I am writing this from Lynnfield, Mass., where I am preparing for my father’s funeral. He passed away last week, in the middle of my hectic transfer of the contents of one bookstore to another. His death was no surprise; he had been declining for months and barely alive for the last 10 days. Still, I’d have to say that business seems awfully trivial under such circumstances. Operations are on hold back home, but I can report the following about my big move. Twenty-thousand books, packed tightly, might fit in 500 boxes. But where does one find 500 boxes? For me, buying them is a most disagreeable option; and even if I wanted to pay U-Haul $1.50 each, they don’t have 500 on hand. Your
Inventory Management Archive
If you use any type of inventory software, it probably asks you for a SKU or stock-keeping unit for each item. SKUs are different than the UPC or the ISBN as they are assigned not simply to a specific title but to a specific ITEM. You can easily have two books with the same IBN… but two different SKUs because one is new and one is used. Many programs will just generate a general code for it. However, it may be worth doing custom codes to streamline order pulling and packing. You can pack a lot of info into those short little codes so as soon as an order comes in from the internet, you know exactly what to do before even touching the
By Joe Waynick In my previous articles, “Have You Heard Of FBA?” I suggested that as a local retail store owner, you could significantly enhance your sales using Amazon.com’s FBA program. In this article, we’re going to explore some of the costs of doing business using FBA. One of the biggest reasons many store owners don’t take advantage of FBA is because they have a misconception about the fees. They think that merchant fulfilled orders are less expensive than fulfillment by Amazon. Unless you work for free, nothing could be further from the truth. Amazon Fees There are certainly fees associated with FBA. Consequently, you must price your books properly to cover those fees and still make a reasonable profit. Specifically, you have the following
It seems easy enough: find a vacant shop, fill it with bookshelves, fill those shelves with books and start selling books. You’re in business! You’re now a book seller. You also need customers, people willing to buy your books at the price you set. The question arises: what sort of books should I buy and what shouldn’t I buy? When I opened my shop four years ago, I naturally thought: people will buy books that I like and wouldn’t buy books that I didn’t. I said to myself: fiction, who needs fiction? This is going to be a quality bookshop, I’m not stocking fantasy books or any of that romance claptrap. Wrong! Unless you’re a technical bookshop or a highly specialized one, you need to
Storage and display are the bane of the bookseller’s and book collector’s existence. The more valuable the book and the better the condition it is to start with, the more likely poor display and storage are to damage the book. Reading copies are already so far gone in condition, they’ll tolerate less than optimal condition with little hit to value. But a fine first edition with a fine jacket needs special handling. Books need to be kept somewhere cool and dry. If you live somewhere humid and hot, this will be the thing you spend the most time fighting. You’ll need air conditioning. Conversely, somewhere TOO dry can damage bindings. Books are like Goldilocks, they like it in between. Heat can also damage books as