Q&A: Where did my Amazon listings go?

QUESTION: I just checked 60 of my Amazon listings and a bunch are missing. The first two I checked don't even show up. Surprised, I frantically searched my open listings for a few more. Only three out of the first 12 I checked were even there.

Of the remaining 48 randomly selected books, only about half were actually listed. Had these items been penny books, my concern would be less urgent. But most were saleable items and, since having been relisted, have sold. I am a Pro-Merchant and have been for the duration of the listings (about one year).

Furthermore, several listings I checked by clicking on the link for the item led to a dead end, 'This Page No Longer Exists' page. My theory is that the page was closed after the listing, but how would I have known?! Now, I fear, I have to check every single link to every single listing and pull each book from my shelves to learn whether or not it is even listed. This would, obviously, be as enormous a project.

There has been no indication to me that any of these listings were closed. Where did they go? This is, obviously, very disappointing and frustrating for me.

ANSWER: This sort of thing has been a continuing problem for me too, ever since I've been selling on Amazon. It seems to be just a random thing, that every once in a while some of my listings just drop off into thin air. About once every six to nine months I go through and make sure everything on my shelves has a listing. I usually find about 15-20 percent of the items I have are no longer listed, for no apparent reason. Very frustrating, because I depend on Amazon's listings to know what I have in inventory.

Also, there has been a big glitch at Amazon recently, and that may be part of what you're seeing. So before you do anything drastic (like taking a complete inventory) I would give this a few more days. There are many comments on Amazon's seller discussion board about missing listings. I think there is some kind of payment snafu that is making the dropped listings problem look even worse at the moment.

And there's one more factor: Every so often Amazon goes through their catalog and deletes books. Sometimes there seems to be a legitimate reason for it, like the book is an obsolete edition. And other times these deletions seem to be just random and nonsensical. Your listing won't be closed, but it's in limbo because it's not showing up anywhere on Amazon. For this kind of missing listing, assuming it's a fairly valuable book, you should verify that the ISBN is no longer in Amazon's catalog. Then try to find the best match for what remains in Amazon's catalog and list it there.

I remember one time about six years ago, Amazon had a big crash and lost most of the listings of many of its Pro-Merchants. Poof, one day they were gone, and that was that. Those sellers who didn't have a backup list of their stock had to relist their whole inventory.

Since you're a Pro-Merchant and don't have a separate inventory system, I'd recommend keeping a periodic backup by generating an Open Listings report at least once a week and saving it to your hard drive. That way, if Amazon has a big failure someday, you'll have a record of your ISBNs, descriptions, and SKUs, and you won't have to reinvent the wheel entirely.

eBay adds features to TurboLister

eBay is adding features to TurboLister this week, including some functions that were only available through "My eBay":

• View and Edit your Active and Scheduled Listings. You can now view and edit your live and scheduled listings right from Turbo Lister. Make your desired changes within the tool, click on "Synchronize" in the top navigation bar, and your listings will be updated on the site.

• Relist or Sell Similar Items. Relist items or use the Sell Similar option in Turbo Lister by using the new buttons within the Listing Activity view.

• More Time-Saving Options. "Find & Replace" text within your listings. In addition, you'll be able to use Windows shortcuts to copy/paste information between views, and to export data from Turbo Lister to a spreadsheet program like Excel.

Q&A: How can I avoid repricing scams?

QUESTION: I'm concerned that unscrupulous sellers on Amazon Marketplace might scam Marketplace vendors who automatically reprice their inventory to meet the lowest price.

For example, assume the market price for a specific textbook is $80, but student X doesn't want to pay that much. He knows about automatic repricing, so Student X offers to SELL the book on Amazon for $45, even though he doesn't have a copy. He waits for the automatic repricers to match his price, then he buys it cheap. It seems like this could be just the sort of "insider tip" that could spread like wildfire across college campuses.

ANSWER: I think this type of thing is already happening and will only increase as more students buy books online. I wouldn't be surprised if some "real" booksellers are using this technique to see if they can outsmart (or even sabotage) their competition.

There are several ways to avoid this trap. It's smart for sellers to have a "rule" that any price change over a certain percentage or dollar amount won't be automatic. Here's another way to approach it: Set a minimum price for each item, so you're essentially preventing the price from going below your wholesale price or your target price.

Another safeguard is to eyeball the competing sellers. For example, any time I reprice a book over $20, I check the feedback of the sellers with lower prices. If someone without a track record is lowballing, I'll ignore that listing.

