Armchair Booksellers, Or why I hate the Amazon Sellers Board

Got a problem with a customer?
Post the problem on the Amazon Seller’s board. Go out and scout books for the next 3 hours, or, perhaps reprice the books you have, or list some Auctions. . .Then go back to your post, and you will find that some nice bookseller will have replied with a composed e-mail for you to send to your customer! No need to spend your own precious time on this, some person who only sells 10 books a week, and prob lives off their spouse, will do it all for you!

Need to know where to get cheaper shipping supplies? Don’t bother doing the research yourself, instead, post to the forum, again go out and purchase more inventory or other things that will generate you more income, and when you come back there will be a slew of sources for you. OF course, I should mention, that since none of these people ever do their own research on supplies, the cheapest supplier with the best quality product ( matching ulines) has not yet been posted to any of these threads, lol.

Really these people have too much time on their hands, they post every little thing that happens to them in a day. I feel sorry for them, as some must be lonely or something, and have no one else to talk to, but enough is enough. Also, I don’t feel too bad for them as a lot of them , just want to show how smart they are, how much more they know than anyone else. Bizarre.

Here is one post I see too much : “Anyone else notice that their feedback number is fluctuating? Every time I’ve checked today it’s gone up and down.” Who the heck has time to check their feedback more than once a day–Heck, I don’t even read my comments.

There is another lady that posts every time one of the “hundreds” of packages she ships is a day late, or, not scanned, or her post carrier sneezed, or someone left her a “4,” or someone uses a weird word in their feedback comment. I put hundreds in quotations because if you look at her feedback and inventory, there is no way that she sells 100s of books a week–in fact, I doubt she sells a 100 books a month across all her venues–but she will be the first to give you all the advice you need. . .

Don’t feel like researching a title? Again post it to the forum, there is always someone who wants to show off their knowledge and search skill– this one aggravates me the most because often times the title is available right there on Amazon if the OP had just searched–and more times than not if they had used Addall, or just googled, they would’ve found a ton of info on the title. It’s pure lazyness. And besides, when you all tell a Lazy NOOB how to price their book, the chances of me buying it low and selling it high go down.

You know, I’m all for trying to help someone determine if their book has woodcuts, or was published in 1829, or is a First Edition. But really, do we have to hand the whole kettle with prepared meal, plates, silverware, napkins, and bottle of wine, over to them?

Every little thing, every little time that these Armchair, Part Time, and Hobby booksellers decide to do all the work for someone else, it cuts into almost all of our businesses. They make the competition stronger, by giving them more time–Time is money. I mean people have written books just by reading those forums.

I think that a lot of people are learning that the practice of showing off their expertise in forums/blogs that thousands of people can read is damaging to their own bottomline as I see the usual suspects don’t offer as much help as they used to, and many blogs do not post insider info anymore, heck, alot of them don’t even update– Though, you gotta love that one blog out there, the one that has a B & M and is teaching it’s own customers how to sell online–OK, isn’t that where you get a good chunk of your inventory? And even though the remainder market has been glutted, they seek to make it even worse by posting all the links on their blog–again, why not make people do their own research? Why hand everything over to them?

Inventory is getting harder and harder to find, and it’s going up in price too. I buy books that should sell for $30 only to have some jack ass part time seller get desperate to sell their book, cuz you know, they can’t hold onto a book for longer than a week, and they come along and knock their price down to $17, thus the repricers follow, and the price is ruined. Now sometimes I can buy all the low copies if the profit margin is good, but that is getting to be slim to none–plus one never knows when Hamilton Books might get a surplus from some old warehouse somewhere and come in and undercut you with a 100 copies of the book.

I do not have a husband to support me, I am not retired with a pension or a SS check. I do this full time, if you are one of these people that has so much time on their hands, and another income, or someone else supporting you, please think about this before you give help so freely.

You may ask, “If you hate them so, why do you still visit.” Because anytime anything happens in the book seller world, or there is any prob with any book seller site/service, a million people rush to be the first to post about it.

***One should also be forewarned that there is just as much misinformation on the forums as good info, and people will preach to the heaven about how to do something, but if you order a book from them, you will find that they aren’t practicing preachers.

best,

BWB