Customer Support Tip: Creating a Storefront

Creating a storefront is a great way to personalize your store for buyers.

1. Sign on to your AbeBooks account.
2. Click [Your Homepage] in the Members Menu.
3. Click [Create a free homepage].

Here are a few tips for the information you can include and customize:

• Contact Information: You choose which of your contact information to display. If you have a bricks and mortar store, make sure to select the checkbox to display a link to Google Maps so that buyers can visit you in your store.
• About Your Bookstore: This is your chance to impress buyers with the unique details of your store. Share something memorable such as the store pet's name, or why you started selling books, and buyers will remember to check your store again. You might also like to include your store hours here.
• Catalogs: Feature two of your catalogs on your storefront, and then include a link to see the rest. We recommend rotating your featured catalogs each month or season depending on what's relevant. You might want to feature your Gardening catalog in the Spring, or Children's Books during back-to-school in the fall. In the Catalog Description field, include some information about how specialized or general your catalog is. For example: "From house plants to exotics, and beginner to green-thumb experts, our gardening catalog includes it all."
• Template: Choose a colour scheme and image that represents your store. You can change it at any time.

Once you've adjusted your Storefront to best show off your store, contact our Customer Support team and we'll customize the URL (Web site address) for you. You can add http://abebooks.com/home/STORENAME to your business cards, e-mail signature, and anywhere else you include your contact information (like store bookmarks or bags).

Tip: Reducing Returns

A return means a disappointed buyer and a lost sale for you. Reducing your return rate, even if it's already low, can help you save sales and ensure buyer satisfaction.

To start, review all of your returns for the last few months or longer. Read through the buyer comments, and check which reasons your returns are usually for. Check the list below for tips for each reason:

• Item did not arrive: There are several ways to prevent returns for this reason. First, check your shipping matrix and make sure it accurately reflects your shipping times. Next, make sure to always ship your books within 2 days of processing your orders, and use a trackable method of shipment. Enter the tracking information online, and buyers will be presented with it and won't be able to initiate returns for this reason.
• Damaged Item: Pack your books well to prevent damage in the mail. Check out our discounts for packing and shipping materials through Brodart.
• Item Not As Described: It's especially important to review buyer comments for this reason, and then use their feedback to update and improve your descriptions. We also recommend clicking the [Book Details] link on the order processing page to review your description and make sure it accurately reflects the book you'll be shipping.
• Order Accepted in Error: If you often find that you process orders as available and then find that the book has previously sold or is otherwise unavailable, it may be time to review your inventory management processes. Make sure to mark your books as sold (don't delete them!) in your inventory management program, and upload often. You can also print off a Book Report to check the titles you have listed online versus what you have in your store.

Rare and Antiquarian Tips

The following tips were provided by Ed Postal of Barnaby Rudge Booksellers. If you're interested in providing tips, send them to Maria. If you'd like to read more tips, check out our Avid Collector newsletter.

1. The standard convention in the industry for dates in books are the following:
• The date printed such as 1900 means that the date is on the title page.
• The date printed in parenthesis means that it is on the copyright page only (1900).
• The date printed in brackets means that there is no date printed in the book  but it is known or approximate [1900].
2. The Modern Library from 1917 until 1929 was bound in leatherette from 1930 through 1939 in a flexible cloth and after 1939  in a regular hardbound cloth. They all came in dust jackets
3. The Oz books by Frank Baum did not have any dates other than the copyright dates. Reilly & Britain changed to Reilly & Lee in 1919 so even though the date may be earlier it was printed after 1919. In 1935 they stopped using color plates in the book so if there are only b&w plates the printing was after 1935 no matter what date is in the book. 
4. Check to see when a person died before you claim that a book is signed by the author.  Many times you will see a book that is "signed" but it was published after the author died

Bookseller Summit Meeting Notes

Thanks to all those that attended the Summit or contributed comments via email.  We have tried to incorporate the key dicussion points in the list below but if there is something we may have missed please email Maria directly.

San Francisco Bookseller Summit – February 19, 2007

Meeting Notes

Agenda:

• Welcome & Roundtable Introductions
• Review Summit Agenda and Goals
• Abe Books North America Update ( Shaun Jamieson )
• AbeBooks European Update ( Udo Goellmann )
• Working Lunch & Review Bookseller Survey ( Maria Hutchison )
• Open Discussion / Question & Answer

Key Summit Topics:

We began the meeting by reviewing individual priorities with each bookseller.  These topics guided the discussion throughout the day. 

• Discuss regional issues
• Separate rare & antiquarian books in search
• Hear what’s happening with Abebooks
• Sell more books
• Seller ratings
• Valuing books
• Here to learn

Listed below are the major discussion points and action items that resulted from the meeting.

