Booksellers

The Advanced Book Exchange was the first big online database for online booksellers in the 1990s. Its major competitor was Bibliofind, which was bought by Amazon. ABE says it has about 13,000 members with 70 million listings and 1.5 million registered buyers.

Just five years ago, more than 90 percent of online booksellers were ABE members. But with the advent of Amazon Marketplace, ABE now appears to control less than 25 percent of today’s seller corps.

ABE sellers pay a subscription fee of $25 monthly, and the fee rises based on the number of listings. Sellers with more than 500 listings pay $37 a month and the fee can go up to $300 for those with more than 15,000 listings. A commission of 8 percent of the book’s price is paid on each sale, up to a maximum of $40 per book. The minimum commission is 50 cents per book. If ABE processes the credit card transaction, a fee of 5.5 percent is due.

For buyers, the disadvantage of ABE is that it can provide an uneven shopping experience compared with standardized marketplaces like Amazon Marketplace and Half.com. Sellers may have their own shipping and return policies.

Alibris sellers pay a 15 percent commission on the sale of items priced under $500 and 10 percent on items over $500. Also, sellers are charged a minimum monthly subscription fee of $15, and the fee can rise to $150 a month for sellers with more than 100,000 listings. Alternatively, sellers can pay a $1 fee per item sold instead of the monthly subscription fee. The company also sells and warehouses some used books on its own.

One of the advantages of Alibris is that it allows sellers to target business and library customers. Alibris was spawned from BookQuest, an early business-to-business network for antiquarian book dealers.

Barnes & Noble is the second-largest online bookseller, though it trails Amazon by a huge margin. B&N has been experimenting with adding a third-party sellers platform like Amazon’s Marketplace. During 2004, ABE members could list used books for sale on its Web site. But the listings are pretty well hidden and B&N has a moratorium on new sellers. The situation bears watching. B&N is the leading brick-and-mortar book chain and could shake things up if it launched a real used book marketplace.

See a real-time list of the most highly sought after used and collectible books.

Read more free articles on selling used books profitably online: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm

Steve Weber is author of "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site" (ISBN 0977240606). Got a question for Steve? Send to: steve_weber@yahoo.com