As third-party repricing software has gotten more sophisticated, they allow you to specify these types of rules. For example, AMan has a "Price Watch" feature which prevents major upward or downward deviations in price. And it has a graduated decline feature where you can specify that your price will be lowered by only by a certain amount.

Kevin O'Brien, who developed AMan, says there's another perhaps less-common shenanigan some sellers use. The seller will raise their price on a book temporarily, trying to get you to raise your price too. Then they'll come in at a much lower price, trying to get a quick sale while you're at an uncompetitive price.

If anyone has more techniques or tools for avoiding these kinds of scams, please add a comment.

Q&A: How can I list books for sale on Amazon's international sites?

QUESTION: Now that Amazon has done away with zShop listings in lieu of building a universal catalog, how does one go about listing a book that is already listed on Amazon.uk, for example? I have bought from other U.S. third-party sellers who have listings there. How can a single person set up such an account which requires you to have an address, checks and a credit card in that country?

I would imagine that to list a book in the U.K. catalog, one has to have some markup to cover shipping costs. Any insight on listing books that I cannot list at my regular Amazon.com (U.S.) account?

ANSWER: As you probably know, several weeks ago Amazon launched a feature where our U.S. listings automatically appear on the international sites, if the book isn't already for sale there, and assuming we've checked "Yes" for international shipping.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not?) I've gotten lots of e-mail lately from sellers having trouble listing books on Amazon.com which were published outside the U.S. Maybe this is a temporary glitch, maybe not.

Anyway, back to your question: Apparently a lot of U.S. sellers open up accounts on the international sites so they can sell there directly -- although it sounds like a lot of trouble to me.

However, if you were doing a good volume of business at the international sites, it might be worth it to set up an account with one of the software vendors that can provide some automation, so that you're not constantly having to manually delete the listings that sell.

I'm totally clueless about this, so I asked Shaun Jamieson, the business development manager at FillZ, for some more elaboration, and the answers appear below. (FillZ is one of several companies that provide automation tools for Amazon sellers.)

QUESTION: If a seller was using your software, can they automatically list on Amazon's U.K., German, Canadian and French sites using their .com account? Or does selling on these other sites require new accounts with those international sites? Can someone sell on those international sites without software such as yours, just by using their browser?

ANSWER: FillZ offers access to all of these markets, but you still have to have separate seller accounts for each market. Sellers can sell directly on those international sites without of a service like FillZ, but it’s more difficult to maintain you inventory when you are getting orders from multiple markets simultaneously.

The main barriers to selling on these markets are having a local mailing address and bank account. FillZ has a referral program to help sellers get set up with escrow bank accounts in Germany and the UK . This makes the decision to list on their markets easier. Since we put this program in place, a number of existing sellers have started listing on the international Amazon markets. I know of sellers who had flown overseas just to get his accomplished.

QUESTION: It seems a lot of sellers are having trouble listing certain books on Amazon.com now because of listings appearing on the international sites. I'm not sure I understand the problem -- whether it's a bug, or just the way things are now.

ANSWER: We have many sellers who list the same inventory on multiple markets including the international Amazon markets. We have, however, only ever heard from one seller who received an error message for an item that was listed to Amazon.com in the context you mention.

This seller was told something to the effect of: This item was already listed on Amazon.co.uk and could therefore could not be listed on Amazon.com. After further clarification and investigation, it appeared as though this item had an ISBN that was in the UK catalog (UK ISBN), and was not in the .com catalog.

I don’t think Amazon was saying the item could not be listed on both markets. I think they were saying the item was not recognized by the catalogue of one market (.com) and were suggesting they list it on the other market (.co.uk).

Amazon will delete customer e-mails and shipping addresses from "Sold, ship now" e-mails

Do you rely on Amazon's "Sold, ship now" e-mails to fill your orders? Starting Feb. 1, those e-mails will no longer contain customer e-mail and shipping addresses. We'll need to get that order information from our Seller Account or with software Amazon will introduce in two weeks.

Here's the announcement:

To protect the privacy of our customers and sellers, we will soon be changing the content of "Sold, Ship Now" e-mails.

Beginning on Thursday, February 1st, "Sold, Ship Now" e-mails will contain only the following information:

• A notification that a customer has purchased one of your products.
• The quantity and product title of the items in the order.

