ABE's Amazon Program

Archive: Online bookselling

We started selling on Amazon's Marketplace and zShop when we first started putting some of our shelf stock online. When we upload the latest additions to our catalog books with ISBNs go into the Marketplace, the other books are shuffled off to the badlands of the zShops.

When you bring up a title on Amazon you'll see BUY IT USED! followed by a price. That is a marketplace listing. The high visibility guarantees a quick sale for a reasonably priced copy of a book that is currently highly sought after; we sell lots of recent pomo crit. and cultural studies.

zShop listings show up at the bottom of the page. Amazon's logic has always eluded me. But I haven't been tempted to crack it after I'd bought an Oxford classical studies encyclopedia and been advised that I might like a copy of Mein Kampf as well.

Aside from the possibly lack of relevance few people scroll to the bottom of a web page. Our zShop sales are minimal and we wouldn't bother listing the old books without ISBNs if it weren't included in our “Pro Merchant Account.”

Many worthwhile books don't merit listing on Amazon. Too many people are selling copies for a penny or a dime. Mostly people selling their own used books or from a back room in their home. Many of them the people who list ex-library books or copies with highlighting as “New!”

With Amazon's slender shipping reimbursement (they keep a chunk of what the charge for shipping for themselves) there'd have to be a revival of slavery before we could sell books for less than three dollars.

When ABE announced that we could have our ABE listings automatically transferred to Amazon we didn't see any reason to do so. Our books are already there. ABE ups the price by a few percent to give themselves a small profit on the listings. If we have a book on for $5.00 why would anyone go to a lower listing and pay $5.35?

ABE called us on the phone last week to ask that we reconsider. Since it wouldn't cost us anything I figured I'd oblige them and went to ABE's site to click on their Amazon agreement.

Tuesday a bunch of orders from ABE's Amazon program poured in. Most of it for pedestrian stock I'm glad to be shed of. Many of the books had been listed on Amazon for a year or two.

We've never pursued Amazon feedback. Our feedback is 4.9 on from about 600 people. If I'd solicited feedback it could easily be a thousand or few. I've tended to hold the feedback system in contempt. One person left us a negative rating because they didn't like the book they'd bought.

My guess is that people are buying our books via ABE even though they cost a little more because ABE's feedback is already in the thousands.

More proof that I wasn't born to be a merchant prince.