Q&A: Should I offer international shipping on my used books at Amazon Marketplace?
QUESTION: I've been selling used books on Amazon for about a year. I don't offer international shipping, but I'm considering it. What are the pros and cons?
ANSWER: On the plus side, offering international shipping will get you some additional sales and more volume -- perhaps another 7 percent, depending on your stock. Hard-to-find titles attract overseas buyers, so it's smart to check the "international shipping" box when listing your scarce higher-priced books.
But there are so many drawbacks to international shipping, I've eliminated it on all but my most expensive listings in the past year.
Overseas shipping sucks up a lot of your time. You must complete customs forms and deal with the inevitable confused overseas buyers. These customers require lots more hand-holding -- e-mailing back and forth, repeatedly clarifying the shipping terms, etc. Sometimes overseas buyers don't use English well, so communicating is a challenge.
On the other hand, international customers buy a good percentage of higher-end, scarce titles that they're unable to find locally. So on those high-margin sales, I'm willing to put up with the occasional hassle.
If you're still building your feedback record and need the cashflow, international shipping is a good option. To keep your feedback clean, I recommend free upgrades to Global Priority airmail, particularly on standard-sized books that fit into a flat-rate envelope. Amazon's checkout page tells international customers their book will be shipped via "surface mail" and arrive in 4 to 6 weeks, but this doesn't stem the complaints from customers who expect their book promptly.
I never worry about insuring overseas shipments worth less than $75. But if you're sending a super-expensive book, insurance is worth the peace of mind. However, Postal insurance isn't available for Global Priority packages. You'll need to ship the book via regular airmail to insure it, so that will be considerably more expensive.
Also, there are a few countries where the Postal Service doesn't send Global Priority mail, including Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia and some others. So you'll need to send those via regular airmail, but fortunately Canada and Western Europe will account for most of your international sales.
If you list your books with an automated system, remember to disable international shipping for your larger, heavier books. I still remember the time when I was a new seller, and a buyer from Germany bought a huge, 8-lb. Biology book I'd accidentally offered internationally. The book sold for about $2 and was too large for a Global Priority envelope, so I lost about $15 on this "sale" after paying the airmail fee.
I'd be interested in comments from readers. How has international selling worked for you?
ANSWER: On the plus side, offering international shipping will get you some additional sales and more volume -- perhaps another 7 percent, depending on your stock. Hard-to-find titles attract overseas buyers, so it's smart to check the "international shipping" box when listing your scarce higher-priced books.
But there are so many drawbacks to international shipping, I've eliminated it on all but my most expensive listings in the past year.
Overseas shipping sucks up a lot of your time. You must complete customs forms and deal with the inevitable confused overseas buyers. These customers require lots more hand-holding -- e-mailing back and forth, repeatedly clarifying the shipping terms, etc. Sometimes overseas buyers don't use English well, so communicating is a challenge.
On the other hand, international customers buy a good percentage of higher-end, scarce titles that they're unable to find locally. So on those high-margin sales, I'm willing to put up with the occasional hassle.
If you're still building your feedback record and need the cashflow, international shipping is a good option. To keep your feedback clean, I recommend free upgrades to Global Priority airmail, particularly on standard-sized books that fit into a flat-rate envelope. Amazon's checkout page tells international customers their book will be shipped via "surface mail" and arrive in 4 to 6 weeks, but this doesn't stem the complaints from customers who expect their book promptly.
I never worry about insuring overseas shipments worth less than $75. But if you're sending a super-expensive book, insurance is worth the peace of mind. However, Postal insurance isn't available for Global Priority packages. You'll need to ship the book via regular airmail to insure it, so that will be considerably more expensive.
Also, there are a few countries where the Postal Service doesn't send Global Priority mail, including Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia and some others. So you'll need to send those via regular airmail, but fortunately Canada and Western Europe will account for most of your international sales.
If you list your books with an automated system, remember to disable international shipping for your larger, heavier books. I still remember the time when I was a new seller, and a buyer from Germany bought a huge, 8-lb. Biology book I'd accidentally offered internationally. The book sold for about $2 and was too large for a Global Priority envelope, so I lost about $15 on this "sale" after paying the airmail fee.
I'd be interested in comments from readers. How has international selling worked for you?
posted by Steve Weber at 2/16/2006
5 Comments:
Hi, Steve, looks like I am becoming a regular here. When we were active on ABE, International sales were a major part of the sales! And, surprisingly things went mostly smooth for us. Even some surprises like an order for $150 to Russia that went well and got praise from the buyer! Another to Israel surprised us by going just fine. On Amazon.com we restrict our International offering to if the item will fit in a Global Priority flat rate. So far there have only been a few International orders on Amazon, but they have gone fine. As you mention, the global priority flat rate saves alot of hassle! Also, as you mentioned, International buyers buy the more expensive scarce stuff. Sometimes I get the feeling we have found the one person in the world who might appreciate what we aquired locally... I find that one of the cool things of this biz!
The weak dollar is another advantage to selling books to international customers. Sometimes I research a book and discover that I'm the only US seller for that title. I can then price it higher than the UK listings, yet sell it more quickly.
I always use Global Priority Mail when I can because it is so reliable; the book will arrive in less than a week, usually. Hiring FedEx to handle its Priority Mail shipments was a smart move by the USPS.
I have gotten burnt shipping surface or even air mail internationally. The buyers have become so spoilt that they really expect their book tomorrow, via Global Priority Mail. Nobody ever takes Amazon's 4 - 6 weeks into account.
I only ship internationally if it fits into the SMALL Global Priority envelope now, since the Amazon's reimbursement doesn't add up anymore for the big one. Also, the book has to be under a pound, to save me the hazzle to fill out the form and go to the Post Office. My carrier picks up the small ones for me. This works out really well. I feel sorry for the international customers, since so many seller were forced to eliminate the international shipping option due to Amazon's crazy commission scheme. I get requests all the time wondering if I am willing to ship internationally. If the book was expensive enough, maybe, but I am not willing to waste time at the Post Office, hazzle with forms and pay extra in shipping, thus losing an even larger amount of profit to commissions for 10 bucks or so.
I'm running the e-commerce platform for a major Polish portal (www.wp.pl), and we've been trying to interest sellers of English-language books to list on the site (Poland has 40m people, and there's a fair amount of interest in English-language books).
We'd be interested in any specific changes one would make to the sales process that would make it easier for U.S. sellers to sell overseas.
I'm running the e-commerce platform for a major Polish portal (www.wp.pl), and we've been trying to interest sellers of English-language books to list on the site.
We'd be interested in any specific changes one would make to the sales process that would make it easier for U.S. sellers to sell overseas.
My biggest specific-change suggestion would be to have an English page the site. I don't find anything I can read there. ajan -at- gmail -dot- com
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home