Q&A: Crazy lowball sellers on Amazon, eBay and Half.com
QUESTION: I have been selling books on Amazon for a few years. How do you deal with my "favorite" situation: I have a rare book, CD etc. It's out of print and there's only one used copy on offer. It is listed for $5. Aaaah!
Do you put your book in for the $99 it's worth and outwait the crazy amateur? What usually happens though, is that the next person comes along, only looks at the lowest price, and lists his for $4.95, or worse $2.95. Before you know it, there's another penny book!
Don't people understand you can make real money selling rare books? Unfortunately, rare books take time to sell, so there's always plenty of time for another copy to surface at a ridiculous price before mine sells.
In your book, you recommended that if you see a book that is worth $100 dollars online and is available for $60, you should buy it. I can only advise against that. Before you know it, somebody else will have found a copy and -- you know the rest.
ANSWER: Inexperienced sellers just wanting to make a "fast buck" (or in some cases just clueless) can ruin things for lots of other people by underpricing. The only hope is that there's enough demand to eventually clear out the low-priced books.
Lots of people say the knowledgeable sellers should snap up the stuff that's listed on Amazon or eBay/Half.com at too-low prices, then relist it at a higher price. I have never been willing to take that chance myself, however. How do you know the item is described properly? And what if the inexperienced seller discovers after receiving my order that he's underpriced his book? He'll either ship it to me, and be mad at me, or won't ship it, and then I'd be mad.
Since a lot of my scarce books are academic books, I can count on two times of the year (August and January) to clear out a lot of the lower-priced listings. When semesters start, the students snap up all the low-priced books and then the higher-priced ones start to sell. So sometimes I'll let a book sit for six months until a new school semester starts when I can sell it at my price.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, I got a copy of a marketing management book, like new, and published only a couple of years ago. The book retails for about $120 and I got it for $15. There were three used copies listed on Amazon from about $40 to $60, so I priced mine at $89. Since it's January I knew it would sell pretty quickly since students are back at school. Sure enough it sold at my price within about five days.
When I said in the book that you can buy a book for $60 and resell it for $100, I should have emphasized that you should be operating on past experience (by previous sales you've made), not just hope. For example, there are four or five scarce nonfiction books that I come across several times a year, and it just sticks in my mind what they're worth because I've sold them several times before. In these cases, I know the demand is always there for them, and the price will hold steady. On the other hand, I would not recommend that someone pay $60 for a book just because there's a copy listed on Amazon for $100. That copy might have been listed on Amazon for five years without selling, and your copy might sit there forever.
Recently there was a great series of letters to the editor on Amazon penny books printed in the Wall Street Journal.
Do you put your book in for the $99 it's worth and outwait the crazy amateur? What usually happens though, is that the next person comes along, only looks at the lowest price, and lists his for $4.95, or worse $2.95. Before you know it, there's another penny book!
Don't people understand you can make real money selling rare books? Unfortunately, rare books take time to sell, so there's always plenty of time for another copy to surface at a ridiculous price before mine sells.
In your book, you recommended that if you see a book that is worth $100 dollars online and is available for $60, you should buy it. I can only advise against that. Before you know it, somebody else will have found a copy and -- you know the rest.
ANSWER: Inexperienced sellers just wanting to make a "fast buck" (or in some cases just clueless) can ruin things for lots of other people by underpricing. The only hope is that there's enough demand to eventually clear out the low-priced books.
Lots of people say the knowledgeable sellers should snap up the stuff that's listed on Amazon or eBay/Half.com at too-low prices, then relist it at a higher price. I have never been willing to take that chance myself, however. How do you know the item is described properly? And what if the inexperienced seller discovers after receiving my order that he's underpriced his book? He'll either ship it to me, and be mad at me, or won't ship it, and then I'd be mad.
Since a lot of my scarce books are academic books, I can count on two times of the year (August and January) to clear out a lot of the lower-priced listings. When semesters start, the students snap up all the low-priced books and then the higher-priced ones start to sell. So sometimes I'll let a book sit for six months until a new school semester starts when I can sell it at my price.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, I got a copy of a marketing management book, like new, and published only a couple of years ago. The book retails for about $120 and I got it for $15. There were three used copies listed on Amazon from about $40 to $60, so I priced mine at $89. Since it's January I knew it would sell pretty quickly since students are back at school. Sure enough it sold at my price within about five days.
When I said in the book that you can buy a book for $60 and resell it for $100, I should have emphasized that you should be operating on past experience (by previous sales you've made), not just hope. For example, there are four or five scarce nonfiction books that I come across several times a year, and it just sticks in my mind what they're worth because I've sold them several times before. In these cases, I know the demand is always there for them, and the price will hold steady. On the other hand, I would not recommend that someone pay $60 for a book just because there's a copy listed on Amazon for $100. That copy might have been listed on Amazon for five years without selling, and your copy might sit there forever.
Recently there was a great series of letters to the editor on Amazon penny books printed in the Wall Street Journal.
posted by Steve Weber at 1/20/2006
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