Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (whiteunicorna) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:24:05 GMT

losninos wrote:
Dr Z: Can you use a software program, e.g., HomeBase to upload to ecrater? I've been searching for an hour but can't find an answer. Thanks!

Not Dr. Z but all I've been able to find for bulk uploads is the tab delimited file. I've tried several times but it keeps coming out wrong. I might go back to it one of these days.

De

DeWayne White

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (Joyful Alternative) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:56:01 GMT

Reading through this, before coming across my own 2008 comment (before I figured out that my no-ISBN books weren't getting to amazon), I wondered about ecrater, too. My husband gave up on eBay's constantly rising fees and changing rules and listed some stock on ecrater, and it actually does sell, and I've been wondering about books there.

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (losninos) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:34:56 GMT

Dr Z: Can you use a software program, e.g., HomeBase to upload to ecrater? I've been searching for an hour but can't find an answer. Thanks!

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (djclausewitz) — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:04:29 GMT

At one particularly intense period for my former day job my inventory dropped from a then peak of 7,000 to 6,300. I have always had a big backlog of books to be listed - which is what I have started tackling now. In my case I have some new projects that I want to preserve some time for. So it appears you are using the Alibris to Amazon route for reasons very similar to my own intentions. Good luck with your future plans to migrate to more book selling and thanks for chiming in.

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (Joyful Alternative) — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:55:16 GMT

I use Alibris as a portal to Amazon, mainly because my bookselling work is episodic---when my main income work is slow---and I want things as easy as possible. This way I just fill orders first thing in the morning when I'm not quite awake and then proceed to my main business.

Eventually, I want to expand to my own website and some of the other possibilities; eventually, I'd like to gradually retire from the other business and do mostly bookselling. However, I just bought a...

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (djclausewitz) — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:03:05 GMT

Thanks to everyone. This is all helpful. Whiteunicorn - great website, informative and entertaining. I'll give you credit if I end up using Booktrakker. Dr Z - I'll also check out Art of Books. MSager- (Marilyn?) I believe it was you who expressed the goal of having 10,000 books on Alibris with a minimum price of $25.00 each. My goal is to have 10,000 books on Alibris by 7/30 (currently 8,200). However they will have an average price of around $10.00 and include large numbers of...

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (DrZilboorg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:31:28 GMT

Really, I didn't know that.

Who changes the grading system, and moves BCE and no jacket from one field to the other?

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (MSager46) — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:33:42 GMT

You can upload directly to Amazon from Home Base in UIEE format. I did for a number of years before Booktrakker.

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (DrZilboorg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:40:32 GMT

Check out Art of Books as an alternative to Booktrakker, and form your own opinion.

I use Homebase, and upload where I want to, cut and paste to Amazon as I list in real time. I'm working on a spread sheet converter for half.com and ecrater and it might be able to work with Amazon, too.

That's just me, I'm small time, only 4000 books or so, and my way works for me right now.

To be honest, I'm working on the spreadsheet mostly because I need a...

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (MSager46) — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:06:35 GMT

With 8000 books listed, you need to take a good long look at what you want from this business and how much time and effort you want to devote to it. I would certainly invest in a data base ( I also use Booktrakker) for ease of listing and for control of stock. If you go with Booktrakker, Andy can guide you on downloading your existing inventory into the data base. If you don't want to make...

Re: Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (whiteunicorna) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:29:40 GMT

First, BookTrakker is not a "service" in the usual sense. There is a one time charge for the program (although there may be, over time, charge for major updates) and that is it. At the present time, "pre - release) Grabit (a lookup program based on Amazon data) is available for free. If you were to use something like BookTrakker, you would have an automatic upload system (what BT calls OneClick) which would let you upload to many services like ABE, Alibris, Amazon,...

Drinking the Alibris Kool-aid

feeds@yuku.com (djclausewitz) — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:37:14 GMT

I am thinking about giving in to the Alibris urgings to use them as my bookselling portal to the internet. For many years I have run a very part time (5-10 hrs) a week using Alibris and all their other channels except Amazon - nothing else. I have been marginally profitable virtually the whole time despite many mistakes and foregone opportunities to stop doing everything "by hand" and start using technology. I recently retired from my day job and have moved to 20-25 hours a week and...