Frequently Asked Questions - Sellers
1. Why should I join Choice Books?
Good question. Let's put it this way - if you sell books, either through a 'bricks & mortar' shop or otherwise, then you will no doubt see overheads which immediately
have an effect on your profit. Let's face it - unless you are one of the devoted amongst us who just sell for a hobby, then profit is frankly why we sell. So, whether
the costs are associated with lease charges, staff wages etc it is irrelevant - they all hit the bottom line. We started Choice Books to try and negate against these
costs.
2. How does Choice Books generate revenue?
Choice Books at the time of launch in July 2008 didn't create any revenue - which kind of contradicts what we said above - however, hopefully you will subscribe to our
way of thinking after you have read the rest of the page. So - we offered free listings and free sales at launch for all members. When it is decided a that we can
justify fees being applied to our members sales, it will take the following structure
-
A 'Final Value Fee' of 3.4% on sales (excluding Shipping).
- There is a £30.00 ceiling regardless of value and a minimum of £0.10 fee per sale.
- Books sold for £1.00 or under are free from any charges.
Please note however - there has been no decision as to when these charges are going to be introduced, and even more stunning - since our launch in
July 2008 not one of our members have paid a cent, penny, dime for any services associated with the site - Great!
3. What is the driving force within Choice Books?
Choice Books originated from an unhealthy obsession in collecting Signed 1st Edition Books. As we evolved over the years we needed to counter this buying by
selling to others the books we either didn't feel we wanted any more, or that had realised an increase in their saleability. We had the means then to further
fund our interests. As this gathered pace we opened a shop on eBay. As time went on we found over and over again eBay increased the fees structure on the site
which is fine, but this instilled in us a need to create a better selling environment for us to sell books.
From June 2005 we introduced Choice Books as a
trading website, we have to say it looked far from grand in the early days, and we sold very little via the site still relying on eBay for selling. A year later
in June 2006 we updated the site to become more user friendly, but still only listed books available from Choice Books. Since September 2007 we have been working
tirelessly to update our site to allow others to benefit from the excellent features available. We hope you agree it is fantastic. We now want other sellers
to enjoy the benefits we have built into Choice Books.
4. Just how free is Free?
So, as the saying goes, you never get a free lunch, correct in the majority of cases, but it makes us proud to be able to announce that Free actually means
Free. You will need to be authorised to list on the site but after this, you simply need to log in and it's as simple as that. You can list an unlimited number of books
on the site. You can sell an unlimited number of books with no value ceiling in place, and it won't cost you a penny. As mentioned in the above answer, after
this Free period (which has yet to be decided) we will be introducing FVF which will be very competitive with other book listing sites, but listing fees will remain free.
5. Can I list whatever books I chose?
Choice Books is primarily a place to sell your signed, rare and 1st edition collectible books. We would like to think that people would visit Choice Books to
find that elusive missing volume or the highlight to a collection. Originally - as some of you may know - we wanted to have a place where buyers of rare
1st Editions could come and buy, sell and peruse collectable books. We needed to re-think this somewhat in late 2009 as we had more
requests to list more middle of the road books - your more common editions but similarly desirable to buyers. Also - it was proving difficult
for sellers to identify and filter their more valuable/desirable editions, so we opened our doors to sellers of all books following these discussions.
6. How many pictures can I list per book?
Another exciting feature only available at Choice Books is the ability to upload any number of pictures with each listing. The maximum size per picture
is 3Mb and will be resized to best fit into the standard web browser. We think that for a very expensive book buyers would like to see high resolution
images before making a commitment to buy. Very seldom you will see a number of pictures with a book on any website. When we have sold expensive books
in the past we have always tried to answer any potential questions regarding condition of the book with pictures. We have seen books for sale for upwards of
£20,000 and the only picture available to view is a stock picture of the cover. This seems crazy to us, we certainly wouldn't consider a purchase by
viewing a stock photo. This also reduces the need for emails asking or requesting further images, it gives buyers more information regards the book for
sale and therefore increases the chance of a sale.
7. How do I get my books onto Choice Books?
There are a number of methods you can use to upload your books. If you have just a few books you can upload each one
separately - similar to eBay. You pop
the details into a generic listings screen followed by the pictures associated with the book. Another method - which a few of our medium/large sellers
use is manual upload of files derived out of Homebase, BookTrakker, WorldBookMarket databases. You simply export the file to your chosen
location, from where you click the upload button. Your file is automatically rendered onto the site. Updates and Purge/delete files are managed
the exactly the same way. The third and most popular methods is FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is very simple and can be set up in your chosen
Book Management Program. A number of these uses 'One Click' upload for your updates which makes life a lot easier to update over a number of
sites.
