Which is better in selling books? Making money or growing in your book selling knowledge. I suggest learning more about your higher valued books for expertise. Specifically speaking, we live in the age of recommendation not necessarily the age of information. People are over run with information. Many people are looking for someone to cut through the chatter and help them make a buying decision. Recommendation from a trusted source, or a perceived trusted source, is a welcome relief to many online buyers. If you have a person at your eBay store or website holding out their credit card asking what they should buy, wouldn’t you be just too pleased to help them?
The more you handle better books the more skilled in the book selling trade you will become thereby eventually becoming an expert. As you become adept at handling higher valued books you become more confident in the trade. Expertise lends well into a specialty profession more times than not, but certainly to know a little about a few genres is better than flipping $5 books that are just ISBN numbers to the seller. There certainly is a difference between a skilled employee and a consultant.
Which would you rather work with when you have your wallet out?
Here are few tips in portraying the expertise of book knowledge specifically online:
1. Know your titles.
When listing the books take time to peruse the pages of your higher end books. Perhaps do a quick Wikipedia search and read about the tome. If nothing else this gives you the confidence in listing it since you are somewhat familiar with the contents of the title. Take perhaps ten minutes or so and run a Google search on the book to become familiar not only about the book but who buys the book. Again, this information helps you better target a sales campaign to a target buyer. You know a little about the person who may be looking for this type of publication and can better write a description tailored to him or her preferences Since your time is valuable I suggest using this strategy only on your $75 or more books.
2. Know the book selling language.
In the internet world aside from a picture, all you have are your words to sell the book. Use them wisely and carefully. Be professional but don’t talk past the buyer’s knowledge. It does look very professional and impressive to another book seller to use words like forefront, quarto, frontispiece, and the like; however, your buyer wants to actually decipher the book’s overall description to make an informed buying decision. If you choose to use book selling terms known only to the trades people perhaps include a glossary or plain terms with parentheses in the write up.
3. Include a human touch.
When you sell to a person eye ball to eye ball there are techniques that have been proven effective. One is using the person’s name and looking at them in the eye with a smile. We don’t have that advantage with a LCD screen. There is a way to personalize your listings a bit by adding a humorous comment or even mentioning how the book came to be part of your collection. This makes you as a seller feel more personable and the trust factor is kicked up a notch.
4. Add pictures or a video.
Pictures personalize a listing even further than mere words. I wouldn’t suggest adding a picture of a cat on the book to make a listing seem friendly, but definitely utilizing the About Me page with a personal picture and some family tidbits would be appropriate in trying to gain the trust of a potential buyer. Adding your background experience which increases the buyer’s perception of you as a book seller rather than a widget flipper is another often overlooked marketing strategy. A short bio at the end of each listing can relax a buyer and make you stand head and shoulders above the other listings. Video is just becoming popular in listings and there are many ways to be creative with that in context of helping increase your expertise as a book seller. You can have a short clip of your inventory, your actual store front or a shot of the office with narrative of customer satisfaction. To drive traffic you can upload some “how-to” videos to YouTube. You certainly know how to sell a book on eBay.
Now I invite you to sign up for our subscription for best selling children’s books online. We will not only tell you how to sell your children’s books online but which ones to grab. Sign up here.
