posted on June 7, 2001 07:02:56 AM
I sell books in addition to other things I very rarely sell books at ebay anymore and have been using amazon and abe and half.com (Sometimes). It amazes me that there are so many sellers on Half .com selling their books at 75 cents or less even books that are brand new. I saw one book at Half the other day that was listed at $0.00
I don't get it. Why bother?? By the time Half takes their fees and the envelope or box to ship the book in these sellers are losing money. I would think instead of putting them up at a lose wouldn't it be better if they donated them to a charity and take the tax write off, it would be more than what those sellers are making now.
Also what's up with Half.com Pricing I have gone to list an older book to find that One Half doesn't tell anyone the book is out of print if it is and 2. they list the price of the book as the actual price of the book at the time it was printed in lets say 1969. I mean come on the book sold in 1969 for $1.75 doesn't mean that same book would sell the same today even in print and they expect you to sell at half that price. Maybe that's where some of the half.com sellers are getting confused. Don't Know???
[ edited by autumnmoon on Jun 7, 2001 07:05 AM ]
posted on June 7, 2001 09:10:41 PM
Half.com is worse than a garage sale. IMHO they should prevented sellers from selling a
"Like New" condition book for less than 50%.
That would have not only evened the playing field but properly conditioned the buyers to expect deals of HALF-OFF. Now the buyers think it's a cheap garage sale. I went for 3 months with practically no sales. Most of my inventory was 'Like New' Non-fiction. Got angry one night and went in and slashed prices across the whole inventory. BAM! The orders started flowing in. $40 NEW titles for $9.95 and $4.95 just to get rid of them.
It's sad and it's Half's fault for their insane policy of allowing no bottom limit on pricing. When they made the minimum 75 cents they grandfathered all the old lower priced inventory instead of just deleting it.
My current rant is how they don't bother to answer their support mail. Some clueless customer ordered a $1.95 book and failed to include not only their last name but left off the Apt # and mangled the street address.
Guaranteed would have been returned by the USPS. I emailed support 5 days ago asking them to get verification on a complete address before I ship and no answer.
posted on June 7, 2001 09:52:15 PM
I agree that the lowballing on Half.com is getting out of hand.
Most of the people who list these books at such low prices are not professional dealers but rather people who have regular jobs and are trying to make a few extra bucks.
Not far from where I live there is a paperback printing company that has hundreds of people working for them. When there are paperbacks that are not up to standards (known as seconds) they are given to the employees. Of course the employees are not supposed to sell these copies but most of them end up on Half.com. One time about 7 years ago someone who worked there offered me about 25 cases of these paperbacks at $15.00 a case. I don't deal in general paperbacks but I took a look at these and it was difficult to tell that they were seconds. Anyway the point is that these people who are making $6.00 or $7.00 dollars an hour think it great to make an extra $15.00 or $20.00 a week selling books at .75 each. They don't have to worry about overhead, or running a store, or even taxes (yet). Hopefully they will get tired of it after a while and quit. In the meantime maybe it's best just to ignor sites like Half.com and put our efforts in more worthwile book sites that offer professional service not only to the customers but also to the dealers that support them.
posted on June 8, 2001 07:12:06 AM
I'm not sure it's just the occasional seller of lots of books with little interest in profit, or "amateurs" or whatever. I think we are seeing across the board - ebay, Amazon, half.com, whatever - a realistic adjustment in the cost of books.
Who says a new hardcover is "worth" $20 if it's list price is $40? Who said it was worth $40 in the first place? How much did it cost to produce? And does any of this matter?
To mbe, the reality is that competition drives down prices, and the customer determines the value.
Maybe that makes it challenging for us because we can't assume that any hardcover we buy or scrounge will hold any particular value. Most don't. But the law of supply and demand also means that since books go out of print very quickly these days, scarce and desirable books are VERY lucrative because people can't buy them new after a year or so.
There are plenty of books listed on half.com and Amazon for nice money, and I don't mean antiques or first edition Faulkner or anything remotely like that. Rather, it's well-illustrated books, hobbyist material, books on collectible topics, history books of enduring interest, nice craft books [not the generic stuff], etc etc.
These books are not always all that easy to find to buy for resale, but they are certainly out there, as close as your next public library booksale!
posted on June 8, 2001 07:29:17 AM
If I sell an OOP on half I mention that it is OOP. You can then price it accordingly --you may or may not get a buyer.
Some of the lowballing is bad news, but part of the risk involved in selling anything.
I have had several very respectable sales on half. On average, I am making more per item there than on eBay--now if I can only get the volume up everything will be fine.
posted on June 8, 2001 11:12:24 AM
I used to get good money on Half.com for my items, but that was before massive competition moved in and relentlessly underpriced me. My Half.com sales are becoming very infrequent these days and usually only for the low $ items and for things where there are few competing sellers. Luckily crosslisting every item on Amazon Marketplace generates almost as much in sales. Amazon also highlights OOP items prominently.
Wish ePier or another firm would start a competing Fixed Price marketplace based on the Half.com premise and lower fees. It's a winning idea that's being underutilized. AOL, Yahoo and MSN could pull it off easy!
posted on June 8, 2001 11:39:05 AM
Is everyone else as ticked off by how many mistakes Half.Com has in its data base? HC's are listed as PB's, Titles do not match ISBN's. We entered one book & it had 4 or 5 mistakes. The picture, title, author & format were all different! You notify them & get at form letter. Has anybody every been notified by Half.Com that the description of a book you entered has changed? I haven't. If you have over a thousand books listed you can't go in & check to see if if is still a paperback, and yes they do fix there mistakes with notifing you!
posted on June 8, 2001 01:25:12 PM
Crosslisting every item on Amazon? Does that mean you list one item in two places?
Maybe that's what happened to something I ordered from half.com not too long ago. The seller didn't confirm, and the seller's item disappeared from the half.com database.
I rated the seller a 1. I was livid. It was an OOP item I had been waiting for over a year to get my hands on.
posted on June 8, 2001 03:42:16 PM
Yeah, crosslisting means listing the same item in 2 or more places. It does increase the sell-through on items. Just have to remember to delete the listing from the other venue(s) IMMEDIATELY.
No, I wasn't your Half.com seller! Haven't been tripped up yet.
posted on June 9, 2001 10:41:19 AM
I sell on Ebay, but not books, movies, cd's etc. - What I sell on half.com are things that I no longer want or need. For example, I recently purchased Jimmy Carter's new book on Amazon.com - I read it, it was very good. I own too much stuff (plus I am moving 1000 miles in August) so I put it up for sale (at a price that was actually higher than half) and it sold in a day. I think most of your competition are non professional sellers who just want to move things that they own. If people want to sell things for $1, that is their choice. I suspect those items don't have much of a market anyway. There isn't much difference between that and a new book that doesn't sell that gets remaindered for $2 at a major book store.
