The reason Why people Have Penny Books For Sale on Amazon

Anyone spending any time at all on Amazon will observation the penny books for sale. And there aren't just one or two copies for sale but sometimes hundreds of copies. Do habitancy indeed make money selling books for a penny? Why do they list them for only a penny? I know curiosity drives some habitancy to pursue an reply because they are wondering if they are missing a sales opportunity. The one sure way to get flamed in the Amazon forums is to ask these questions there. You will abruptly be scolded for not searching for an reply prior to posting the question. After all, the logic goes; this query is asked about once an hour on the forums and has been answered hundreds of times. Just look it up!

The only qoute is I have looked it up and the explanations given in the "answer" are partial answers at best. So I have decided to stick my neck out, go on the record, and attempt a more standard answer. After all, if you are an specialist in online book selling you should be able to reply this one right? It's like the whole of angels dancing on the head of a pin for a theologian or why the Detroit Lions can't win a super bowl for a sports investigator (or win a game for that matter). So sit back, relax, and let me explain.

Bookstore

The first opinion to understand is a goods called a re-pricer. This goods will check each listing you have on a venue like Amazon and compare your price with all other current listings and then modernize your price for that item based on rules you set. You can choose for example to be the cheapest, the most expensive or in the middle of the pack price wise. You also have some operate over how often your re-pricer will run. This is typically a stand alone goods you purchase, a web based service, or some venues even have it built in like Alibris.com. The tool is based on the principles that habitancy will buy the cheapest goods that meets their needs.

This has been validated to a great extent by the new media venue Glyde.com which recently went online to compete with larger sell sites. When you go there to buy you will only see the cheapest listing for any one goods in a particular condition. If you look for a book you will see one price for new and one for exquisite for example. When you list an item to sell there you are given a suggested price for that item at its health and when you enter your desired price they give you your location in the queue. Until you are the cheapest one (first in the queue) you won't have a opening at a sale.

The second opinion involves understanding the priorities in the day-to-day activities of a large commercial online bookstore. Let's say you have 20,000 books online and are selling 100+ books a day. You get paid when books sell. This means you have to list books to sell them. Once they sell you have to get them in the mail Asap to keep Amazon and your buyer happy. The more you list the more you sell and the more you make. That is your priority and to keep overhead down you hire just enough staff to ensure you get your priorities done in a timely fashion.

The last opinion to understand is standard profit. What I mean by that is where do you look to judge your success? Do you feel like a failure if you don't make a profit on each item sold or do you look at the thorough numbers and judge based on them. When I was running an on-line bookstore I was happy when overhead was under five grand and total sales were over fifteen grand. I figured if I lost a few dollars on a few books a month it was standard given my thorough profit. After all no one is perfect.

Now let's walk straight through the scenario. You have set the re-pricer to run four times a day on your whole inventory. You have left it configured with the default value of $.01 for the lowest price and you want to be the cheapest by $.03. You then leave your inventory in the hands of the re-pricer and merge on listing new books. All the books you list for sale start out with a price of at least .00. One particular book you have listed has a competitor that is also running a re-pricer set to be the cheapest by $.02 and also left the default of $.01 as the lowest price. Your re-pricer sees his price at .98 and reprices your copy of the book to .95. His re-pricer notices on the next pass that you are cheaper and lowers his price to .93.

This process continues until you are both at $.01. You don't indeed observation though because you would have to allocate time to look for this. Once identified you would have to pay someone to find the book on the shelf, de-list it from your venues and then pay to have it disposed of. You are not only paying for this whole process but you are also diverting resources away from listing new books, thus reducing the whole of books you sell. The cost to you then to eliminate the penny books is much more than selling the book and shipping it at a penny. When shelf space becomes tight and you need to eliminate the older books not sold to make room for new ones that will sell you systematically eliminate the lower priced older books and arrange of them. I used to do this once every six months or so. By doing it once or twice a year you can optimize the process and keep the succeed on your sales to a minimum.

In summary, that is why there are penny books. No one starts out selling books at a penny. It is just the results of using the re-pricer technology. So relax, you aren't missing anything really. There is no underground of the penny books. One more thing before I go. The humorous part to the re-pricer is the newbie book seller that manually checks the price of his hundred or so books everyday. He notices every time he lowers his price you abruptly lower yours. He then tries distinct strategies like lowering the price to near nothing and then setting it very high. He begins to take your actions personally. Imagining you are setting at your computer day and night changing your price just to annoy him. I have indeed received email from these sellers almost threatening me corporal harm. I had to construe they were trying to outsmart my re-pricer and it would all the time win.

The reason Why people Have Penny Books For Sale on Amazon