Selling Books? Abebooks v Amazon

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Seller_OvNSG0AO7kG9Z

Selling Books? Abebooks v Amazon

I am a specialist bookseller and use both Amazon and Abebooks to sell on. Over the last month or so sales on Abe have been pretty strong whereas Amazon has been poor, it just intrigues me as to why, I suspect more competition on Amazon. My advice to booksellers is to use Abe!

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Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc

And your competitors are now moving Abe :wink:

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Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO

It doesn’t really surprise me that Abe is busier for someone who is a specialist bookseller. I think they have been doing a better job of promoting themselves in recent times and the fact they have more blog content really helps that end of the market.

At the end of the day it is still an Amazon company.

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Seller_IotgWgSZV4UrT

Probably because Amazon book search is rubbish.

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Seller_YSVJTvJFHSin4

The answer may be people using a site like bookfinder.com (also, ironically, owned by Amazon). In nearly every case when I find a book I want on Amazon I put the ISBN into bookfinder.com and find the same copy being sold cheaper (often considerably cheaper) by the same seller on Abe, Biblio or Ebay. This did not so often used to be the case.

Our experience of selling on ABE was a few years ago now, but we found it abysmal in terms of sales compared to Amazon, as well as much clunkier to use. We got ten times as many sales on Amazon as ABE. Do they still not allow you to sell to the UK only? Or has that changed?

However, it may be a better site for specialist and antiquarian booksellers, for sure (which we are not).

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Seller_mxez2L8QjE6WW

In part it may be Amazon’s insistence that books are listed by ISBN / ASIN - and if the information on the original listing is wrong it is almost impossible to get it corrected, even something as simple & obvious as a typo. Abe has no such silliness, so people after a particular book go to Abe, as they have learnt that most of the listings there can be trusted to be accurate (WoB, Awesome, etc not included). And communicating with the seller is so much easier - and buyers can negotiate with sellers. All in all a much better experience.

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