Bookseller Digest UK

Managing Extra Shipping Charges

When you sell an item and are unable to cover the postage costs with your standard delivery fee, you can ask the buyer to pay the additional cost by requesting extra charges. To increase the likelihood of the buyer accepting these extra charges, we strongly recommend adding a comment explaining the reason for submitting the request. 

Important things to remember when managing extra shipping charges:

• If a buyer refuses the extra charge, the order will return to you. You can still choose to either accept the order at the original price or reject the order. 
• If you cannot send the item at the original price and extra shipping charges are refused, choose the option "Item Rejected" to avoid negatively affecting your bookseller rating.
• Do not let orders expire. You have 4 days to process an order after a buyer has accepted the extra charges. If a buyer refuses, you still need to cancel the order within 4 days to confirm the cancellation to the buyer and to avoid the influence an expired order would have on your bookseller rating.

Protecting Books with Adequate Packaging

Ensuring your books arrive safely is a very important part of online bookselling and protecting your books with sufficient packaging can help substantially. Poor packaging can reflect negatively on you as an individual bookseller and on the AbeBooks website, and could deter customers from returning to buy from your book collection.

Books that do not arrive in the condition described can also be refunded and do not leave a positive impression on the buyer. Refunds for items that do not arrive as described on the website have an impact on your bookseller rating visible next to your listings.

Here are some ideas to consider...

• Use a thick material to protect the cover and support the book. Consider further protection inside the parcel to decrease movement and provide padding for the entire book.
• Make sure the corners and binding of the book are adequately protected
• Buy packaging in bulk to reduce costs
• Request extra shipping charges to package more fragile books adequately or build the cost of the extra packaging into the book price.
• Take advantage of AbeBooks free promotional material (packing tape, envelopes, etc.)

The Royal Mail website has more advice on how to package books and other paper ephemera, along with tips on how to send an item securely. 

Optimise your Storefront Web Address

To help with search engine indexing, your Bookseller Storefront has several website addresses (URLs). You can see these addresses by accessing your Members Menu and clicking on Your Storefront.

One of these two styles of addresses has been designed to make it easy to remember and to provide to your customers:

www.abebooks.co.uk/bookseller/USERID

To locate your User ID, sign on to access your Members Menu and select Your Personal Information. When you click on Update your account information, your User ID should appear at the top of the page.

At your request, our Customer Service Team will be happy to change your User ID to suit your needs. To submit your request, please use the Online Contact Form to let us know what you would like the User ID to be changed to.

Important: The User ID should not be over 20 characters long (or 15 characters long if you are using HomeBase 2.3)

New Reviews and Recommendations on Book Detail Pages

On AbeBooks.com, you can have a sneak-peek at what we hope to offer soon on our "Book Detail" pages for books with provided ISBNs.

The following information, supplied by a reliable third party source, will be added to the bibliographic information of a book:

• A synopsis
• Customer Reviews
• Recommendations from other buyers of this book
• Other reading suggestions

Click here to see how these pages have been enhanced.

Furthermore, the structure of these pages has been updated to meet the criteria of the main search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) Thanks to this redesign, the pages will appear higher in the search results gaining more online visibility for the books on the site and helping you to sell more books!

Bookseller Storefronts: Update your catalogues and categories

As you may have already noticed, the new Bookseller Storefronts feature a Browse Categories box which allows buyers to browse through your books exclusively. These categories are attributed to your books automatically through utilising the book information available (for example, keywords). You can also assign your books to the AbeBooks categories manually or update those that seem to have been mis-matched.

In addition, the new Storefronts give more visibility to your catalogues and allow you to feature two of them in greater detail. If you do not already have catalogues but wish to take advantage of this opportunity to promote your specialities, now is the time to start!

To read about the various ways to manage your catalogues and categories, please see our Help pages and then choose the inventory management option which is relevant to you.

Going away for a long weekend? Set your account to vacation...

If you are planning to go away for three days or more to take advantage of the May bank holidays, remember to put your AbeBooks bookseller account on vacation!

Making use of the vacation tool on the AbeBooks site allows you to take your books offline at your discretion in order to prevent receiving sales that you can't process.

You can manage your vacations through your online account by following the simple instructions detailed on our Seller Help page. If you decide to go away for longer than a few weeks, please bear in mind that the minimum monthly subscription fee will still be charged for having 0 - 500 books online.

If you have any questions or require any extra help managing your vacations on AbeBooks, please don't hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team.

New Bookseller Storefronts are launched!

If you haven't noticed already, AbeBooks is pleased to announce the launch of the new AbeBooks Bookseller Storefronts.

All booksellers have been assigned a default Bookseller Storefront. All AbeBooks links to your previously assigned websites and Storefronts will now redirect to these newly designed pages. On the new Storefronts, each seller has the ability to customise their own page as they see fit. Available features include:

* The ability to upload your own image. (Bookshop picture or logo)
* The ability to uniquely describe your shop and your specialities.
* The ability to display all of your catalogues to buyers and/or to feature two catalogues of your choice at any time.
* A Search function that will allow buyers to search your inventory exclusively.
* A Browse function that will allow buyers to browse your inventory exclusively.
* The addition of an ‘Ask the Bookseller a Question’ link, allowing buyers to contact you directly through the AbeBooks system.
* The ability to choose from three different colour schemes.

Click on the option Your Storefront on the Members Menu to view and personalise your Storefront.

