's it will take to help me list books for two hours.

Number Crunching

2006-11-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

Every year I think "this is the year that I will be a big girl and do our taxes all by myself." Then the Client Organizer from the accountant arrives in the mail shortly after Thanksgiving and I come to my senses. I spend a half hour filling out the Client Organizer, the accountant prepares the tax return and it's ready a day or two later. I give him $200 and within a couple of weeks both tax refunds are automatically deposited in our account. Cutting the $200 check is an "ouch" moment but I figure a relationship with an accountant is important. I'll have someone to call in a panic if we're ever audited or if I ever have a ton of money and need some advice about tax shelters.

Anyway, I have spent some time printing out Quicken reports from the last few months. Remember those eBay store fee increases last August? To my great surprise, the earnings from our eBay store, which now has only 50 Buy It Now items and 5-10 auctions per week, nearly exceeded our earnings from Amazon during a four week stretch in September-October. On Amazon we have 2000 books listed. Our Amazon earnings were not unusually low and there were no valuable books in our eBay store. It was a matter of a $30 sale here, a $50 sale there and dang if those 50 eBay books didn't nearly beat the 2000 Amazon books. Amazon has since resumed its place as our number one revenue stream but our eBay store with 50 items now steadily generates more revenue than it did when we had 2000 items in the store before the fee hike.

Less really is more. As fun as it is to come with a fresh batch of books from a sale, removing dead weight from the inventory is almost as satisfying. So is sprucing up descriptions and repricing books and seeing them sell quickly as a result. Spending a few hours focusing my attention on the books I already have is always as productive as a few hours in the field.

Feeding the Google Monster

2006-11-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

I took the plunge on Wednesday and uploaded our eBay and Amazon listings to Google Base. All roads lead to Google, it seems. It took forever (10 hours) for our Amazon records to upload. Sheesh. The Google monster is a slow eater, I guess.

Google supposedly provides extra exposure for your books if they are listed in Google Base. Recent discussion over at the BookThink forum seems to indicate that this is the case. At this point it's unclear to me if this exposure is any greater than the exposure I get from my eBay RSS feeds or Amazon's feeds.

In your Google Base account you can track the number of clicks and impressions your books receive on Google, so that's a bonus. I'm surprised at the number of impressions many of our books have received already. Apparently many people go to Google first when searching for a book, rather than heading straight to Amazon. Clicks are more important than impressions, however. A click can lead to sale. eBay listings have their own link so if someone clicks on your eBay link in Google there's a greater chance of a sale. Amazon listings don't have a link to your specific book, the link directs them to the general Amazon listing, so the clicker will see all available used copies for sale.

As Steve Weber pointed out, there's nothing to prevent Google from someday flipping a switch and directing Google book searches solely to Google Base rather than to Amazon or eBay. I figure I should be ready for that possibility. For now, at least, I'll keep feeding the Google monster but I sure hope he starts eating quicker because the upload process is much too slow.

Reading

2006-11-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

I want to call your attention to Hugh's Blog. You don't have to be a bookseller to appreciate his thoughts, especially in this post and this post.

What is it about bird books?

2006-11-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

It's weird. As a reader I never seek out bird books, other than for the occasional reference, and never look at them in bookstores. As a bookseller I always make sure to check the nature section at sales and always grab any unusual bird books. I can't help myself.

When I list books I'm usually all about efficiency. With the bird books, however, I'm like a grandpa driver. I bring on the template that I reserve for my fancier listings, take several photos and can easily spend an hour fussing with the listing. I'm not a birder and it's been several years since I've managed to maintain a feeding station for birds on a consistent basis. I suppose my motivation is that, unlike most of the non-fiction that we sell, bird books are fun to page through and give me a chance to take a break from the computer screen and appreciate nature.

I've never stumbled across any valuable bird books so I don't have any flashpoints for you, unfortunately. I guess bookselling is not always about knowing which books are valuable. Sometimes it's just about appreciating the books themselves.

Ashamed Book Company

2006-11-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

If you use Turbo Lister to list books on eBay (and you should if you list more than a few auctions per week) have you noticed that there is a spell check feature? Use it! I study a lot of eBay book auctions and it's disconcerting to see so many typos in listings. I even find typos in the listings of veteran Power Sellers who use Turbo Lister. Tsk tsk. Use the spell check!

Whenever I use spell check it changes Ashland to ashamed. Harrumph. But I use it anyway and you should too.

My pal ScoutPal

2006-11-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

My next piece about ScoutPal is up at Elaine's bookselling blog.

If you have arrived here from Elaine's blog, welcome! Pull up a chair and feel free to rummage through the archives.

Let the books find you

2006-10-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

A reader asked the following question:

"Would you care to share what is your "good source?" We live in WA state but am still looking for a good source beside happening on a few good books at thrift stores and garage sales. I really do not know where else to find some really good buys."

If I had to narrow it down to one good source I'd say "everywhere." Everywhere includes:

Library sales.
Thrift shops.
Garage sales.
Flea markets.
Church sales.
Used bookstores (try the clearance section. Try asking if they have books in storage that they would be willing to unload).
The book dumpster behind Half Price Books.
Estate sales.
American Association of University Women (AAUW) sales.

You can find announcements of most of the above sales at booksalefinder.com. Also make sure to check the classifieds every week. Sometimes library sales aren't listed on booksalefinder so it pays to check the library websites too.

It's also important to let the books find you. Start by telling everyone you know that you are an online bookseller and that you'd be happy to buy books from them or sell on commission. Most people will be happy to give you books and you won't have to pay. They get empty shelves and an excuse to buy more books and you get free inventory. They are probably relieved that you aren't asking them to buy anything or come to a Tupperware party. Others will want a commission but you won't have to pay until the book sells.

Not everyone you know will have books but they have the potential to give you leads. They might be related to a newly retired professor who wants to unload their books. They might visit a garage sale in their neighborhood that wasn't listed in the classifieds and, after spotting several shelves of vintage ballet books and photography books, give you a call. They might be oppressed by a garage full of obscure books they inherited from a friend and want to free up their storage space.

You'll be surprised by what you find. "How can someone spend their whole adult life reading nothing but book club books?" you'll wonder to yourself. Or you'll look at several boxes of scientific and philosophy books and wonder, "Did this man never indulge in light reading?" and then the next box you'll open will be full of 50 Betty Neels romances and you'll scratch your head. The best part is that you'll be able to go through the books leisurely, in the privacy of your home, with no other dealers around you. The more books that find you the less dependent you'll have to be on the sales and thrift shops.

Perhaps the most boring sounding title in our inventory

2006-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Micrographia: Or, Some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses, with observations and inquiries thereupon. ZZZZZZ. (Sorry. I dozed off while typing that title.)

It's a Dover book. Dover books usually aren't worth selling, of course. But Dovers from the 1960's with hyper-specific titles like these can sell in the $20-30 range. This title is a bit more exotic: Theory of the Motion of the Heavenly Bodies Moving About the Sun in Conic Sections.

I think I like this one the best: The Bad Child's Book of Beasts and More Beasts for Worse Children and a Moral Alphabet.

