Searching for Out-of-Prints from the Buyer's and Seller's Perspectives
- By Carl Burnham
2004's most sought after out-of-print book
By Carl Burnham
As booksellers, we are always on the lookout for new markets to gain access to new buyers of our rare and new books and ephemera. In the online world, the old adage is doubly true that "You shouldn't keep all your eggs in one basket." This phrase is said to have possibly originated from an English translation of Don Quixote. In any case, a bookseller has to be diversified in where his books are displayed to the online world and give full descriptions of their offerings. The lion's share of books sold online is through Amazon.com. By roughly estimating from online sales figures, the top five U.S. sites where customers go to buy books online are: Amazon, Barnesandnoble, Ebay (including Half), Abebooks, and Alibris.
During the Christmas season of 2003, it was reported by Worldwide Holiday Facts that over a million items were purchased during a one day period through all of Amazon's online properties (amazon.com, amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, amazon.co.jp, amazon.de, or amazon.fr). I have read from unofficial online postings that it sells an average of over 315,000 books per day. If that is true, that equates to over 218 books on average sold per minute just on Amazon.com. So by the time you read this article, almost 1,100 books will have been sold on Amazon.
For rare and out-of-print books, how easily are buyers able to find the books they are searching for while at these top five book sites? To find out, I did a search on each site of the #1 out-of-print book for 2004 (as reported by Bookfinder) which was "The New Soldier", a 1971 book written by John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The book is still a hot commodity and was especially during the heated 2004 Presidential campaign, to the chagrin of Senator John Kerry. For each search, I typed in "The New Soldier", and searched only the U.S. and not the international sites. Some of the search results were a little surprising.
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Searching for Out-of-Prints from the Buyer's and Seller's Perspectives
- By Carl Burnham
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On Amazon.com, the book was listed as the 14th link on the first page of search results, with a minimum price of $350, with links at the top of the page to John Kerry. Looking further at the book listing, 8 other copies were available, ranging up to $2,475 for a signed copy. Both the lowest and highest priced copies were being sold by new sellers with no feedback ratings. Two books were available by Abebooks sellers through Amazon.com.
A search on Barnesandnoble.com revealed no results for books until I clicked on the very bottom of the page on the obscure out-of-print linkage. The book appeared as the 16th link, with 6 copies available, ranging from $338 to $828.
From a search through the results found for active auctions, Ebay came up with a listing of 3 e-book copies by an enterprising seller starting at $7.95 each, complete with video of Kerry's controversial medal toss over the White House fence. One book was being sold, which started at $14 and was at $33.53 as I write this article. I'll let you know in a follow-up article if I won it... For completed auctions, a signed copy of the book had been bid up to $455 (reserve not met) which appeared to have been signed by Kerry. On the Half web site, there were no matching results for the search.
An Abebooks search displayed a link to the Senate Hearing testimony on the first page of results. It was only after modifying the results to display from the Highest Price that the book was located on the 4th linkage at $2,000. The search results are rather cumbersome, and do not display links to other booksellers selling the same book from within each listing. I had to scroll through 280 other listings which loosely matched the search query. When I narrowed the attributes to First Editions only, I was able to scroll through the resulting pages to find 5 copies available, ranging from $320 to $2,000.
A search on Alibris listed the book as the first result, with 7 copies available ranging from $319 to $1,999.
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Searching for Out-of-Prints from the Buyer's and Seller's Perspectives
- By Carl Burnham
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With our own online book sales, the sales results are similar to their ratings. We find that our sales during 2004 through these top five book sites have been led by Amazon with 60 percent, followed by Alibris (which includes Barnesandnoble) at 25 percent, with Ebay (including Half) ranging from 15 to 25 percent. These percentages include both out-of-print and current edition books. Some of our out-of-print book sales are through repeat business and by customers directly contacting us after searching on Google, as with our recent sale of our New American Cyclopedia set dating from 1857. With our ever-growing inventory of out-of-print books, we are considering Abebooks, although we would like to see several significant improvements made in their search functionality as noted. We could list anonymously through sites like Alibris or Abebooks which would include the Amazon Marketplace, but find it more beneficial to have our own unique identification for brand recognition, sales, and having our own feedback ratings not tied with others.
In addition to these leading sites, we have found sales success through listing directly with the lesser known sites, including Biblio, ChooseBooks, and A1Books. From searches done on these, A1Books was the only one where no results were found. I will note that the A1Book site has an attractive interface, with the administration sections geared towards the bookseller. From just listing with A1Books, we had our first sale there in a matter of days.
The results of my search demonstrate that some of the leading book listing sites do a very good job of displaying search results for out-of-print books while others leave it up to the potential buyer to wade through multiple pages of loosely matching search results. Booksellers should keep this in mind when listing with the various sites out there, while also making sure their descriptions are accurate, and be willing to experiment with the lesser known sites.
Carl Burnham can be reached online at www.SouthpointBooks.com .
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