Q&A: How do you get Amazon SKUs on your books?
QUESTION: How to you mark your books with SKUs?
ANSWER: I use "removable" laser/inkjet labels, Avery 8066. This gives you 30 labels per sheet. When the book sells, it just takes a second to pull off the label.
The Avery labels are pretty expensive, though, so I usually buy an off-brand from somewhere on the Web, you can find them by searching for "Avery 8066 compatible". Buying them through Staples comes out to 4 cents or 5 cents per label, but you can save more than half by going with a no-name label from places like onlinelabels.com
I also rigged up an automated way of printing the SKUs on the labels. To do this you'd need to print mail-merge form letters in Microsoft Word, pulling the data (SKUs) from an Excel worksheet. You can download a template for the form letter from the Avery Web site.
And if you don't have Excel, there's an excellent free program called "Open Office." It includes a full suite of software, including a word processor and spreadsheet program. I can't tell any difference between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office, except that I can get OpenOffice to work about 95 percent of the time, and Office works about 50 percent of the time. Here's where you can get OpenOffice.
posted by Steve Weber at 9/11/2006
10 Comments:
I use a very simple procedure. I write consecutive numbers on a small Avery removable label (#05422 - 1/2 X 1 1 3/4). The number becomes the location on the shelves (ex: 1 is the first book, 2 is the second, etc.). In the SKU field I add the ranking (ex: 500,000 would be 500K, 1 million would be 1M). You can also add the price you paid for the book in code. The letters in BLACK HORSE can represent the numbers 1-10 (B=1, L=2, etc.).
For us smaller fries - what's wrong with a pencil and an eraser?
Jeff, I'm curious why you add the ranking to your labels? Also: as soon as you pull a book, doesn;t the shelf location change for the rest of the books?
For the benefit of us novices, could you please explain what an SKU is?
SKU is short for Stock Keeping Unit. For us used booksellers, it's a way of positively identifying each book. For example, let's imagine you have three copies of Da Vinci Code listed at different conditions: one like-new, one very good, one acceptable.
The SKU lets you identify the book that goes with each sale, instead of backtracking.
Using an SKU system saves me several hours per day, compared to the way I worked when I started, organizing alphabetically.
Also, you need SKUs to use Amazon's Inventory Loader tool available to Pro-Merchants.
I am a small seller. Each of my bookcases is assigned a letter. Each shelf on the bookcase is assigned a number. Therefore, the first shelf on the first bookcase is A1. So when I have room on A1,I simply put this in the end of the description of the book I am listing. I then put the book on that shelf. I have had no problems with this system. Having to only look on one bookshelf to find a book is much easier and quicker for me than assigning a SKU to each book.
I just like to put the rank on there for my information and enlightenment (I don't write it on the label). The only thing I write is the number of the book. When I sell a book I simply move the books to the left and they stay in order but there is of course a gap in the number.
I have extremely limited space! Have hardcover books stacked on a shelf alphabetically, oversized paperbacks standing on another shelf alphabetically and regular paperbacks alphabetically in book-high cardboard boxes marked the date they were entered.
It's starting to get crazy and space getting MORE restrictive. ALL suggestions from you people with experience (big and small sellers) is GREATLY APPRECIATED !
briansmonky - get more space. Just kidding. Luckily I do not have a space problem, just an organization problem - I plan to buy some shelve this week, and I think jim c's method would work fine for me. Steve did a blog on bookshelves a couple of weeks ago, and someone commented that he used the large lidded plastic storage containers - the sku was the date that he filled the boxes. Maybe this method would work for you - you could stack the storage boxes up as high as you dared...
We have over 4,000 books and no time to mark each individual book. We put books in boxes and mark the boxes with a sku, with each book having extra letters to identify. For example, 12bcheston. Would be located in box 12b, and the book would be on Charlton Heston. Works simple. Fast. Efficient. Why overcomplicate it?
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home