Shiny Books

2006-10-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

I like shiny things. Shiny floors, shiny mirrors, shiny silver bracelets. And shiny books. A reader of my article for Elaine Krieg Smith's blog asked for further clarification about shiny books, so here goes.

When I'm at a sale and not finding much, or it's crowded, or I'm feeling tired, I look for shiny books. I start in the children's section and look for shiny picture books. More often than not I can find some picture books that aren't hypercommon and that will sell for $10.00 or more and have a good sales rank. I'll sell books for as low as $5.00 if the sales rank is in the four figures. Shiny young adult books are, in my experience, mostly worthless. Educational/homeschool books, text books are another area where shininess often pays off. Fiction? Not so much.

I know, I know. It's the children's picture books before 1963 that are worth the big money. It's the esoteric non-fiction with dull covers and titles that are worth money. And so on. I'm simply tossing out the idea that a steady stream of sales of $10.00 (or more) shiny books is motivating to the beginning seller as they learn the ropes and it helps the bottom line of the experienced seller.

ScoutPal has turned her into a Scout Pal

2006-10-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

I knew that buying some new technology would reinvigorate our business but I didn't anticipate the free labor it would bring me. Well, not entirely free. I sometimes dole out Twix bars or Starbucks coffee as compensation.

First Daughter has become my constant companion at sales since I purchased a new Motorola RAZR cell phone and activated ScoutPal. She is 13 and, previously, was more than happy to stay home while I went to sales. Now she is more than happy to tag along and sit and do price lookups, giving me more time to pick books.

I don't have many skills to pass on to her. I can't sew, knit, garden, make furniture, fix engines or cook very well. But, by golly, I have a cell phone and ScoutPal. Along the way she is absorbing a few flashpoints and learning that making money working for yourself is, in fact, a possibility. She even listens politely now when I sometimes go on at length about why I picked a particular book from the shelf. I hesitated before purchasing the Motorola RAZR - it's a bit more expensive than many of the cell phones on the market - but now I see it was a very worthwhile investment indeed.

Smoking or Non-Smoking?

2006-10-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

This past week I received at least three e-mails from potential buyers asking me if the book is from a non-smoking home. One of them also wanted to know if my home is pet-free.

Until this week I've never received this question so it makes me wonder. Did someone recently publish an article about malodorous books, telling buyers to beware? Do online booksellers have a reputation for being smokers? After all, our workplaces don't have restrictions on smoking. We can even wear white bathrobes and drink (Wild Cherry Pepsi in my case) while listing books.

I never use the "from a non-smoking home" line in my eBay descriptions but maybe I will start doing so. I wonder how much a book's value would increase if the words, "read by Audrey Hepburn while smoking" were included in the description. That might be one instance where smoke would increase the value of the book.

Here's a Flashpoint For You

2006-10-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

A fun title: Men are From Locker Rooms, Women are from Luxury Boxes: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Spectator Sports

The cheapest copy on Amazon is $225. But why? Would women rather fork over $200 to read a book about sports than sit through endless hours of games? Tomorrow I will be at a library sale and will be sure to check out the sports section. It's the type of book one would expect to find at a sale. Surely there are 1000's of men who bought this book for the women in their lives (along with some astro turf negligee), women who would probably happily donate it to a library sale.

The sales rank is slightly more than 1 million so it's not a brisk seller. I looked on Google but couldn't find any cached pages with recent sales information. I suppose it's one of those books where one could price it high initially and then gradually lower the price until it sells.

I'll have to drive through football traffic to get to this library sale tomorrow. Finding this book there would be a nice reward.

Branching Out

2006-10-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article for Elaine Krieg Smith's bookselling blog. Research is Elaine's specialty and her blog and book lists are valuable sources of information for booksellers. This article is the first in a series of three. The next two will be about ScoutPal and smartphones vs. regular cellphones.

A week in mid 20th century England and Scotland

2006-10-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the D. E. Stevenson novel I sold on eBay last week, I was able to spend a week in Scotland and England. Well, not literally, but through the story, which I decided to read during the week it was for sale on eBay. Bookselling might not providing the funding for international travel but it puts books in my lap that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

David is the main character in Five Windows, which is set in mid 20th century England and Scotland. He is the son of a Scottish minister and spends his pre-teen years in rural Scotland. He spends his teen years living with his uncle in Edinburgh and attending a day school. After graduation he moves to London and works as a junior clerk, rents a flat from a bookseller and helps him with the store and begins writing books.

Yesterday I packaged the book and mailed it to the customer. I felt a tad wistful because if I want to buy this book, and dip into a world where community - with its wide array of interesting and sometimes borderline dysfuctional characters - matters, where settling down with a girl you've known your whole life suddenly becomes more important than seeing the world, where a boy's favorite past time is to visit the local shepherd and the local mechanic, then I will have to pay $60 or more for my own copy.

Happily, my local library has copies of many if not all of her forty novels, including Five Windows. I will try Mrs. Buncle next. This also means that her books might show up at upcoming library sales. Many of them have excellent resale value, even the mass market paperbacks, so it will be a dilemna: sell them or keep them?

Sometimes it pays to show up late for a library sale (Or: A Primer on library sales)

2006-10-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

Normally I show up on time at the beginning of a library sale. Bookselling is my job, after all, and I figure that I need to be there when the largest number of books are available. Or do I?

Let's look at the cons of showing up on time. Library sales attract dealers and they tend to show up early and stand in line. I have never managed to arrive early enough to be the first in line. The next time U2 goes on tour and I want someone to stand in line for me for several hours to buy tickets I think I will hire a bookseller. Anyway, the presence of these dealers can be a distraction. The dealers in my area are civilized, for the most part, and rarely do I see a scan monster, but even so I find myself looking at their stacks of books and watching them as they work. "He's buying THOSE books? HAHAHA!" I'll think. Then I'll second guess myself and wonder if he knows something I don't. Sometimes a dealer will have a stack of highly eBayable books and I kick myself for not getting to those shelves first.

The physical presence of all the other dealers plus the normal people who are there simply to find reading material (imagine that! People actually goes to sales to find something to read! Maybe I should try that sometime!) is also a nuisance. Sometimes I'm forced to reach over someone's shoulder to pluck a book from the shelf. There's much stepping on toes and bumping into each other. Also, dealers and other buyers will often carry around stacks of books for an hour or two and ultimately reject many of them and leave them behind for the workers to reshelve. You never get a chance to lay eyes on those books.

So, last Friday, I went to a library sale that had begun the evening before. The library is 25 miles from my home and it was tempting to skip it because I was unable to go to the sale on opening day because I actually had a life that evening (kids to feed, a meeting to attend). I went on Friday anyway because I like road trips and even if I find nothing it helps keep my scouting skills sharp.

I had the place to myself, for the most part. Aaaahhh. I could work at my own pace and in silence. Except for the chatter of the library workers, who said there was a huge line the night before and several dealers, one of them a woman with five kids who spent the entire three hours there scoutpal-ing everything with her oldest daughter. Oh. I see. So every book I touch at this sale will have been handled, and rejected, by another dealer. There's probably not going to be anything left. I'm wasting my time. Eventually I forced myself to change my thoughts. "I know things other dealers don't know. Surely I can find something."

