Barnes & Noble targets Amazon Marketplace
Regular readers of this blog will recall my previous post about Barnes & Noble's plans for starting a used-book marketplace similar to Amazon Marketplace.Like most online booksellers, I'm interested in expanding my business. Hey, competition is as American as Uncle Pie.
So I applied on the Barnes & Noble's Bookquest Web site as soon as I found out about this in June. But I'd nearly forgotten about it when, today, I got an e-mail from sellerrelations@barnesandnoble.com to let me know, by golly, the application for my seller account had been approved. Hot Diggity!!!
To be honest, I was a bit scared that this was a scam. Seriously, I've gotten so much spam lately. I'd even forgotten what my "password" was. Not only that, I'd personally asked BN.com's management to keep me updated on this program, so I could write about it ON MY BLOG ABOUT SELLING BOOKS ONLINE.
But I never heard diddly, which made me fairly nervous about plugging in my checking account number on the dag-goned Web site.
But I did it anyway, and here's the answer I got via e-mail:
Dear Weber Books,
Congratulations, your application has been approved and your Barnes & Noble Authorized Seller Account is ready to be activated. To activate your account, please click on the link below, or copy and paste the URL into your browser, and sign in:
After you have signed in, you will be asked to read and accept our Seller Agreement. Once you accept the Seller Agreement, your account will be activated. When you receive an email confirming that your account is active, you can begin selling on Barnes & Noble.com. The email will contain instructions on how to log on to your Store Manager, which contains the online tools that you need to manage your business on Barnes & Noble.com. Thank you for applying to become a Barnes & Noble Authorized Seller. We look forward to working with you in the future.
https://secure.barnesandnoble.com/sellers/activate/
Sincerely,
Barnes & Noble Seller Relations
Email: sellerrelations@bookquest.com
Telephone: 866-897-1763
Hours of Operation: 9AM - 8:30PM (ET), Monday through Friday
Here's the fine print. Here's the signup page.
Anyone else get this e-mail? Please, for Heaven's sakes, don't let me be the only one. I need to buy groceries tomorrow.
I've already listed some books. And I'll be sure to update this post when Barnes & Noble updates this section of my new seller account:
posted by Steve Weber at 10/12/2006
4 Comments:
Hi Steve,
We were accepted as online B&N booksellers several months ago. The email you received looks exactly like the one we got and things have been fine. We too had to "log on" after receipt of the email and enter all our personal info. We receive orders from B&N but not as many as from the three A's but more than Biblio. I keep hoping B&N will promote it more vigorouly. We shall see.
Thanks. I checked my bank balance this morning and everything was still there, so I guess it's legit. I still transferred everything from Checkings to Savings, just in case ;-)
I agree, if Barnes & Noble wants to move third-party merchandise, they're going to have to show the used book price right on the detail pages, just like Amazon does. Making the customer dig around for it isn't going to cut it.
Why bother having a marketplace if nobody can see it?
Are you comfortable with the Barnes and Noble returns policy? Every time I read that you must accept any return within 120 days of the order I automatically think "or at the end of the semester. Whichever comes first." Do you really want to be a lending library?
I also find the part quite charming about if a lost item arrives after a refund has been issued, the customer has no obligation to return the item. This could get quite pricey!
I am not too concerned about the returns policy for Barnes & Noble it because even though returns are aggravating, they are a very small part of things overall.
On the other hand, I don't see any reason under the sun to have a 120 day return policy, it's just asking for trouble. I can't think of a
single reason for having a refund window more than 60 days. Very seller unfriendly.
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