Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2010 Issue
Four eBay Bookselling Tips
Even booksellers from Hawaii have an equal opportunity with eBay.
Likewise one of my interests is illustrated books and magazines and some of them may be humorous or have cartoon style graphics. I don't list them in books; I list them in comics. There are many sub-sections to comics, but the real reason to use comics rather than books is that there's been a huge increase in interest in comics and comic related material and even bigger increases in prices for good examples.
People who are interested in comics are also interested in vintage illustration, cartoon albums, older sci-fi and pulp magazines, and oddball paper items with art of every kind. Comic buyers are not primarily looking for books, but they will buy books if they find them in the comic category, because they are looking for vintage illustrated material of a certain style and period.
TIP #2: Understand the difference between Auction and Buy It Now (BIN)
If you sell Buy It Now/Best Offer you pay a low listing fee but a higher percentage of the selling price to eBay. If you sell Buy It Now the price you set is the most you can possibly receive if the item sells. If you also select the Best Offer option you may get offers that are even lower than your original asking price.
If you sell in Auction, you pay a much higher listing fee but a lower percentage of the selling price for final value. The price you set as the opening bid is the least amount you can receive if the item sells. However, if your item actually sells at auction, it is possible to get more, even substantially more than the starting price.
But -- what many booksellers do not realize -- is even a small seller can have a standing account where for a monthly base fee plus a nominal additional per-item charge sellers can list Buy It Now (BIN) items for up to 30 days. The additional amount ranges from about 5 cents to about 20 cents per item depending on which plan is selected and the anticipated volume. The point is --- you can start out selling something at a high price using BIN and risk a maximum of 20 cents in exchange for exposure to a very large number of potential viewers. Think of it as a showroom window or a display case.
Sellers can usually tell by the number of watchers and to a lesser extent by the number of hits, if a BIN item is something that might do better as an auction which costs more and only runs for a week. If there are five or more watchers within the first few days of a month-long BIN item it is an easy task to move it over to Auction. Yes, you'll be out as much 20 cents but chances are very good that there will be at least one bid in the auction format and possibly it may go higher or even much higher. Items that don't get a lot of hits or watchers are probably not good bets for the auction format - so leave them in BIN where the upfront cost is very low and let the clock run out.
This is not rocket science, but most sellers don't do it that way, because they think eBay is only for cheap, cheap, and cheaper where in my experience eBay is the vehicle of choice for buyers seeking scarce, unusual, and hard-to-find.