I looked at the large print books and there was a D. E. Stevenson book there! I didn't need to Scoutpal that one to know it was valuable. If you are a bookseller, grab your scouting book and write down that author's name. Her novels are extremely scarce and in demand. I have it listed on eBay right now for $49.99 and there is a bid and a couple of watchers. There were also two large print books by Georgette Heyer. They are now listed on eBay for 14.99 each and I sweetened the deal by saying that if you buy both both the shipping will be free. They picked up bids immediately.

OK, so I had three books, worth at least $80. I glanced at the children's section but figured the mom with the five kids probably cherry picked everything. I was right. I went back to the non-fiction and looked at the bird books. I've loved bird books ever since I read The Burgess Bird Book For Children to First Daughter eight years ago. Whenever I list a bird book on eBay it sells, but good bird books are hard to find. I saw three bird books that I had never seen before. The books are large (13 x 10) with gorgeous color plates. I paid a total of $6.00 for the three books. These were books that, if I didn't sell them on eBay, I'd be happy to keep them in my own library. Whenever I feel that way about a book I find in the field I buy it. If you like birds, take a look at the pictures in my auction (item # 160036710118). One of the books has a plate of the white-throated sparrow, my favorite bird, so that cinched it for me, and I was sure to include that in the listing.

OK, so where was I? Oh yes. Library sales. One of the library workers said that someone had brought in a bunch of bird books earlier that morning. She said that people keep coming in and donating books even though the sale started the night before. This is an important detail to remember about library sales in small communities. Once the library sale starts and the signs go up, people drive by and notice. They think of the boxes of books in their garage or the books cluttering their shelves and the next day they haul them in. After the start of the sale. After the other dealers have come and gone. Heh heh heh.

Bottom line: when you are at a library sale remember that you know things other dealers don't, even if you're a newbie. If you're there when it's crowded, focus on your specialty, your strengths. Don't waste your time doing a lot of desperate ScoutPal lookups on books you don't have a clue about. I came away from that library sale with six books for $9.00 and all of them have picked up early bids (oh how I love early bids!) and will sell for at least $95, so sometimes it's not a bad thing to leave a sale with only six books. In other words, think quality, not quantity (unless, of course, there's a box of 75 science fiction books all written by the same author and in that case think quantity and cut yourself a deal). And don't forget to show up late.

Turning Negative Feedback into Positive Feedback

2006-09-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

Last week Amazon sent me an e-mail telling me that my feedback for the last 30 days was only 90 percent and I'd better get my act together. Oops.

I went to our account and saw that eight people gave us five out of five stars last month. Yay! One person left us two out of five stars, saying that I had described the book as having clean pages but there were some underlines. These two stars lowered our monthly feedback to 90 percent. Oops.

Our lifetime feedback remained unaffected (96%) but I decided to contact the buyer anyway. I apologized and asked him to remove the negative feedback. I told him I'd be happy to give him a partial refund or a full refund, including return postage. I told him we have a home business and feedback is crucial to us and that I want him to be a happy customer. Sometimes people think they are buying direct from Amazon instead of from an individual seller so it's good to dispel that notion.
Well, the buyer was not mollified. "Sorry, You did not state in your description accurately what the condition of the book was. There is writing in the margins. Changing it would simply be a lie. Perhaps, in the future you will not receive such low marks."

Undettered, I wrote back again, apologized again. Finally it seemed to dawn on him that I was a real person, a person actually trying to make him HAPPY. He asked for a list of the other philosophy books that we have in stock. I sent it to him and he picked one out and I mailed it to him at no charge. He removed the negative feedback and now our score for the last 30 days is 100 percent and our lifetime feedback increased to 97 percent. He thanked me for my "professional" attitude. Now we're both happy.

A note to Amazon book buyers: if you purchased a used book, please leave the seller 5 out of 5 stars if you are satisfied with the transaction. If you are not satisfied, contact the seller first and give the seller a chance to correct their error and make you happy. Sometimes a buyer will leave 4 out of 5 stars and say something like "pleased with the book." Aaargh. Some people can't bring themselves to give 5 out of 5 no matter what. They think it's too hyperbolic. Because so few buyers bother to leave feedback even a 4 out of 5 will have a negative effect.

A note to Amazon sellers: when you receive a rating that is less than 5 out of 5 stars, don't hesitate to contact the buyer. Anything we can do to make buyers aware that we are professionals and real people, not faceless entities, will make the online marketplace more hospitable to buyers.

Turning inventory into inventory

2006-09-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Last week I went through four shelves of inventory. I looked up each book on Amazon and ended up culling two thirds of the books. Off to Half Price Books they went. I repriced most of the remaining books and spruced up some of the descriptions.

For a few titles I noticed that our copy did not appear on Amazon even though I listed it months ago. I corrected that and one of them, a $45 book about staging Shakespeare plays for children, sold almost immediately. I listed a few books on eBay and sold them all (a Martha's Vineyard photo book from the 1940's, a puppet theatre book, a Beatrix Potter biography). They had been collecting dust on Amazon for a year or more. During the first 18 months of selling books online we didn't list on eBay. I now know much more about eBay and as I go through the old inventory I'm certain I'll be able to pluck out other titles to list on eBay and move out the door.

Even though I could be discouraged that two thirds of that inventory was stale and had to go I am instead invigorated as I look at the empty shelves. It motivates me to go out in the field and make more acquisitions.

So, if you're a bookseller, and are in the doldrums and haven't found any exciting new inventory lately, just take a look at your shelves. Look at those old books with fresh eyes and you'll find some gold and increase your sales.

$200 in 12 minutes

2006-09-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday nights are not usually a hot time for book orders. People aren't sitting at their computers. They're at real bookstores or Starbucks or parties or whatever else it is that people without four children do on Saturday nights. Books with Amazon sales ranks of 2 million are not hot sellers. A $5.00 book with a sales rank of 100 might sell in twelve minutes on a Saturday night but not a $200 book with a sales rank of two million. Yet that's exactly what happened to me last Saturday night.

On Saturday night I listed Dinosaurs, Mammoths and Cavemen: The Art of Charles Knight for $199.99. I decided to put it in our eBay store inventory in addition to Amazon, Alibris, etc. I figured it would take several months for this book to sell. Amazingly someone purchased the book twelve minutes after I listed it on eBay. I've never had a book sell that fast. eBay store inventory doesn't appear in saved searches (when you have a saved search for an item eBay sends you an e-mail when a new listing appears) so I don't know how the buyer found the book so quickly.

I wish I could say that I found this book at a library sale or thrift shop. It belonged to a friend of mine and I sold it on commission. He had tried selling the book on eBay on his own to no avail. You never know with eBay.

Free Help

2006-09-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

A few online helps have revolutionized my life as of late. And they're free.

