Recommendation for Website to Sell books?
brian26
Posts: 826
A few weeks ago a recommendation was made for a website that's really good for selling books. It wasn't Amazon. The discussion came up after it was noted that Ebay has been a terrible place to sell books. Any help is appreciated!
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Comments
These sites get good reviews from EBAY-sellers, too.
abes
alibris
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I still like AMZN, because of the diverse/large traffic.
Selling books on the internet is amazingly competitive. Unless you have something unique it is not worth it. I run a "Friends of the Library" organization and we only sell higher end and rare stuff on Amazon and we average about 30-50 sales a month of usually really esoteric stuff. We have a "Pro" store at $39.99/mo and 15% commission on each sale...there is also an Individual Account level which is no monthly, but is 99 cents per sale PLUS 15%. The give a shipping allowance (you cannot set shipping prices) so you need to be sure that will cover your costs if you price really low.
If you complain about eBay fees (I don't) I wouldn't recommend going to Amazon. Amazon will get you great traffic but the price competition is brutal. Since Amazon has an open API (programming interface) there are sellers with scripts that check to see that their prices are lower than everyone else's so there is this constant price war on common stuff so most of it ends up at .01
If you are already an eBay seller it's easy to set up an account with half.com which is an eBay subsidiary and there is some cross-site searching available. Fees are less than Amazon but in line with eBay.
Abe and Alibris were in the game early but are becoming less popular. I think they charge around 17%.
Sites such as Addall.com and Bookfinder.com search all of these sites for the best price.