Q&A: How can I find out the quantity of books another seller has?
QUESTION: I've listed a book for sale on Amazon but am unsure where to price it. Another seller has it listed far below the price of most other sellers. I'd like a quick sale but don't want to price low if this other seller is going to run out quickly. How can I tell if this seller has a huge quantity of the book?
ANSWER: The fastest way to see the quantity in another seller's listing is to add the item to your Amazon shopping cart temporarily. Here's how:
Go to the seller listings here for the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. This is a good example, because it's a current blockbuster (its sales rank is about 275) but since it's oversupplied on Amazon, it's priced too low now.
As I'm looking at the listings now (on the afternoon of June 23), the seller smokymtnbooks has the low price at $4.98. Click the orange button on the right of this listing, "Add to Cart." (Be sure to turn off one-click checkout if you have it turned on.)
On the next page, click on the shopping cart icon at the top of the page. You'll see the book "Collapse" in your cart, and a Quantity box on the right. Delete the number 1 in the quantity box and enter 999, then press return. When I did that just now, the number 999 changed to 140 when the page reloaded. That means this seller's listing had a quantity of 140 at that moment.
What does all this mean? Well, if you want to sell a copy of "Collapse" on Amazon this weekend, you'll probably need to price it at around $5. But my hunch is you could sell it for $8 or $9 if you wait until the end of the summer. I'm betting this book will be assigned reading for many college sociology students this fall. When students start buying it in August, its sales rank might go down to about 50, and these low-priced copies will be snapped up in a hurry.
There's no guarantee the price will go back up, that's just my guess. The reason it's going for $4.98 now is it's a "remainder" book -- the publisher printed too many copies, and bookstores are starting to send some back. Depending on how heavily overstocked stores are with this book, "Collapse" could literally collapse this summer, and become Amazon's next penny book.
ANSWER: The fastest way to see the quantity in another seller's listing is to add the item to your Amazon shopping cart temporarily. Here's how:
Go to the seller listings here for the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. This is a good example, because it's a current blockbuster (its sales rank is about 275) but since it's oversupplied on Amazon, it's priced too low now.
As I'm looking at the listings now (on the afternoon of June 23), the seller smokymtnbooks has the low price at $4.98. Click the orange button on the right of this listing, "Add to Cart." (Be sure to turn off one-click checkout if you have it turned on.)
On the next page, click on the shopping cart icon at the top of the page. You'll see the book "Collapse" in your cart, and a Quantity box on the right. Delete the number 1 in the quantity box and enter 999, then press return. When I did that just now, the number 999 changed to 140 when the page reloaded. That means this seller's listing had a quantity of 140 at that moment.
What does all this mean? Well, if you want to sell a copy of "Collapse" on Amazon this weekend, you'll probably need to price it at around $5. But my hunch is you could sell it for $8 or $9 if you wait until the end of the summer. I'm betting this book will be assigned reading for many college sociology students this fall. When students start buying it in August, its sales rank might go down to about 50, and these low-priced copies will be snapped up in a hurry.
There's no guarantee the price will go back up, that's just my guess. The reason it's going for $4.98 now is it's a "remainder" book -- the publisher printed too many copies, and bookstores are starting to send some back. Depending on how heavily overstocked stores are with this book, "Collapse" could literally collapse this summer, and become Amazon's next penny book.
posted by Steve Weber at 6/23/2006
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