In addition, each new Storefront will be accessed through a user-friendly URL that can be used in your marketing initiatives. This is your new URL and website:

www.abebooks.co.uk/bookseller/USERID

(Note: ‘USERID’ can be written in either upper or lower case characters)

These pages will also be Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) friendly, meaning that your Storefront and your inventory will be indexed by and searchable through all of the major search engines, resulting in increased traffic and improved sales.

Please note that the previous web addresses (URLs), and associated homepages, are being retired. Anyone currently using this URL format may continue to do so but they will be automatically redirected to the new Storefronts, at the new URL.

As well as displaying your Catalogues, you will also have the ability to display selected AbeBooks Browse Categories, enabling buyers to browse your inventory based on Categories they are familiar with through the AbeBooks Browse function. If you have not already done so, now would be a good time to both Catalogue and Categorise your inventory in preparation for your new Storefront. It could also be a good idea to match your Catalogues to AbeBooks Browse Categories.

• * Bookseller Catalogues vs. AbeBooks Categories

We’re positive that buyers will appreciate these new Bookseller Storefronts. They will be able to find your Storefront easily and they will be presented with bookshop information in a consistent format. Most importantly, the new Bookseller Storefronts will help to make your inventory easier to find through search engines, driving buyers to the site and improving sales.

If you have any questions or concerns about the new AbeBooks Storefronts, or if you need any help with Catalogues or Categories, please don’t hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team.

Are you missing out on orders?

We recommend that booksellers check their AbeBooks accounts regularly in order to avoid letting any orders slip by unnoticed. If an order is not processed within four days, it will expire and be automatically cancelled.

You should receive an email from AbeBooks each time one of your books is purchased. However, emails can often be lost, filtered out and simply ignored, so it is advisable to sign onto the AbeBooks site every two to three days to make certain that you can process all of the orders that you receive.

Reasons why not to let your orders expire:

• Missed sale opportunity

•  If the book is no longer available, cancelling the order actively will inform the buyer sooner and help to make the best of a bad experience.

• If a buyer refuses to pay extra charges on an order, letting the order expire will count against your bookseller rating. However, if you reject the order after the buyer has refused, your star rating remains unaffected.

ABA - PBFA Edinburgh Book Fair 2009

Around 65 booksellers came to The Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh to attend this year's book fair, with the majority of ABA booksellers on the lower level and the PBFA booksellers based on the first floor. The fair seemed to receive healthy attendance from the general public with regular purchases being made and many people leaving with bags and packages.

I was there to speak with booksellers about their experiences of listing on AbeBooks and to answer any questions regarding their accounts. From these interesting discussions, I have collated the most useful and prominent topics:

• Postage Rates - how can I change the default rates to reflect my prices and times? 

AbeBooks default shipping rates are not based on current rates and we strongly recommend that booksellers update their account with details of the delivery service they offer. Remember also to add countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands which are not automatically provided. If these are not added, buyers from these countries will have to pay the International shipping fee.

• Pictures - would adding pictures increase my sales? 

By uploading book images your books are more likely to be featured in buyer promotions and bulletins and by being able to see the book a buyer is more likely to make a purchase. Many booksellers feel that taking and uploading pictures would take considerable time. We suggest taking a small selection of your titles and following our step-by-step guide to upload images.

• Bookseller Star Rating  - we would like to remind you that if you have 3 or less orders over 6 months, your star rating will appear automatically at 4 stars. For those orders for which you have requested extra shipping charges: if the buyer refuses the extra charges and you continue to reject the order this will not count against your rating. To find out which orders count and which are excluded, please see our Bookseller Help page on this topic...

Royal Mail 2009 Price Increase

As you may already know, Royal Mail will be increasing their postal rates in early April this year.

From Monday 6th April 2009 you can expect to pay more to send parcels and letters, so you may want to familiarise yourselves with what awaits.

The Royal Mail have already updated their internet site with a downloadable .pdf document which contains the details of the new postal prices.

Once the prices go up, it will also be important to ensure that your AbeBooks Shipping Matrix is up-to-date with any changes you wish to make. You can adjust your shipping to reflect the new postal prices at any time.

As many booksellers use different shipping services and have to ship to many different countries, we offer a flexible Shipping Matrix. The matrix allows you to add or update the information according to the services you use and the countries to which you most often sell.

Offering accurate rates and speeds for each country will make sure that your listings are more competitive and that buyers return to buy more of your books. You can also avoid refunds from processing too soon by setting more realistic shipping speeds.

Did you know..?

• You can add more countries to your matrix so that you can offer more accurate shipping for each country to which you ship. You will find the standard  AbeBooks countries on the matrix. All other countries will come under the International shipping rates and speeds, unless you add each country separately with the appropriate rates and speeds. We recommend that you add those countries from which you regularly receive orders.

• You can increase or decrease the shipping rates according to the shipping services you use (both standard and priority). AbeBooks has a default shipping rate that all booksellers are welcome to use. However, those rates can be changed at any time to be more accurate to the services you offer.

• Not only can you change the rates, you can also change the speeds according to the shipping service you use. You know best what delivery times your shipping services offer - update your shipping matrix to reflect those too. 

NOTE: Any changes to the Shipping Matrix will be updated on your account immediately, but may take longer to appear online in your inventory - make sure you allow a few days for the changes to go through.

When processing an order, every bookseller has the chance to increase or reduce the shipping if they have an item which is smaller, larger or more valuable than the average order, and the default shipping therefore either too high or low. 

This function is available at the order processing stage of an order. For more information visit our online help pages:

How do I increase or reduce shipping charges for an order?