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So - what happened? First, within hours, offers started coming in. To my surprise, only a few of them were obscenely low. The rest were either totally acceptable or high enough to persuade me to make a counter offer. Despite the fact that, as much as possible, I try to sell uncommon, in-demand books that hold or increase their value over time, as the offers came in, I searched comparables and often was surprised to see that the offer was very much in line with what others were asking. I've been late re-pricing too!

Another thing happened: A number of books that I'd had in inventory for a year, sometimes two or more, started selling. A few of these were the only copies listed online, but, when I stopped to think about it, What was the point of sitting on an uncommon book priced at $75, for example, if nobody would ever pay more than $50 for it? At some point in time you've got to figure that you've got it priced too high.

Well, it turned out to be a very good month - sales out of this Store shot up to 62% of my total FPV venue sales. And, if you think it was invigorating to see this additional revenue come in, you're right. At the beginning of the month, I confess that I was somewhat slow to accept offers as low as 2/3 of what I had the books listed at, but once I started pulling the trigger on them, it felt genuinely good to see sale after sale.

If you don't have an eBay Store, you can still do this on other venues simply by inserting something in your descriptions. Here's something I found in an Alibris seller's description: "Due to the vagaries of market fluctuations, an item may occasionally seem overvalued. To compensate for that possibility, all serious buyers are welcome to make a best offer on each and every item listed, with the assurance that ALL reasonable offers will be accepted." Well worded, I thought.

Will this work for you? Heck if I know, but if your sales are heading south, it might not hurt to conduct your own experiment.

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