selling your stuff on Amazon - part 8 - advice for newbies in the first 2 posts

mishkanorman

I ALWAYS have the last minute packing moment of nerves about the book, bit like a date really, will they like it , will they think im too over the top, what if they think its ugly, what if its boring ...........


thank god I havent had a date in over ten years !!! I couldnt cope with the stress


mishka

COOLTRIKERCHICK

getcarter wrote:

:wall: I sold a book yesterday, took one look at it and decided I was too embarrassed to sell it at that price(i had mentioned that it was scuffed in my decription) and refunded half the price! I'm doing muself out of money now...flaming concience(sp!)

someone bought a few items off me on ebay..... and paid all the postage...... when i posted them off... i felt soooo guilty at the diff in price..... i refunded a lot of the postage back...... not even a email back.....i could have kicked my concience that day....:mad:


on average how many books do you have listed at any one time ? ....i have read some peeps have about 900 books on amazon....also if you got this amount of books listed..... how many do you sell per week ?

sorry for the nosey questions......and i know its like saying how long is a peice of string ...lol......but there's a point.. where the law of average % kicks in......

apprentice_tycoon

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote:

on average how many books do you have listed at any one time ? ....i have read some peeps have about 900 books on amazon....also if you got this amount of books listed..... how many do you sell per week ?

sorry for the nosey questions......and i know its like saying how long is a peice of string ...lol......but there's a point.. where the law of average % kicks in......

It really is a piece of string question :rotfl: I have 950 listed and I can sell anything from 5 per day to none - it ebbs and flows, a lot depends on if I've just listed a new batch, I tend to get a flurry for a week or so then it settles back down again

rare_stuff

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote:

on average how many books do you have listed at any one time ? ....i have read some peeps have about 900 books on amazon....also if you got this amount of books listed..... how many do you sell per week ?

sorry for the nosey questions......and i know its like saying how long is a peice of string ...lol......but there's a point.. where the law of average % kicks in......

The law of averages only glances occasionally at amazon, most of the time tending to ignore the number of books listed vs. number of books sold.

What does happen though is that when adding new books a bigger proportion of these will sell in the first week/month after a month the chance of it selling will decrease by a lot, after 6 months if it is still on the shelf it stands a good chance of still being there in another 6 months. This is often referred to as the 'long-tail' effect.

It may depend more on what type of book you are listing, as academic and non-fiction books will see a jump in sales inline with academic terms. A vague guide can be worked out depending on the sales rank of the book and how many other copies there are for sale. If in the top 100 you will normally expect to sell within the first week of listing as long as there isn't dozens of other copies available. Though I have sold 2 copies of an unranked book in the space of a month before, where there are a dozen other copies for sale, unfortunately someone had screwed up the listing and changed it from a book to a VHS tape, complete with page count and publisher details still intact, even after reporting this to amazon it took them over a month to correct the listing, meaning I again sold the book and had to refund!

Currently I have almost 6,000 listings on amazon and am selling approx 100 a week, 4 months ago I had 5,000 and was selling 200 a week, but then I had a much better supply of books and was listing faster to keep up with sales at that time too. I do know sellers that have listings of only 2-3000 that are selling 300+books a week, but they must have an outrageously good supply and most amazon sellers can only dream of such a sales rating!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

thanks guys.......some more questions..... sorry.....

i read a while back that some peeps.... use a hand scanner to list their books...... how does this work.......and are they worth it.......... when you are listing in big numbers.?

and also i read that people get postage discounts..... what type of numbers must you be posting out weekly/monthly.... and what type of discount is it ?


yes i know i am a nosey so and so.....:D

but if you dont ask..... you dont know.....:D

boston_uk

what type of numbers must you be posting out weekly/monthly.... and what type of discount is it ?

For packet post you need to be sending 5000 large letters / packets per year. It works on avereage weight as far as I can understand.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content3?mediaId=600105&catId=5200019

Full details on there - and you can search the business section for others

foxybabe

Hi, what is the easiest way to tell if a book is a first edition. I have read the first page but I am still unclear how to tell.

Many Thanks everyone.

boston_uk

Hi foxybabe

You need to follow the links in that 1st post to the other sites. A search on the thread will also pick up more questions like this and their answers!

boston_uk

cont'd .....

especially the very comprehensive answer from a couple of days ago by rare_stuff, our resident guru

jo_b_2

foxybabe wrote:

Hi, what is the easiest way to tell if a book is a first edition. I have read the first page but I am still unclear how to tell.

Many Thanks everyone.

First editions seem to be a bit of a minefield and not the pot of gold you might think, unfortunately.

This post might give you some more help.