New Strategies for Selling Books on eBay

by Craig Stark

#35, 17 January 2005

Part I: Getting Your Price, Keeping Your Fees Down

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the coming weeks, BookThink will be taking a fresh look at selling books on eBay. As fees have risen and competition has intensified, it's not the same game it once was, but believe me, it's still a game that can be played - and won. Rethinking your tactics then changing your approach might be your ticket to winning.

Given the right book - something that's both in high demand and has at least fairly broad appeal - you can safely save a significant amount of money on eBay listing fees simply by putting it up with a low starting bid and letting multiple bidders go at it. With three, four or more bidders, it's very likely that you'll get a price that you'll be happy with. This, of course, is the ideal. Unfortunately, there are only a small percentage of books that will perform consistently in this situation. Most books have less than intense demand and/or appeal only to narrower market sectors. These call for different tactics.

There was a time when I used reserve prices for over 90% of my books. It was relatively cheap, you could protect a book at any price level you liked, you could start your opening bid low enough to attract bidders, and if you used the Buy-It-Now option, it didn't disappear after the first bid (as it does when something's listed without a reserve) - that is, it would remain a temptation throughout the auction. For years, there was some anecdotal evidence that bidders were less likely to bid on reserve auctions, but frankly, this was a phenomenon I didn't experience. For me, it was the perfect solution.

Unfortunately, reserve fees have skyrocketed in recent years. I use them less than 10% of the time now, and then only if it's an especially valuable item. Instead, I use a different set of tactics in place of this to achieve more or less the same thing without having to cough up exorbitant fees. Here are three of them - and a fourth that some buyers use at risk.

1. High Opening Bid

This is the obvious choice to replace the reserve tactic but one that's the least appealing to me. Certainly, you can protect a book you need to get at least $50 for with a $49.99 opening bid, but you'll still pay $1.20 for the pleasure, and there's something about high opening bids that discourages bidding. Two things are likely to happen here: the auction will close without a bid or a buyer will come in at the last moment and take the book for your minimum bid. Neither outcome is terribly satisfying.

2. Double Category Listing with Low Opening Bid

Listing in a second category will double your fees. However, if you keep the opening bid low, say, at $9.99, your cost to list the book in two categories will still be only $.70, and you'll be exposing the book to more potential bidders, perhaps almost as much as double the number. For books that bidders may not be searching for by title but are likely finding via browsing, this can be an effective strategy because it increases the odds that your book will be found. Unfortunately, your book will still be unprotected, and not all books have crossover appeal - i.e., have more than one intuitive category that makes good sense to use.

3. Low Opening Bid With Optional Price Revision

This is the tactic I use most often because it encourages early bidding, keeps your listing fees low, and still offers some price protection for your books. Here's how it works: you start the auction at a low opening bid and monitor it daily. If bidding activity is relatively brisk, fine. You won't need to do anything else. However, if the book sits and sits without a bid, and you get to a day or so from the end of the auction, you then go in and revise the opening bid to a more acceptable amount. This effectively returns you to the first tactic I discussed, but you've avoided giving the book away and, at the same time, given it a good shot at attracting interest.

4. Low Opening Bid with Optional Auction Cancellation

Another possible tactic is to start the auction with a low opening bid, monitor it as above, and, if there's little or no bidding activity, cancel bids (if necessary) and/or end the auction early. Again, this gives you price protection, but it also gets you into a gray area. eBay states four acceptable reasons for ending an auction early:

  • The item is no longer available for sale.
  • There was an error in the starting price or reserve amount.
  • The item was lost or broken.
If you started your auction with a low opening bid, you could argue, of course, that there was an error in the starting price. The problem with this - apart from the ethical issues involved - is that, assuming a pattern of cancellations could be identified, eBay might interpret the behavior as fee avoidance. This is eBay's explanation: "Sellers are not permitted to cancel bids and end listings early in order to avoid selling an item that did not meet the desired sale price. This is considered to be reserve fee circumvention. Although there are legitimate reasons for ending a listing early, abuse of this option will be investigated." Sellers who use this tactic, therefore - and I'm not recommending you do or don't - can probably do so only sparingly, and, if bids are cancelled, there's always the risk that a complaint from a bidder will trigger an investigation.

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