It Always Tickles Me When I sell to TV Shows. . .

I just sold an OOP book to the Jim Lehr News Hour. . .I don’t want to say what it is lest I spoil some show plan and give a heads up to their competitors. I will just say that it was a history book. . .

Last year I sold a book to The Daily Show.

Both of these books were passed up by other dealers, and I picked them up because they were from a genre that I personally was interested in. So I guess it just feels good to know that my gut feeling on these two books paid off, as well as that Politically oriented TV shows are also interested in the same thing as I am.

****

Today, has been a good day. . .I also sold a 1959 psychology book for $100, another book that other dealers passed up, it only took 2 months to sell–I was lucky 🙂

Also a book I purchased for arbitrage 2 months ago sold. . .That it sold in 2 months makes me think that maybe I should’ve listed it for more–I didn’t have a whole lot of info to go on in pricing this item. Both of these books had no ISBNs and high ranking numbers on Amazon, and though these ranking numbers don’t mean as much for those of us who specialize and sell on other sites, these 2 books happened to sell on Amazon, and not on the venue that I expected them to sell on. 2 copies of the book that I sold for $100 are still sitting on ABE, same price and condition as mine.

I like the way this week is shaping up. . .A good scouting day yesterday despite the crappy Scout Pal issues that have been persistent for a little over 2 months. More on this later.

Some exciting B &N News for BWB

That’s right, B & N has accepted BWB to sell directly through them! Yea! No more Alibris for B&N sales. Booo–it took them just about 1 year to approve me, during that time I lost the password–but I finally figured it out a few minutes ago. Now I have to get my SFTP login info, and I suspect that may take a few days.

Long time between posts. I took 2 poor man’s vacations, followed up by 2 frenzied work weeks. . .First, I had friends in from out town for a week at the beginning of March–during this time I did not List or reprice or anything, I just shipped what sold, and as soon as they left I made up for lost time by working dbl the hours I usually do. . .til I got the stupid Cold/Flu Head Chest thingy for 5 days, and then did the no scouting/listing only shipping and then dbl hour thing again.

And Here I am. Only a couple NOOBs to bitch about, but I will have to get that in the next post. . .

Getting Squeezed At Every End TY USPS

Boo for more Postal Increases. . .

It’s been harder than usual this time of year. . .Besides the price of Gas and Food going up, my #1 selling venue Amazon has been the pits for me. . .And overall, I’m pretty much only moving my lower priced stock, as I imagine everyone else is starting to feel the pinch of rising prices too, and spending big bucks on a book is simply out of the question. All my local scouting spots have raised their prices, yet again. . .

Why has Amazon been so craptastic for me? Well, it could be the influx of new sellers from Ebay that have been pricing 20% to 50% below me, and then all the repricing fools that kick in. So even though I have stock that usually turns quick, prices are going down so fast that I’m never on the first page. I count on my good feedback to get sales and not always have the lowest price, but 2nd page is the pits.
And perhaps there are many new sellers out there who are now selling their books for some extra gas money instead of donating them, or trading them in at local bookstores. They always put up their books too cheap, and the repricing fools always follow.

I know a good book will gain it’s value back, buy, it still sucks none the less to have no chance at selling it until all the lowballers bite the dust.

It has led to some successful arbitrage, but, mostly it’s just deflated the book prices for my OOP and Best Selling Stuff.

A part of me thinks that there is just something wrong with Amazon too. . .My other venues are doing fine, and even trending upwards. I mean seriously, I can sell 20 books on Amazon one day, and the very next day sell 2. I’ve never had such sporadic sales on Amazon in the 6 years I’ve been selling there–I even had 2 days with ZERO sales, despite adding new stock–I don’t think that I’ve ever had a zero day on Amazon before, cept for vaca. I check that my books have been uploaded after I finish listing them, so it’s not that. . .And I sure as hell am no where near my velocity limit.