A couple of times per day I now sit down to my own custom-made magazine thanks toGoogle Reader. Google Reader is a place to store your favorite blog and website links. Each time the blog is updated the new entry appears in Google Reader. No more wasting time laboriously clicking on individual blog links. I can now read more blogs in less time.

I've had a Yahoo e-mail address for years but had been oblivious of the Yahoo calendar feature until a couple of weeks ago. Someone on an e-mail list recommended Microsoft Outlook to a frazzled mom. That program costs money, however, so I wondered if Yahoo might have a calendar and, sure enough, they do. Once upon a time I used a Franklin Covey planner. In recent years I've used a wall calendar. I'm not usually in the vicinity of the calendar when I need to write something down and, even if I am near the calendar, I usually can't find a pen. Yahoo Calendar also has a task list and notepad for writing down grocery lists or whatever. I may never need to use a pen again.

I tried a free book repricing service last week: Tooyen. I had always been reluctant to use a repricing tool for fear that it would slash prices even more dramatically than Wal Mart. But Tooyen repriced items in a conservative yet competitive way and left many items unchanged. I was pleased.

Now that I have this nifty calendar, repricing tool and reading program I have even more time to list books. A bonus. I think.

Makeover

2006-09-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

If you take a look at the sidebar you will now see categories. Categories! I feel like my blog is more grown-up now. Blogger doesn't provide a category feature for blogs so I had to sit down and figure it out all by myself. I decided to use del.icio.us tags. It's not as nice as having a fancy drop down menu for categories but it's free and very easy to use.

I still have not added Google Ad Sense text ads to the blog. I think of these ads as the mosquitos of the blogosphere and can't bring myself to clutter up the site with them. These ads seem more like Ad Cents than Ad Sense. It's hard to imagine making much money from them. I wasn't totally without shame, however. I added a donate link on the sidebar for those who wish to make anonymous donations through Amazon. I've seen this on other blogs and figured it was worth a shot. Maybe someday I'll hit the big time and have real ads on the site with tasteful graphics and content that is applicable to bookselling.

I also added a new blog to the sidebar: Ephemera: exploring the world of old paper. It's cool. Check it out.

Questions, Questions

2006-09-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

A reader recently left the following comment:

Hi! I have been reading your blog for a couple of months now and would
like to compliment you on your whimsical style of writing - it's easy to read
and also informative! I am an ebay beginner , an elementary teacher by
profession, so I have not much time to do all of the research on ebay, thrift
shop trawling etc, but I have built up quite a supply of books to list after a
busy summer of yard sales! Deciding how to price the books and get them into
ebay takes so long because I am new at it. How do you research as you do? What
do you put into the key words and options to find a seller that you think is
doing well? Then how do you keep track of her and your data? That's many
questions in one but only a tiny fraction of what I would love to ask!

I thought I'd go ahead and answer her questions here. (By the way, I'm chuffed that she used the word "whimsical" because it's one of my favorite words.)

Research. I prefer to call it snooping because that makes it sound more fun. The best way to snoop is to go into the advanced search screen of eBay. Click on completed auctions and then choose additional parameters, such as the non-fiction book category and books that are that are at least $30, so that you don't have to wade through as much junk. Just for kicks you can also narrow down your search by zip code. Let yourself become very familiar with this advanced search screen. It's your friend.

While perusing the completed auctions pay close attention to the books that you would have passed by at a sale. Study the auction titles and layouts and make mental notes of what you like and dislike. I like to mentally rewrite titles, even on highly successful auctions, because it's a good exercise. Eventually a certain seller will catch your eye. Go and study their other listings. Mark them as a favorite seller in your "my eBay." This allows you to return to that seller's listings on a regular basis. I look at the listings of my favorite seller on a daily basis and it motivates me to list books (I'm happy to share my favorite seller IDs via e-mail. Click on the "contact me" link in the sidebar). At the end of the week I sometimes search her completed auctions and add up her sales, because that motivates me too.

When researching book values (not quite as much fun as snooping but it must be done) I use Amazon. If the book isn't listed on Amazon, or if the Amazon price is very high, I look on Bookfinder. On Amazon I study the sales rank as closely as the price. Sales rank tells you how quickly the book will sell. If a book has a sales rank of 200 and can be listed for $5.00 I'll happily do so because I know it will fly out the door within 24 hours. If a book has a sales rank of 3 million and is worth $20.00 I study the book to see if there are keywords that will make it sell on eBay. If not I usually chuck the book, especially if the content seems weak.

Feel free to ask more questions!

A book I will miss

2006-08-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

I have no interest in skiing. Even though I grew up in Wisconsin my only exposure to skiing as a child was ABC's Wide World of Sports. During the opening credits every week they would show the "Agony of Defeat" footage of a skier falling off a ramp. At a young age I decided that watching other skiers crash was far safer than (literally) hitting the slopes myself.

Even so, I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the photos in this 1957 book about skiing. Notice how he isn't wearing a hat or jacket. He's dressed like he's spending an afternoon at the ski lodge sipping hot chocolate mixed with Baileys Irish Creme, not like a man skiing down the slopes in Norway in mid-winter:

Did you notice the back flip? Pretty cool. Here is one of the step-by-step instructional photos. Rather impressive camera work for 1957:

Another nice shot of the gentleman skier with a dramatic spray of powdery white snow in the background. No agony of defeat here:

This book is packed with 100+ photos, including a few action shots of water skiing and several shots of the mountains of Norway in winter. I sold it on eBay last week for $12 so it's not a valuable book. Even though I am still not inspired to hit the slopes - snow shovelling and snowman production are my main winter activities - I will miss paging through this book.

One million books in the middle of nowhere

2006-08-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

Last week we discovered treasure in the sticks of Wisconsin. Even though there wasn't a princess in this castle, as Third Daughter hoped there would be, there were thousands upon thousands of books. And thousands upon thousands of books in a huge building next door. And in at least two more smaller buildings that I call "dollar stores" because they put their $1 books there.

This compound is called Castle Arkdale and is open by chance or appointment. The booksellers are a retired couple although it might be more appropriate to say they are book amassers rather than sellers. Sure, they sell books, but there is no sign at the bottom of the driveway and they aren't exactly in a high traffic area. They do not have a website. Clearly they are not in this for the money.

One doesn't see books like this at library sales or thrift shops; I knew I couldn't begin to absorb it all. I let myself simply be content in the presence of so many books without feeling pressured to unearth every gem. Sometimes it's nice to simply look at old books and admire their artwork without thinking about the value or eBay keywords. Not all the books here are priced for resale so I spent as much time as possible in the back of one of the buildings where most of the bargains are located and parked myself in the non-fiction section. I found two copies of William Nickerson's How I Turned $1000 Into 3 million in Real Estate In My Spare Time. I was excited because it was the first time I've found this title and, the last I heard, this book was worth three figures. It's only worth $30-40 now, however, but it's a quick seller and I've already sold them. I found an Elizabeth Goudge hardcover in one of the dollar stores, which has already sold, along with a Tex Mulane football novel, which should sell for around $40. I looked closely at the home section because I like to look for old books about houses, especially from the Arts & Crafts era, because they sell well on eBay, plus the mentality back then wasn't to supersize a house but to make a small space seem bigger. I found one such gem, published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1946.

