Reluctant Book Seller

Post Office Sales Targets

kaerast — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:14:39 +0000

At a fairly large city-centre post office this afternoon I saw their intra-day sales charts and goals which list by hour how many items they are selling and how many they should be. None of the items were related to postage except for “Special Delivery”, everything else was banking, currency exchange, passports and e-topups. No wonder staff always try selling me something I don’t want or need, no wonder they would rather sell special delivery (at around £6) instead of second class (at around 90 pence).

There was a time when Post Office staff were helpful and would give you all the options, and assist in getting your package to it’s recipient as efficiently as possible. These days they are more interested in meeting their sales criteria for that hour. There are however some nice staff left who will quickly and efficiently sell you what you want and then move on, rather than wasting both your time in trying to sell something else.

I propose that Post Offices become a place of sending letters and parcels again, a place where people are helpful and friendly and want to get your package sent rather than sell you car insurance, a place where success is measured in delivery times and smiles rather than number of mobile topups sold.

Slow Progress

kaerast — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:33:35 +0000

A bunch more sales over the weekend, and then nothing. I’ve listed most of the books I think are going to sell at any profit on Amazon now, all 250 of them, and we still make a small loss on every other book or so. Making a loss on the odd book or two isn’t an issue, the lack of sales is.

We have spoken about market stalls or car boot sales, but they both come with problems. A market stall would require an imense amount of commitment shifting the books around and manning the store, plus paperwork and organisation. A car boot sale would require less commitment, but to shift fewer books and would mean getting up early on a Sunday; it might also mean sharing the stall with a homophobic idiot in order to reduce costs.

Profit and Loss

kaerast — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:28:38 +0000

I made my second sale today, and at such a low price that it brought total profit (ignoring initial outlay) to minus 44 pence. We should really learn from this, and indeed we shall.

We clearly need to learn more about postage costs, as my local post office is rather clueless. We need to be able to go in, tell them exactly how the book should be sent (second class letter, second class package, etc) and not let them lie about maximum weights.
We need to weigh books as we add them. Anything under 250 grams is ok to sell at a penny, anything over needs to be sold for at least 97 pence to just break even. And that is assuming that packaging and time is free.

On Sunday I aim to make a trip to the new carboot market near home to see how busy it is and whether it is worth taking our books to the weekend after.

First Sale

kaerast — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:09:54 +0000

Today we made our first sale on Amazon, highlighting the messiness of how this is all going to work financially. I’ve put together a P&L sheet for each of us in Google Docs, but Google (without relying on external gadgets) lacks more advanced functionality that a real spreadsheet or SQL system would provide. We only have simplistic calculations in place which although include all the data don’t clearly demonstrate what money should be going where. Currently the chart shows my £2.23 income and £0.90 postage costs, however that’s not entirely accurate – for one, Amazon haven’t actually paid me yet and for another it has taken several hours work to reach this point (and at my usual £10/hour freelance rate that would make for a huge loss).

However, regardless of any issues we are facing, it is still our first sale. May this be the first of many (hopefuly 5000!)

Inventories

kaerast — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:54:59 +0000

As well as more cataloging (and much spring cleaning to avoid cataloging) I spent some time working on our inventory spreadsheet this morning. Initially we are using Google Docs as it means we can share the list of books not only amongst ourselves but also with friends who are interested in “borrowing” our books. It also means that after a little coding (we are after all tech geeks more than book geeks) we can produce nice gauges such as this one to show our current progress. This screenshot isn’t live, however my iGoogle homepage now displays the live gauges along with my usual tech news sources.

I’m starting to worry about the amount of penny books we have, despite reaching £80 estimate after four boxes the majority of books have been only worth a penny and may be rather difficult to shift (even to charity shops) I’m considering looking into how much it would cost to ship out a few boxes to Turkey for the local animal charities to sell to the ex-pat community.

Initial Sorting

kaerast — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:45:44 +0000

This evening we spent several hours taking delivery of another car-full of books and doing some initial sorting of the first two boxes. We estimate there are around 100 boxes in total, so at this current rate we have 50 more days of sorting. However, we learnt a few important lessons today.

Paperbacks almost always sell on Amazon for around a penny, with a few going around the £2 mark. It isn’t always easy to predict which books will go for £2 but it is usually the reference type books. At a penny it is not worth listing them, however the initial two boxes worth will give us a kick start on ratings.
Hardbacks are much more likely to give a good price, and it is fairly easy to spot which are likely to be more expensive. The older, non-popular-edition books and the highly specialised reference books are usually the best bet – though the occasional surprise means it’s worth valuing most of them on Amazon.
We really need to rethink our sorting strategy. It is not sensible to catalog and value every single book, especially when many of them already have prices penciled in which we can use at car boot sales and flea markets.
First editions don’t mean anything if it’s a terrible book.
It is easier to list straight onto Amazon whilst the book is in front of you. Otherwise you need to enter data twice, may have mistyped the isbn, and may have an alternative edition.