Bits and bobs

[watervole]

 Still learning more about book pricing.  It's a learning curve that never ends.

There are some interesting differences between what Amazon can sell a book for (or not sell as the case may be) and what you can get in a bookshop.

Here's two classic examples.


This book is a minimum (inc postage) of £4.24 and the next cheapest copy is a pound more.  However, if you look inside it (which you can't do on Amazon), you discover that it has no pictures and looks totally boring.  You won't be able to get more than £1.50 for it in a bookshop.

However, good quality children's pop up books will sell in the shop for more than the second-hand Amazon price.  In the shop, we can display pop-up books to full effect - on Amazon, you only see the cover.

There's also a lot to learn about older books - the ones that are too old to have any chance of Amazon showing the contents.

Amazon prices are almost entirely driven by algorithms (and ABE is starting to go that way, though prices there generally reflect the experience of actual human booksellers).  Thus, an Amazon price is generally inaccurate (and usually far too high) if there are less than 30 copies for sale.  This means that you have to get really familiar with what your customers are buying and what they are willing to pay for it and use that knowledge as your guide, in addition to seeing what online prices are. 

Comments

[yalovetz]

Came across this article on How Amazon Tricks You Into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices shortly after reading your post. Seems to confirm exactly what you're saying - that they price low-selling books too high and popular books too low.

[watervole]

Interesting article. Popular books do have a very rapid fall-off in price online.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I can´t buy used books from Amazon (they won´t send it to CR from this department) and I wouldn´t even if I could - the postage is really, really terrible. I want to buy at your shop!:-)

[coth.livejournal.com]

Amazon and many of their associated merchants are also trying to provide book information by matching ISBNs. This does not work for old books which won't have one at all, or any of the many books where publishers reused ISBNs. In either case the details shown on Amazon will be those associated with the ISBN, not with the copy of the book for sale. (This drives professional booksellers (e.g. Porcupine Books) nuts, but they can't prevent it.)

So when you order on Amazon you'd better be careful if you want a particular edition or care about the condition of the book - there is a good chance you won't get it. In a bookshop or on a specialist website you can see that copy of the book and make up your mind with real information.