The children worked as hard as we did looking for books. They searched and they searched (First Daughter is on a quest to find every Babysitter's Club book so she can sell them as a lot on eBay). Leonora, the proprietor, commended them on their efforts and she spent several minutes ringing up their books (using pencil, paper and mental math). Obviously I need to return here again, and again, without children and with a smartphone so I can look up book values on the internet as I browse the store. I envision that this will make for a nice Saturday escape during the winter months when there are no library or garage sales.

How About Those Cubs?

2006-08-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

This book was yesterday's find of the day. I almost passed it by because it was published by Doubleday in 2005. I spent a good chunk of my high school years watching Cubs games on cable (I watched even more Cubs games than MTV videos because I liked watching Ron Cey hit home runs better than I liked watching Michael Jackson dance) I knew that the Cubs have a huge fan base, so surely this book had a large print run. Like the Cub fan that I am, however, I can't give up on them easily and called home (yes I don't have ScoutPal or a smartphone yet but when you have those things you don't get to speak to your husband and hear excited cries of "mama!" in the background) and found out the book is worth $50. Whoa. As Harry Caray used to say, "Cubs win!"

The eBay store changes went into effect yesterday

2006-08-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

And the sky didn't disappear. Fourth Daughter enjoyed her last day as a two-year-old. I went to the P.O. and avoided listing new inventory. I took Second Daughter to the pool and sat and read instead of suiting up; it's my preference that the child exert herself and get tired rather than the mama. I even listed a few store inventory items at the new price and my blood pressure did not rise. All in all a normal day. So there, eBay.

$175 Church Sale

2006-08-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago I whined about a book lot selling for "only" $123 when, after searching the completed auctions, I thought it would sell for much more. Last Sunday I sold a lot of 76 action adventure paperbacks by for $157. I was expecting much less because a lot of 60 paperbacks sold for only $25 the week before. True, that seller's listing wasn't as nice as mine. And that seller charged way too much for shipping ($25). But still. I was pleasantly surprised.

I found that box of books at a church sale. There were only two other books at that sale worth picking up (one of them published by Wiley, of course) and they sold within 48 hours for a total of $18.00. I offered $9.00 for the box of action adventure books and didn't think twice about buying it, figuring someone out there likes this author and will want them.

I like excursions to church sales because there are items from many different people all in one place - so efficient - and if people are feeling charitable they will sometimes surrender their nicer books or entire collections of books. And junky toys. Very important, those junky toys. They allow me to say, "I'm going to look at just a few more books," to my little ones without them doing an imitation of Edvard Munch's The Scream while simultaneously clawing at my legs as if they were fans in the front row of a rock concert.

Snooping

2006-08-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

As nice as it is to work from home there are downsides. One of the best ways to learn one's job is to watch co-workers in action and I don't get to do that, except at library sales where there are other book dealers, and then I don't want to see other book dealers because I feel rushed and if the dealer is a scan monster I have to push my way past them, which I've discovered is easier to do if I'm holding a child because then the scan monster is more compelled to be polite and make way for me.

Reading forums and blogs is helpful, of course, but I like to actually see what other booksellers do. Therefore I'm reduced to snooping on eBay. Searching completed eBay book auctions is the only way for me to see a bookseller in action. In doing this I have discovered several sellers that I admire and I study their listings at least once a week. There is one seller who I study on a daily basis because everything she does is counter-intuitive to me:

She lists approximately eight auctions per night, six nights per week. What, no Buy It Now listings? No store?
Her photos are not sharp and are sometimes out of focus and she usually uses only one photo per listing.
She uses gallery photos. Huh? Why spend the extra money? Especially when the photo isn't high quality.
She does not use a template. Her descriptions are one paragraph and very tightly written and I pay very close attention to her phrases and have started "borrowing" some of them. I like the simplicity of her listings.

I also like her numbers. Last week she had 53 auctions. Thirty of them sold. The gross sales were $523 and she averaged $17 per book. If she has 240 or so auctions per month she makes quite a bit more than we did when we had a store with more than 2000 items. So I've started imitating her on a small scale and hope to earn more in one month with our small store inventory of 70 items and 1-3 auctions per night than we did with a store with 2000 items.

It's motivating for me to check her new listings each morning. When I was out scouting last week I went to the games section because of her. She had recently sold some vintage Scrabble books and I because I believe Scrabble to be the best game ever I bid on one of them, but lost, and hoped to find one in the thrift store. I found a Sheepshead card game book instead, which is worth $50.

I won one of her other auctions last night and will be anxious to see how she packages the book and if I can learn yet more from her as a result. Maybe someday I'll even be brave enough to contact her and ask all my questions. "Do you list on Amazon?" "Do you have a lot of repeat customers? "Do you do any marketing?" "How do you decide whether or not to relist an unsold book?" "Do you have kids and if so have you ever snapped at one of them when you found them reading a Listed Book or when they misplaced your tape gun or used them as decoys to sneak past the Scan Monsters?"

(filed under: bookselling tips)

Rolling in the Paper

2006-08-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Our local newspaper gives away the end rolls of newspaper. After printing out the paper there is leftover blank paper still on the rolls and these rolls are available at the front desk.

This paper makes for excellent packing material when mailing books or other items in a box and is one way for us booksellers to cut down on our packaging expenses. This paper is also perfect for coloring projects for the kids, for making banners for a party, etc. Best of all it's free. Maybe your local newspaper gives aways these rolls too.

You gotta love eBay

2006-08-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

During the recent heat tidal wave First Daughter dragged me to a thrift shop. As important as it is to look for new books I wanted to go home and dehydrate in peace and take a nap in the process. First Daughter was on a mission, however, and used the "You promised!" line to guilt me into stopping. While she rummaged through the clothes I sat on the floor in the children's section and found twenty or more high quality children's books. Three of these books were sign language coloring books.

These coloring books are almost worthless on Amazon and the sales ranking is very low. I put them together as a lot on eBay and was afraid my opening bid of $9.99 was perhaps too ambitious. But, what do you know, there were nine bids and 30 hits and they sold for $22.50 and will be out the door tomorrow. A quick turnaround like that and a selling price like that would not have been possible on Amazon so, as tempting as it is to hate on eBay for the fees, I can't help but be fascinated with the way eBay allows you to match up a buyer with a book they didn't know existed until browsing and finding your listing. More than once I've used keywords in the auction title and haven't even used the author's name and title of the book and have sold the book.

Another eBay bonus: eBay store sellers have access to free traffic reports. These reports show you the search terms that buyers use when finding your items. I activated our report today and look forward to studying it regularly. A legit form of snooping.

Thanks to that overheated excursion First Daughter came home with a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, some kids in California will now benefit from these coloring books and I learned yet another important lesson about eBay and how it's all about the keywords. I know $22.50 isn't something to be all excited about but I'll be a little bit more motivated tomorrow when I open Turbo Lister and list an auction or two.

