Lately I've been surfing eBay to fill in some holes in my bookshelf. I hate to read a series out of order so if I'm missing a book or two from a series I prefer to grab them at Annie's Book Swap or eBay.
One thing I've also been doing is going through the wholesale lots on eBay to grab whole series from authors I like. In doing so, I see a lot of things sellers are doing wrong in that category. Even though I doubt any of those sellers will read this, I feel compelled to offer them some advice.
1) Look to see what everyone else is selling.
The number of sellers listing the same things are pretty high, and it's funny to see a bunch of sellers staring their lots at a low price and another couple starting nearly identical lots for five to ten times more. Unless you've got something different, don't expect to make a fortune selling book lots.
2) If you have romance books to sell, save your time and throw them away.
Don't take my word for it, use the search function. People that read romance books must not know how to use the internet, because the vast majority of lots don't get bids. Yours won't either, trust me.
3) Learn your genres
Science fiction and horror/suspense are not the same thing. Political thrillers and war novels aren't the same thing either. Don't put them together and expect bids. And another thing you shouldn't mix together: male and female writers of any genre. Lots of readers have a preference for one or the other. Mixing them, unless you find the right reader, reduces the number of bidders you get.
4) List the books in the lot, and have a picture of the covers
And don't do just one or the other unless you have no choice. I have a list of books I'm looking for, and if you don't list the books in the lot I can't decide if I'm going to bid or not. Having a picture of the covers helps for the folks that are more visual.
5) Multiples of the same book is a no-no
Listing a lot of four of the same book is dumb, even if it's a book people might care about. Listing a lot of four of the same book that no one cares about is just a waste of time and money.
6) Don't bother listing your book as "HTF"
When there were thirty listed in the last month, and a hundred available in the eBay stores, "hard to find" seems like a silly thing to say. Plus if it's a paperback released in the last ten years, it ain't "HTF" under any definition of the phrase.
There's a ton more stuff I could list, but as I have to snipe an auction in 3 minutes I'll have to leave it at this...for now.
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"HTF" is bad enough, but how about "RARE?" Some of these dealers think "rare" just means "relatively old." There are probably 200 copies of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (on CD, vinyl, and cassette) on eBay at any given time. And out of those, there are usually a dozen or more listing it as "rare." Sorry... I meant "RARE!"
ReplyDeleteAnd it drives me nuts when they tell you when a VHS or DVD came out and make it sound like it's the year of the film's release. "Really? 'Gone with the Wind,' from 1997? I didn't hear that they'd re-made that... " I know that sometimes, it might matter. The 1989 VHS release of "The Wizard of Oz" was a 50th anniversary edition, and it had some cool extra features, but usually... nope!
By the way, Shrek: Extra points to you for writing "eBay" correctly. I usually see it as "Ebay."
P.S. ~~ Still waiting for that email about what you've been doing since 1989... ;-)