I can deal with the Postal Increase for media mail, and I’m glad that I closed my Ebay store as it is going to cost an arm and 2 legs to send books priority–my books either don’t fit in flat rate envelopes or are too expensive for them. Thing is that Ebay buyers seem to want their books in 4 days, but will they pay $8 for that, or ream you with 1 star when your media package gets there in 7 days.

I just don’t think that I can afford to upgrade for free anymore on more expensive sales, ahem, not that they are rolling in right now. . .but $7.70 for 2lb book and $9.80 Flat Rate Box, plus $1.75 for sig confirmation adds up after the original shipping credit is spent. $60 book minus commission, cost of prod, cost of services, cost of gas for scouting, that extra $5 – $10 out of the pocket starts to hurt.

It’s Not all Bad. . .

I will take a break from my bitching, to share an e-mail I got today from an Alibris customer.

“I wanted to let you know that the book arrived today in fabulous
condition, and I wanted to thank you for the care in packaging it and
in sending it. I also wanted to say thank you and kudos for the
very, very accurate description you gave of the book. I was not
disappointed in the least. It made the transaction a pleasure.”

I mean, in this faceless enterprise of selling books on the web, it’s nice when I get letters and e-mails like this, thought I would share so that you all know that not everything in my life is glum 🙂

Jackass teaching Idiot School

BWB walked into an unbelievable situation at her favorite spot to scout last week.

A guy I’ve never seen b4 was teaching another guy how to scout books. Ok, LOUDLY teaching. Showing him how to scan, telling him which books he should bother looking at, and spouting all sorts of online info so that the other 10 people shopping the book aisle could hear him. Yes, definitely stroking himself and getting off on it.

And more stupidly, this 60 ft long book section is right next to the stock room door ( which he was standing right next to) and across from the 3 cash registers and all the people standing in line.

The nOOB he was teaching kept grabbing penny books and saying, “How bout this one?” He didn’t have the first clue to anything about books, not even how to handle them as he kept throwing them from 5 ft away into a cart…

I just sped ahead and looked at a dif section of shelves, and still walked out with 15 books, but man, how stupid is this guy?

I expect a few of those who were close enough to overhear this guys seminar about selling online, to now sell their books online instead of donating, and eventually become hobby sellers and buy stock at this very store, as well as the store to raise their prices once again.

Jackass.

Ebay’s Stupid New Feedback Policy

Can’t leave a buyer a Negative, or even a Neutral !

This is idiotic. . .Even on Amazon a Seller can leave negative feedback for buyers to warn other sellers about potential scammers and hard to deal with customers.

No buyer needs perfect feedback.
I love when people say they are being held hostage by the seller, if they are a shitty seller then simply take the chance they might leave a negative, who cares? You don’t need your perfect 100% ! A few negatives will never hurt the buyer, us sellers are smart enough to know retaliatory feedback and real deserved negative feedback. However your seller needs near perfect 100%, and this policy will only help scammers. And now us sellers will have no way to be forewarned of these people.

My policy is that I don’t leave a positive until I know the transaction is satisfactory,either by feedback or an e-mail. And guess what? I get feedback on almost 90% of my Ebay transactions. Before I started doing this I was hovering around 40%.

Why did I start waiting to leave feedback?
I’ve received just below 3000 positive feedbacks, and 6 negative feedbacks. Every negative I have, the buyer never e-mailed me first to let me fix the problem .

1 feedback is because the person felt that they paid too much! Yes, I came to their house and held a gun to their head and said please buy my overpriced item!

2 feedbacks are for slow shipping–both packages got there in less than 6 business days– one of them 4 business days and this packages was also paid for 2 weeks late. My listings clearly state delivery time, and that I will not ship until paid.

1 negative came from an item damaged during shipment. The 2 others were from Half.com transactions in which I overlooked a flaw.

You know who this policy really hurts? Any New sellers or buyers or INTL buyers.
New sellers are going to have to have to refund even the most blatant scammers. If someone is truly dissatisfied with a product, they won’t even have to return it to the seller, as a new seller won’t be able to take a negative feedback.