August 1 Came and Went

2006-08-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

And I didn't sign up for Abebooks as I thought I might. One of my first thoughts after the eBay store changes was the possibility that maybe we should reopen our account at Abebooks on August 1. Now that I'm spending less on eBay fees I have to spend that money somewhere else, right?

We started our bookselling career on Abebooks back in the good old days when Abe would list your inventory on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Canada and Half.com in addition to their own site and at no additional fee. Now that's no longer the case and last year they had serious snafus while redesigning their site and we dropped them six months ago. If they would lower their monthly fee ($37 to be listed only on their site) I'd come running back. The international sales are strong there so I might do it anyway, at least for August - January.

Whenever I think about the Abebooks $37 monthly fee it makes me think about smartphones, because the monthly fee for that is comparable, so I spent a bit of time researching options yesterday. Because my current cell phone provider can't seem to get me a cell phone that browses the internet (they tell me my current cell phone is "too new" but let's not discuss it or I'll start grinding my teeth and my dentist wants me to stop doing that) I'm one of the few booksellers that hasn't used ScoutPal. At this point I might as well bypass that step and get a smartphone with a full keyboard and have the ability to go to bookfinder or Amazon while scouting for inventory. I was shocked to discover that you can now get Blackberry phones for one cent (or less!), and right now the BlackBerry 8700c seems to be the leading candidate. There's also the Cingular 8125 and the Samsung SCH-i730 and ever so many other options.

Abebooks or smartphone? Or both? Decisions, decisions. If only they made a smartphone that was smart enough to tell me which sales have the good books.

eBay changes lead to no more diaper changes

2006-07-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

The other night, because of the upcoming changes to eBay, I deleted hundreds of listings from our eBay store, one by one. Because of the rather tedious nature of this task I sought any diversion possible. Fourth Daughter had begun potty training and that night had several accidents. Normally this might be a source of exasperation, but I jumped to attention each time and happily helped her clean up each mess. Whenever she needed an escort to the potty I was right there, happy to assist and applaud and dole out M&M's.

Later, needing a diversion from the potty training diversion, I also clicked on Yahoo Games for the very first time, not knowing what to expect, but hoping it would be more exciting than deleting eBay listings. I found Text Twist and 21,430 points later Text Twist had all the force of a Star Trek tractor beam and Fourth Daughter was treading water.

Since that night Fourth Daughter has been accident-free and I continue to rule in Text Twist. These are changes I can get excited about.

Change. Again.

2006-07-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

By August 22 our eBay bookstore will have to become very lean and mean. eBay announced yesterday that it will raise insertion fees and commissions for store inventory.

I will get the whining out of the way at the beginning of this post. The eBay announcement said this: "A typical eBay Stores seller who uses Store Inventory format -- making no adjustments to his or her selling strategy following these changes -- will experience an overall fee increase of less than six percent." I don't get it. The insertion fees for each item will increase from two cents per month to five cents per month. Isn't that an almost 300% increase? The commission will increase from 8% to 10%. Isn't that more than a 20% increase? How is this a six percent increase? Maybe some smart person out there can explain that to me.

eBay will now list Half.com items on eBay. Some sellers are squawking about this but I'm not. The Half.com listings won't be intermingled with the regular eBay listings. There will be a Half.com box at the bottom of the search results. We list our inventory on Half.com through Valore Books with no monthly fee. Our books will now appear on eBay this way at no charge. Perhaps we'll see increased Half.com sales as a result.

Obviously eBay is infatuated with its "core listings" (auctions and Buy It Now items) and not so happy with the store format. OK. Fine. Maybe I'll try playing their game. While studying completed auctions over the last few months I've found a seller that lists 5-10 auctions per day and does not have an eBay store. This seller is a Power Seller, which means he/she has at least $1000 in sales per month with only 150-300 listings per month. Hmmm. I like that kind of efficiency. I will now study this seller's listings and completed auctions more closely. His listings are simple. No template. The photos aren't professional quality. The books are mostly non-fiction. After a few weeks of of studying this approach, who knows, maybe we'll shut down our store in August and simply list a few auctions per day and see what happens.

These changes will also weed out the mega listers (I hope) and get rid of some of the clutter on eBay. Only the strong survive change. For some sellers, ditching eBay and focusing on other venues will be the way to keep their business strong. For others, a revised eBay strategy will be necessary. By August 22 most of us will be doing business differently on eBay, until eBay throws the next curve ball at us. But we booksellers are a tough lot. We can handle it.

I Like Bookselling Again

2006-07-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I forced myself out the door to scout for inventory. Acquisitions are supposed to be the fun part of the job. I went to a library sale the week before and picked up only two books. I had the worst possible attitude. Plus I spent way too much time trying to look books up on the internet with my cell phone. I'm still learning how to do that and think now I might chuck it completely until I can afford a Blackberry phone and surf the net properly. It's so easy to dither around with the cell phone or tell myself "We have tons of unlisted books in storage" or "I really should spend time looking for inventory online." That's how ruts begin.

I went straight to the thrift store where I knew I would be guaranteed to find at least a few good books. I went straight to the sections where I already have a base of knowledge. I didn't whip out my cell phone (I had lost it at the zoo earlier in the day and it's just as well). I didn't even have my scouting book with me and I didn't strain to remember some of the things from my scouting book. I focused on what I already knew. I lost myself in the process for at least half an hour, got into a rhythm and brought home a box full that I was excited to list, which I did later that day. There's an excitement about going out in the field that motivates me to sit down and list books. Books in storage aren't exciting. There's something about freshly picked books from the field that is more exciting. One of those books has sold already and we actually had a surge of sales this weekend. I hope the excitement, and the sales, continue.

The Little Things

2006-07-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Priority Mail flat rate envelope is my new friend.

Yes, I've been selling books for two years and only now have I discovered the flat rate Priority Mail envelope. Padded envelopes as large as #2 can fit inside of these envelopes, which cost only $4.05 to ship anywhere in the United States. And here I've been using Priority Mail boxes, or just slapping Priority Mail stickers on mailers, and often paying $1-3 more in postage. Most books ship via Media Mail rather than Priority Mail, but those $1-3 overpayments add up.

I've been wise to the flat rate *boxes* and the *global* Priority Mail envelopes from the get go but somehow I was unaware of this envelope and I don't know why the mail clerks didn't mention them to me. But that's OK. When I want to spend a few minutes dissing Crocs or discussing the movie The Devil Wears Prada or extolling the virtues of Mr. Clean Erasers, my favorite mail clerk is always happy to listen. Because I can't have such discussions at www.stamps.com I will keep going to the post office.

I also recently discovered that when I want to send an e-mail to an Amazon customer I can reply to the order notification e-mail that Amazon sends and my e-mail will go directly to the customer. I don't have to go to my Amazon account and scrounge up the order and find the customer's e-mail address that way. Doh! Why didn't I figure that out before?

Another little thing that is helpful: Google desktop search. It's a much quicker way to search for files and e-mails and orders.

