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A Strategy
for Independent Booksellers
- First published here in March 2004, Stuart Manley's advice
is as sound as ever. The
forthcoming (April 2004) increase of ABE's commission charges to 8%, along with
their removal of commission-free dealer-to-dealer sales, means it is a good time
for bookdealers to examine a strategy to combat this ever increasing cost. The
major sites won't quit - for as long as the bulk of their dealers are dependent
upon them, they will keep on increasing their charges to as much as they feel
the market will bear - no amount of complaining will change things. And
I can't blame them - their job is to make money - the old days of an altruistic
ABE have gone forever. And an altruistic Amazon and Alibris never existed. But
the major sites have a weakness - the higher they make their charges, the greater
the opportunity for others to provide a listing service at a more competitive
rate. And it
is YOUR job as a bookdealer to foster competitive listing sites with more dealer-friendly
aims and help them grow, so that the major sites do not maintain a stranglehold. The
strategy is straightforward: 1.
Your catalogue list price is used for your own website and for all non-commission
charging sites you choose to join. 2.
When your catalogue is uploaded to commission charging sites, you uplift the list
price by an appropriate percentage, depending upon the site charges. (If your
database does not allow you to do this, it is time, as a professional bookdealer,
you got a database that does.) 3.
You produce an information sheet to inform your customers what percentage commission
each site is charging, and how to avoid that commission if they choose to. This
information sheet should be added to all customer emails (and available within
your bookshop, if you have one). It should not be anti-ABE or anti-anyone - simply
the pros and cons of using each site, with what they charge clearly stated. This
will mean that (a) your books will show up on the metasites such as BookFinder
and AddAll less expensively via the non-commission than via the commission sites,
thus helping the growth of such sites and (b) as the book buying public, with
your help, becomes more savvy, more and more of them will avoid paying commission,
either by going to the dealer direct, or via non-commission sites. If
enough bookdealers adopt this strategy, great inroads can be made into the supremacy
of ABE, Amazon and Alibris over the next few years, to the ultimate benefit of
all our bookdealing profession. We
have been following this strategy for over a year now with demonstrable success
and are happy to advise others on the various detail points. Stuart
Manley, Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Alnwick, Northumberland. tel: 01665 604888.
email Any
ideas about how we can preserve our independence and our bottom line? Drop us
a line
From
Peter Shouler of the Water Lane Bookshop
+44(0)1722 337929 This
is one of the techniques I use - I run two instances of 'homebase', one is uploaded
to all the search sites I use, including abe, the other is uploaded to just the
independent sites. The 'homebase' for independent sites contains only 'unique'
items (at the time of ctaloguing), i.e. not available on any site (which surprisingly
often) and inventory numbering starts in a higher range (600,000 upwards in my
case), so these only get listed on the independent sites. It is easy to run different
'homebases' if you have more than one computer, but it can also be done successfully
on one computer. | 