If you feel there are any key items that were discussed and not captured in these notes please contact Maria directly and the additional points will be added.

We will continue to update you on the progress of these items through Maria’s monthly rare & antiquarian email update and our monthly Roundtable meetings.

Action Items We Are Working On

Rare & Antiquarian Filter

• We heard very clearly at the summit, book fair and through email feedback that the search for rare & antiquarian books needs to be improved by filtering out print on demand books.

  This is a priority for us.  We are currently working with our Product Development Manager to implement a way to separate out rare & antiquarian results.

Create a better search for Bricks & Mortar stores

• We heard from booksellers that they would like to see an improved bookseller search capability on the site that would allow you to search sellers by criteria such as region, city or zip code and highlighting the contact information and hours of operation.

We have begun work looking for the best format for a search like this.

Wants

• Currently the ‘Want’ search box does not allow enough room for longer title searches. 

We are in the process of having this corrected.

• We used to have a field where booksellers could enter a Private Note. This no longer appears in the want match email.   Booksellers would like us to bring this back.

We agree that this is useful and will bring this back.

• A suggestion was made about publishing a list of what people have listed as Wants, or Want Trends.

This is a good idea and we will start looking at how we could create this list.

Display Purchase Price on Shipping Manifest

There was a request to display the purchase price on the Abe shipping manifest.

We are working on adding this.

More bookseller tools

• A repeated theme we heard was the need for more education for less experienced booksellers.

We will be launching a Wikipedia style tool in the next several weeks.  This will create a place where sellers can post tips, bookselling definitions etc.

• Involve more booksellers in the Rare Book Room and Abe blog, the blog and Rare Book Room help drive traffic to the site.

We are currently reviewing the content on our Bookseller Central page and will incorporate more information for bookseller education.

• Promote Bookseller Education Opportunities, i.e.) Colorado and Virginia rare book courses
• List notable bookseller and collector reference books

We will look at ways to incorporate these.

• Send out more tips or educational items to sellers.

We will use the new Wikipedia for this along with the monthly email updates.

Provide more marketing materials for booksellers

• Many booksellers stated they would be interested in receiving more items or new marketing items such as bookmarks, pens, packing tape, shopping bags co-branded with store and Abe logos.

We can provide marketing materials to anyone that would like them but will also look at adding a list of available items to Bookseller Central.

Mapping Tools

• Ensure these will work easily with Bookrouter, etc. and communicate this to R&A sellers as they are concerned about the new attributes.

  We have confirmed this and will be communicating with booksellers.

Partnering with the ABAA, ILAB and other professional associations

• Promote associations to new sellers and encourage them to sign up for their country’s association i.e. ABAA, ANZAAB, ABAC etc.

  We are open to discuss ways to incorporate this into our site. However, we have to mention that we were disappointed with the representation of the professional associations at the summit. As mentioned, we are happy to discuss cooperation with the elected representatives of the professional organizations any time.

Additional Discussion Items

These items are all important to us and once we get through some of the items in the above list we will begin reviewing the items listed below.

Bookbuyer Tools

• Create beginner “canned” collecting lists. 
• Provide the ability to easily see a history of what buyers have purchased.

Seller Discount

• Create a seller discount button.

Feedback Button

• Create a feedback button to report "bad/wrong" descriptions.

Historical Sales Data

• Booksellers suggested the idea of creating a database of historical sales data. Issue or concern with this was raised – less experienced booksellers may use this as pricing tool, experienced booksellers wouldn’t want to give this knowledge away.

Asian Markets

• What are we doing and what can we do in the future?

Currently we have sellers in 50 countries and buyers in 53 countries.  One of the barriers to developing sites for the Asian countries is the shift to Asian characters. However, we are following the market development in these countries closely and will consider a more proactive entry in the markets in the upcoming years.

• Find ways to increase sales in Japan .

Seller Menu

• Need to better organize the user interface; ideally use some icons for the main features.

  Buyer Menu

• Provide better tracking of orders & price on confirmation emails.

Sales Tax

• Question – Can sales tax be added in so that the seller doesn’t have to charge separately i.e. driven by zip code – reference to the current case of Barnes & Noble.

Shipping Matrix

• Can we exclude countries? A message would come up that the seller doesn't ship to that country.

Seller Ratings

• Feedback that completion is not the best way to go about coming up with a seller rating, although consensus was not reached on this topic.

• Completion Rate/Ratings discussion – bookseller mentioned that he would prefer to choose a bookseller that has a lower completion rate but a higher quality/satisfaction rating.

Matching Images to Books

• A complaint regarding the matching of stock publisher images to antiquarian books.

Seller/Buyer Contact

• Seller to buyer contact is essential for R&A sellers (maintain this feature).