Today I had to package books without the benefit of scissors because I couldn't find them (i.e. the children misplaced them). Scissors. A little thing but absolutely essential. I couldn't even find the pinking shears, which I often use in desperation when the scissors are lost. My Favorite Mail Clerk likes how the labels look when I cut them with pinking shears so maybe the customers do too. But today I had to fold and tear them by hand. Aarrgh.

The little things dont matter, however, if I don't list books. I will go list five books now. Really. I will. No procrastinating. No siree.

$103 for $3 worth of books shouldn't feel like a disappointment

2006-07-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

But it does.

I found 40 International Collectors Library books with the gold gilt edges at a recent church sale. I made sure we attended this sale because last year we acquired several bags of vintage paperbacks from this sale, donated by an older lady in the church. Several of those paperbacks were worth $10-30+ and the rest we sold as lots. I overheard the lady say that next year she might have the courage to donate her hardcovers and I made a mental note to come back.

When we arrived I didn't see a single book under the large tent. Highly unusual. Did another dealer swoop in and take them all? Because the children insisted on looking at every last junky toy I had time to notice that a side door that was propped open with a small sign that said "books." Aha.

I found the 40 books and went home and looked on eBay to research International Collectors Library. This was a Doubleday book club from the 1940's -1970's and the books are classic works bound in faux leather to resemble antique books. One normally runs away from book club books but a seller had recently sold 59 of the books for $600 (eBay item# 7041803891) so I sent Brian to the church's $1 bag sale and he fit them all in three bags. I listed them the next day (eBay item# 160001732609), hopeful that these books might fetch close to $400.

The listing received 96 hits and there were 17 watchers. But there were no last minute bids. Alas. None of the bidders for the 59 books bid on these books. I was hoping one of the losing bidders would be interested in my listing. Maybe it was a bad idea to list an auction that ended two days before July 4 or on the heels of the lot of 59. Maybe the other seller had some titles that were more rare. You never know with eBay. Oh well. At least I got to break in and fine tune our new eBay template. And the 40 books will be outta here and I don't have to store them. And I guess a quick $103 from our first church sale outing this summer isn't so bad.

Life Has Meaning Again

2006-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to Borders in the hope that one or several books would find me. I normally don't purchase books as a result of idle browsing and know exactly what I want and buy it online. It had been months, however, since I read anything for pleasure, and I was desperate I was beginning to fear that bookselling had killed my joy of reading. Therefore I was delighted to discover the latest installment in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series: Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith. Life has meaning again.

If you have not spent time reading about Precious Ramotswe and her adventures as a self-taught private detective in Botswana then what are you waiting for? They might seem like "cozy", lightweight mysteries but they are not.

It has an Amazon sales ranking of around 200 so it'll sell within hours after I finish reading it and list it, and for a decent price, which will take the sting out of paying retail for it. A perk to bookselling.

Aaaarrrgh! Or, why I deeply regret that we don't SKU

2006-06-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time we started our online bookstore. We started with one bookcase and gradually added many more. Without giving it much thought we automatically shelved our books alphabetically by author and divided them into five sections (fiction, children's, etc.). This is what normal bookstores do. It seemed sensible.

Aaarrrrgh!

Now I know better. An online bookstore is not a normal bookstore. Normal bookstores are designed this way to encourage buyers to browse. If you set up your online bookstore this way you will do lots of browsing.

If I was starting over again I would use a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) system. This means that you write a number inside the book, or on a sticker that you affix to the spine, after you list it. You file the books by this number. This saves times when you shelve the books. This saves time when looking for a sold book.

Not convinced? Please don't use a SKU system if the following activities sound enjoyable to you:

A book of poetry sells. Or at least the database says it's filed in the poetry section. You dutifully trot off to the poetry shelf but the book is not there. You sigh and go back to the computer. You look up the book on Amazon to see if there is more than one author or to see if maybe it's a children's book of poetry and therefore maybe you shelved it in the children's section instead or if there's a least a picture of the wretched book. It's an older book so Amazon doesn't have a picture of it, doesn't have a description of it, has nothing at all. Thanks, Amazon. You even do a Google search in desperation. That was a waste of time. You tread not very softly back to the bookcases - your children see that you are in the I Can't Find A Book zone and give you a wide berth, because if they don't give you a wide berth they know that you will find a way to blame them for the misshelved book - and scour the other sections, and many many minutes later find it shelved under the editor's name instead of the author's name (of course you didn't put the editor's name in your database). Oh the books you could've listed, the books you could've packed during the minutes you were looking for the poetry book.

You have before you a stack of books that need to be shelved, books that were listed several ~~weeks~~ days ago so they aren't fresh in your mind. The first book has three different authors. It's a work of non-fiction but it seems to be about religion and you vaguely wonder which category you chose for this book in your database. You could go check on the computer but you're feeling lazy and that would take time. You live on the edge and shelve it, assuming you picked the right author and the right category and you won't pay the price when it comes time to find the book when it sells. Wrong.

I suppose eventually I'll get around to switching our system to SKU. But because that requires spending hours or days unshelving and reshelving each and every book it's possible that the children's photos will get organized into albums or that the we will even put new insulation in the attic before that happens.

More bookseller encouragement

2006-06-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

This time from John Updike, in today's New York Times:

"Booksellers, you are the salt of the book world. You are on the front line where, while the author cowers in his opium den, you encounter -- or "interface with," as we say now -- the rare and mysterious Americans who are willing to plunk down $25 for a book."

Updike gives a link to an article that gleefully envisions the end of the bookseller and offers his critique. I refused to click on the link to the article because thinking about a "universal library" and the digitalization of books, or mere snippets of one's favorite books, into a virtual bookshelf, much like iTunes, makes me want to don my bunny slippers and hide under the covers as I marinate in denial.

"The book revolution, which, from the Renaissance on, taught men and women to cherish and cultivate their individuality, threatens to end in a sparkling cloud of snippets. So, booksellers, defend your lonely forts. Keep your edges dry. Your edges are our edges. For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity."

We Are The Future

2006-06-23T20:29:00.000-07:00

This dose of bookselling encouragement was served up by Craig Stark on the BookThink forum,in response to the inferiority complex we online booksellers can sometimes get when comparing ourselves to the old school antiquarian 84 Charing Cross Rd type booksellers:

"I think a lot of new school booksellers have felt this way, but the way I look at it is, it isn't the old school booksellers who are going to show us the path to success in the coming years. It's all most of them can do to just adapt their businesses to the Internet. We, on the other hand, were born to sell online. We're in our element. We're the future."

Distracted by Mr. Clean

2006-06-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

Washing walls is normally not a temptation from me. Today, however, I bought a package of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and now I'm an addict.

The Magic Eraser is a sponge that does not use chemical cleaners but is an abrasive that works like fine sandpaper. Booksellers can very carefully use these erasers to remove foxing from the edges of books (see this article for more details). I didn't stop there. Like an artist searching for a canvas, I sought out every available dirty surface. I cleaned the chrome edges of the Formica table. I cleaned an entire wall and now it no longer looks like it desperately needs to be repainted. I cleaned the inside of the microwave. I cleaned the Stokke wooden chairs my little ones use at the table.