We will no longer be including information about the buyer, such as the buyer e-mail address, or information about the order, such as the order ID or the product ID, in the "Sold, Ship Now" e-mail.

On Jan. 15, Amazon will introduce the Amazon Services Order Notifier application.

When ASON is launched, an icon is added to your Windows system tray in your task bar. Running in the background, it periodically polls Amazon.com to retrieve any new orders you have received. When new orders arrive, ASON displays a user-friendly “pop-up” notification to let you know that you have new orders.

Here's what the new software will look like (click on the pictures for a clearer view):

Pop-up notification:








View up to 30 days of transactions in the Order History window:



























View the details of each order and print shipping labels and packing slips:

























I'm interested to know the reaction of sellers to this. If this new Amazon software works as advertised, it could make order retrieval more reliable. I've had several mishaps this year when my Internet provider, Verizon, deleted my Amazon e-mails, mistaking them for spam.

Amazon's new software could also reduce the value of some of the third-party software that automates the tasks of printing address labels and packing slips, especially if you're paying $30 a month to handle those jobs. What do you think?

How to be a hero instead of a villain at the Post Office

I don't know what I'd do without online postage. My pet peeve is standing in line, and there's nothing worse than standing in line at the Post Office, if you ask me.

To make it even worse, some of the sourpuss postal clerks just hate to see us online booksellers lugging our day's worth of sales up to the counter. That's another pet peeve of mine: Being hated for bringing someone business.

And there's more: In the past year or two, Post Offices have been outfitted with a new postage printing system that works much slower than the older system, which can make your time with the clerk even longer. Another pet peeve: New, "improved" technology that makes tasks harder to do, not easier.

I've been using online postage practically since I started selling books six years ago. I print my postage at home and drop my packages at my Post Office's loading dock -- half the time, they don't even know I've been there. And hardly a day goes by when the thought doesn't go through my mind, "What will I do if Endicia is down and I can't print postage tomorrow?"

But believe it or not, there are some people who actually enjoy going to the Post Office. Here's a note I received from Carlos Sandoval, who looks forward to taking in his mail every day. If you take your mail to the counter too, pay attention, because Carlos a great idea for making your trip more pleasant, especially during this holiday season. He's been through the drill so many times, he knows the Postal Service's computer system better than most of the clerks:

Call me old fashioned, I still like the interaction with people and like to talk with the people behind the postal counter. And so it goes for the many years I've been selling books, CDs, and movies online.

But a funny thing happened just a month before the busy holiday season -- the USPS decided to outfit all their Post Offices with a new system complete with new software and touch-screen display units. This was supposed to streamline the processing of mail. But, alas, it did the opposite -- many counter personnel complained that it slowed down processing with answering of many questions, slow refreshing of many screens of information, just to process one piece of mail. And, of course, there was learning a new system in a short amount of time.

So standing there with stacks of mail to process was starting to wear on me and the counter person. I could see the frustration they were experiencing, and what was once a pleasant visit was fast turning into drudgery. But I noticed what was going on with the new system. The clerk put on a piece of mail, typed in the Zip code, and proceeded to punch at the flat screen before them, waiting five seconds for the next screen and punch another response, wait for the next screen, and so on. Finally it would spit out a label and it would be applied to the package. On to the next.

Want to be a hero to that person behind the counter? Here's the secret. Tell them to quit punching the screen, keep their hands on
the keyboard. Each of the "buttons" they have to "push" on the screen correspond to the F keys (function keys) on their keyboards. So on a particular display, F1 equals the first button, F2 is the second, F3 the third, and so on. By memorizing or writing down the series of F keys you are hitting for each type of mailing (Media Mail, First Class, Priority), you can speed up the processing dramatically. For instance, I know the "code" for processing First Class mail is: Put in the zip code, F2, F4, F8, F1 (the first screen of information the second button is always pushed, the second screen the fourth, etc.). So instead of waiting for each screen to come up, the clerk types Zip code, F2, F4, F8, F1. And as he is waiting for the label, he takes the package off the scale and is ready to enter the next package as soon as the label is dispensed. The "code" is different, of course, for all the other kinds of services, especially if there is Delivery Confirmation or insurance. Caution the clerk when entering Priority Mail, the different screens for regular Priority Mail and Flat Rate Priority.

Processing time for my Post Office visit used to average about a half hour for a box of miscellaneous packages; it's now reduced to as little as ten minutes. I still have postal clerks thanking me for teaching them this shortcut that isn't in any of the postal manuals.