New buyers? I already see tons of auctions that state “Do No Bid unless you have 100 Feedbacks.”
I won’t take this approach, but, I will close my store and only run auctions, and for expensive items, I will cancel bids of anyone without a proven track record, or even the slightest spottiest record-where as before I would ship to those people on the edge and just take extra precautions. A proven track record to me means a couple years of buying on Ebay, at least 100 positive feedbacks preferably in the past year, and the purchase of other expensive items.

I will also not being doing International transactions through Ebay anymore. INTL transactions usually take a couple extra steps of communication, and there is all sorts of room to get threatened with a neg before the seller has any chance to work things out. I think I don’t need to elaborate here-as one can read my post about International shipping.

It’s true that if I think that someone is scamming, I don’t have to refund, I can send all my proof to paypal, etc. I can absorb a negative, as many sellers can.

Some sellers simply won’t be able to do this without really damaging their feedback percentage, these people will truly be held hostage to feedback, and will lose sales in the short term, until other sellers feedback percentage even out with theirs. I’m guessing that 99.7 and up won’t be considered excellent a year from now, it will be more like 98.7 and up.

People are quick to point out that buyer feedback doesn’t count on Amazon-as I’ve said b4, one can still leave a negative to warn other sellers.

Also, negatives don’t hurt as much on Amazon, and for many of us, we do much more volume on Amazon and can still hold a 99 or 100%.

Also it’s the way the feedback is viewed. Customers on Ebay see a percentage number, and are leary of buying 99.6 and below, on amazon the feedback is viewed dif, as stars, one can have 5 full stars and only be 4.9 or 4.8, when one clicks through -which they rarely do–they see 99%, 98%, etc, there are no decimal points, and generally it seems that people start to avoid sellers around the 4.6 mark–i forgot what percentage that figures out to be and I will fix this when I wake up more and get my work done.

So bottomline. I will closing my store and only be doing Auctions on Ebay, and only for those things that I know to be Ebay gold. Of course I’ll still have to put up with jackasses that need to get an unpaid item notice to actually pay–with buy it nows I always check the must pay immediately box, but with auctions, one can’t force people pay right when the auctions over–hmm something that we don’t have to deal with anywhere else.

New Ebay Slogan:
Welcome to Ebay where you pay more than ever to have your customers jack you around.

For more Ebay nightmare stories which illustrate how wrong this policy is,  please see my previous thread : Aggratiing Customers

Ebayer Pet Peeve

Just a quick post today.

One of the things that annoys BWB the most is when an Ebayer buys an item out of my store, doesn’t pay until they get the Unpaid Item Dispute notice, and then pays with an echeck.

Some people ship right away with echecks, I wait for them to clear for pricier items. . . I only needed to be burned once 🙂

This is irratating in a couple ways. . .As you can imagine, it takes a few extra steps to keep track of the transaction. . . And I have gotten a neutral feedback before from one of these buyers for slow shipping–After payment cleared the book only took 5 days to get to to the buyer, if you add the 3 -4 days for the check to clear, it was still within my shipping guidelines listed clearly of 4 – 14 days–apparently I was supposed to ship the book as soon as the customer won the auction, and have faith that they would send along payment someday.

Of course, I know, I should be thankful that something actually sold out of my store. .. I have a previous post describing our love hate relationship. . .

Big Scammer Beware ? Athens OHIO Address

Over 28 Claims in the last 2 months-not counting refunds, and this is just the people whom actually read the Amazon Seller’s Boards.

This may just be an Amazon scam, but, anyone shipping to a certain address in Athens Ohio should read this thread– this guy is ripping off tons of sellers, he claims non delivery or materially different–and it could be happening to people who sell on other sites too. The partial address and names of the company and people are here–and Amazon seller Support even suggested to one seller that they post this info–

http://tinyurl.com/yq8xxa

** Original OP has admitted to listing things under the wrong ISBN–but plenty of other reputable sellers who list things right have been burned, and some of them even won their  A to Z Claims, and we know hard that is.  The current thinking is that this is a rogue employee as these probs seem to have started in the past 2 months, and people had sold successfully to thembefore that with no claims, or lost packages.