I'd still be magically erasing now but I wore out the first eraser. One more white sponge awaits me and I will save that thrill for tomorrow. The downside to the Magic Eraser is the cost. About $1 a pop, so once can't use it with abandon. You can get a $1 coupon here. I see that Amazon sells 24 packs for $21.95. Oh, the temptation.

Something for myself for a change

2006-06-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

While scouting for new inventory on Saturday I was happy to find a copy of Gilead : A Novel by Marilynne Robinson. I rarely find a book for my own personal library while scouting. This book won the Pulitzer Prize last year and I meant to purchase it after reading a library copy. Now I don't have to.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading this work of elegant literature, I recommend you do so. A letter written by a dying preacher in Iowa to his young son in the 1950's probably doesn't sound like fascinating reading, and if you require fast-paced, thrilling drama, then this might disappoint. An Amazon reviewer said this, "It is another example of what the English language is capable of. The prose is spare, as the subject demands. But it quickly becomes a meditation on how even the simplest life can be touched by grace and wonder. I am not a Christian. In fact, I am an atheist. But this book communicated to me the nurture that can be derived from heartfelt, clear minded, prosaic Christianity."

The preacher, John Ames, marries late in life and has one young son. "It is still true that I will never see a child of mine grow up and I will never see a wife of mine grow old. i've shepherded a good many people through their lives, I've baptized babies by the hundred, and all that time I have felt as though a great part of life was closed to me. Your mother says I was like Abraham. But I had no old wife and no promise of a child. I was just getting by on books and baseball and fried-egg sandwiches."

I happy to have this book sit on my shelf now and I hope to find more copies so I can give them away. I'm not ready to reread the book, however, and am desperately seeking suggestions for novels to read this summer. I'm giving Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne a try right now.

Leaves Again

2006-06-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Another "summer school" text arrived yesterday: ABC for Book Collectors. It was written in 1952 by John Carter and is now in its eighth edition.

This is not a cover to cover read but rather a reference work of 450 alphabetical entries of the technical terms of book collecting. In my last post I wrote about The Dealer's Thesaurus and the tendency of old school booksellers to use the word "leaves" instead of "pages" when describing a book. I immediately turned to the Leaf entry in ABC for Book Collectors. This book pulls no punches: "The inaccurate and slovenly misuse of page for leaf appears to be on the increase and should be pilloried when found." I'm not sure which I appreciate more: his strong opinion on leaves, or his use of the word "pilloried." I will now have to give even more serious consideration to using the word "leaves" in lieu of "pages." After all, how many Amazon descriptions have this word?

Some more entries from ABC for Book Collectors:

Dropped Head - "..which means that there is no title-page, the title being placed at the head of the first page of text; chiefly applicable to pamphlets, leaflets, etc."
Wrappers - "A wrappered book, in antiquarian parlance, is what would now be called a paper-back, and it has nothing to do with dust-wrappers or dust-jackets."
Bastard Title - It was a bit of a surprise to see a brash term like this, considering that the author thinks the word "pages" is unsophisticated. A bastard title is the same thing as the half title page: "the leaf in front of the title-page."
Extra-illustrated - "...copies which have been added to them, either by a private owner or professionally."

I'm tempted to take this new knowledge and write a description like this for one book, just for fun, just to see if the book would ever sell or generate customer inquiries: "The bastard title has marginal worming, the wrappers are slightly cockled, but otherwise a sparkling copy, save for one carelessly opened page and a dropped head on the terminal leaf rather than on the header leaf due to a printer error."

I removed a book from our inventory the other day because Fourth Daughter paged through it too enthusiastically but perhaps I should have changed the description to the following: "Every leaf carelessly opened and extra-illustrated by a young artist using a crayon and strawberry jam mixture, the book is generally shaken, a wad of chewing gum tipped in, soil on head and tail of text block complete affecting the interior, but a pristine copy in all other respects."

Who says writing descriptions can't ever be fun?

First Day of Summer School

2006-06-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

I decided that this summer I need to learn more bookselling terminology and ordered a few books to help me in this cause. My first textbook arrived yesterday, Dealer's thesaurus: 6,000 ways to describe books & historical paper and if you are a bookseller I'd say you should run right out and buy it except the cheapest copy out there is $65.00, so it's not an impulse buy. A couple of weeks ago, before I ordered my copy, the cheapest copy was $99.00. I hesitated for several days (have I ever spent $65 for a book? perhaps not) and, lo and behold, a seller listed a copy for $65.00, so I bought it.

If you're not a bookseller you probably can't imagine why this book is so interesting. There are no paragraphs or complete sentences. It's 195 pages of lists of phrases used to describe books. It was published in 1993, pre-internet. The author combed through the paper catalogs of other booksellers. "I spent hours wondering how to describe faults I would encounter," she explains in the introduction. "I quickly learned that collecting useful phrases on index cards when I came across them was more efficient than searching for a phrase to fit the situation at a given moment."

These useful phrases are in this book and I've already used a couple of them in my descriptions. Some of the phrases are a hoot, such as this one under binding faults: "some moron used tape to secure the front cover." Here are some other phrases:

marginal worming injuring letters in the running heads
pages are slightly cockled
occasional foxing to terminal leaves
one page carelessly opened
a few leaves ruffled
pages lightly damp-rippled; otherwise very good
with the spine largely perished
generally shaken

How does one carelessly open a single page? One better not carelessly open a book with a largely perished spine. I like the words "cockled" and "damp-rippled." I've noticed that the word "leaves" is often used instead of "pages." So that's another way to sound like a professional bookseller. Maybe I should start saying, "don't color on the leaves" and "don't rip the leaves" to the children.

Booksellers who write those descriptions, which I see way too often, that do everything but describe the book ("We ship fast - U save $") or, worse, don't write any description at all, obviously haven't read the Dealer's Thesaurus. This book will always be at hand when I list books.

Empty, lost

2006-06-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

Standing in our empty storage room on Friday was a relief, after so many weeks spent moving our books. All of our listed books are now in our home and I was eager for the first Friday order to arrive because I knew I would only have to walk a few steps, rather than hop in the car, to go retrieve it.

It was a $20 book. woo hoo. Except that it wasn't on the shelf. It wasn't in any of the five boxes of unshelved books. I spontaneously dropped everything and shelved those five boxes of books in my frustration to find the $20 book. During the two hours I spent shelving books I felt slightly desperate like I do when I can't find my keys when I'm late, or when I used to look for a child's pacifier in the middle of the night. Shelving all the books was an important task to complete but I did not feel any satisfaction because the $20 book was still missing. I looked everywhere. I thought of ways to blame the children and searched their bags of play things. I even became somewhat dramatic in my thinking, with the "Oh no, I'll never find another book, I've ruined our business by culling our inventory so dramatically and moving all these books" soundtrack going through my head.

Then an order arrived for a $32 book. I found it. Whew. I noticed it was from the thrift store where I never find anything decent, except for this $32 book, so I made a mental note to stop there again. We've had several more orders since Friday and I found all the books. I didn't ruin our business after all.