Collectible books no longer visible to customers
I would love some advice on how to overcome this seemingly insurmountable obstacle. A customer looking for a book on Amazon can no longer see Collectible books without changing the default filter. I have been selling collectible books on Amazon for 13 years and this destroys my business. If a buyer searches for a used book (as most collectibles are) and they click on “Other sellers and formats from [a price],” they will go to a page that has 4 filters: 1) Like New, 2) Very Good, 3) Good, and 4) Acceptable. The buyer would have to click on the drop-down menu in the filter button and click on the last filter which is left out by default: Collectible. What buyer is going to do that? Even if they find this now hidden category by changing the filter settings, the listing gets mixed in with the other books by price. Who’s going to scan through pages of higher priced books to get to a collectible one? It used to have its own category. I have invested years of time only to essentially get shut down by Amazon.
32 replies
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
I hadn't even gotten far enough to see that issue with my frustration with the new "improved" format that requires even MORE mouse-clicks for a customer to find a book (and confusingly can point them to the wrong one far easier than the old screen).
And as usual, Amazon seems to take complaints from sellers as an incentive to make the change. It's really awful, and I think can hurt even regular used offers.
Seller_BeWo5Xt3t43rn
AMAZON did this as the "collectable" books often were not really anything special most of the time so just list them under used! You can thank your scammy book sellers for destroying this grading. Should of been a gated designation requiring recognition by the antiquarian book sellers organization, would have eliminated all the book club "first editions" and common relatively worthless "signed" copies of unimportant mass market titles common especially with childrens books!
Seller_xwzQL0khly72e
It's a nightmare now. Since one has to pull down a menu and UNclick a bunch of buttons and click the collectible one, most users are going to give up in frustration. It's another case of Amazon making it extremely difficult to find what the buyer is looking for and it's obvious that they did the worst Beta testing and user feedback in the history of programming. The old interface with clearly visible icons for used and collectible was intuitive and easy to use; this is a disaster. I sell a lot of signed and 1st edition books and sales have plummeted over the last month.
Seller_Hi7wbO2Kbo6bl
I just use the "clear all" link -- so just one click after the offers come up.
Seller_z1JDNz6de1lqc
Simple terms Amazon. is saying they do not want your collectible books and to sell them elsewhere. Amazon only wants new that thousands of same item can be sold and alibaba garage brand knock off items on this platform.
KJ_Amazon
Hello @Seller_l4mfrITqsl2Kf @Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw and all of the other sellers who are providing feedback on book listing pages. I am sharing all of the feedback with our CX partner team, and they are very interested in seller comments and reactions, such as those in the below recent thread.
Amazon has again changed the display to purchase books.
We will continue to test CX options to improve the customer experience, and I will follow up here with further updates and available information.
KJ_Amazon
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
I think a great improvement would be to undo many of the "improvements" done over the last few years, and go back to the display prior to the dreadful "slider", which allowed customers to see options without having to find and click on links (which aren't even always in the same place, or sometimes not there at all).
It was great before. Every "Improvement" requires more mouse clicks, and makes it harder to find (or even know about) other options. For those of us not interested in having our Like New or Very Good books priced to compete with the Acceptable copy with torn pages and highlighting throughout, it's frustrating that many customers will never even see that they can get a far better condition book for a few dollars more.
Seller_phrVmyiF9doMS
Further complicating the issue is that Amazon's bots have decided that selling items for over cover price is akin to ripping customers off. Never mind if the book is unavailable at any price; the only option is to call the book "collectible" to throw off the hounds.
Seller_qTJiCxRI8PpIZ
This new setup also completely disregards the fact that a lot of people who are looking for collectible books are either middle aged or older and aren't very internet savvy. A lot of my in-store customers would have no idea how to click all of these filters and drop down menus to find what they're looking for. Hell, I'm 41 and hardly know how to find a book on Amazon anymore. My 78 year old boss sure as heck isn't going to be able to figure out how to find anything. Not only is Amazon trying to shove out used booksellers but it also seems like they want to alienate buyers over 50.
So now the question is, do I change all of my listings to 'used', which will switch them on all venues or do I keep them 'collectible' and say screw it if my Amazon listings no longer sell?
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
I just noticed something pertinent to this post tonight; when I looked at a listing, and clicked the link for more options, there were then two choices for Hardbound.
The first was just as to be expected, including my copy. The second was only books in Collectible conditions.
Not sure if this is a change, a test, or just a glitch. But thought I would throw it out there.
Still, the whole process of having to click extra times makes everything worse. I'm convinced that Amazon programmers are paid by the number of mouse-clicks that users use; that explains not only this new change, but the Ship to Amazon mess.
