Interview with an Amazon Bookseller

Had the fortune to meet up with the owners of alternating reality, a small on line bookstore that uses Amazon.com as their front end. They have a blog web site, where they talk about their books, with links back to their Amazon store or individual products. Interesting interview from a store that is using Amazon. If you are thinking of using Amazon, this is well worth reading.

Techwag: Why Amazon

Alternating Reality: that is a good question, in many ways it was all about how to get books in the hands of people who want to read, for the lowest price possible for us. The idea of using Amazon came about after looking at all the other systems, like eBay and biblio, Amazon ended up having the lowest upfront costs.

Techwag: You are essentially a startup, in a crowded market of used books, why choose to sell books?

Alternating Reality: you have to do what you love, and if you are going to be in business for something you know well. We have been reading science fiction our whole lives, we have star trek tech manuals from 1972, we watched star trek, space 1999, the whole thing, we are science fiction. We wanted to reach out to folks who also loved science fiction, and learn from them as we learn ourselves.

Techwag: Any web 2.0 ideas.

Alternating Reality: we would like to start a MySpace style system for Science Fiction fans, a way to gather around a web site, but until we find some software that will work the way we envision it, it will be a while before we get there. We are looking at packages like ELGG, but it looks like we are going to have to heavily customize it to do what we want it to do. There is competition in this space as well, but most of it is still reference links, or short story collections only. There is no real MySpace type system for Science Fiction fans that we know of. If anyone knows of one and wants a sponsor, have them visit us and hit us up.

Techwag: What is your experience with Amazon

Alternating Reality: easy, stupid simple easy, anyone can do it, that is why we are starting there. No complex fee structures, everything is pretty well preprogrammed, you know what you are getting yourself into. The only draw back is the fixed cost for shipping, we use all of the money to ship a product out to our customers. Good in one way, bad if there is ever a shortage on bubble envelopes.

Techwag: Would you recommend Amazon to others?

Alternating Reality: Yes, especially if they are interested in just giving it a shot with little to no money upfront. The great thing about Amazon, no payment to get in the door, you pay everything when the item sells, and then you get a credit for shipping. If you price right, you get back the cost of the item, you pay your Amazon fee, and shipping comes in below or at what the fixed cost is. The idea of simplicity is good, as well you have direct access to your inventory, pull up individual listings, and link to just about anything you want to link to.

Techwag: What is the biggest thing that ticks you off about selling books on Amazon?

Alternating Reality: the idea of a loss leader is nothing new in business, what is amazing is people selling books for one penny. We run the numbers and it starts looking like World Com financing, we don’t see how they are making the numbers add up. If they sell in the USA and ship to the USA, they are going to pay about $2.47 for shipping for a hard cover book on book rate shipping. They sell for a penny, their shipping credit is 3.99, so they get four dollars for the deal, they end up with 1.53, depending on their cost for a paperback, they make maybe a dollar on the deal if they don’t use tracking. Tracking adds an additional 75 cents to the costs of shipping. They have to make this up in volume, which is not always profitable. Bubble envelops can cost as much as $1.75 and as low as 40 cents, there is not a whole lot of room to maneuver here. This does not include labor or storage costs for the book, the numbers do not add up unless they have some secret.

Anyways, while the quality of the product unknown, anything for a penny; well you have to think about it when everyone around them is going for 9.99 or even 2.99 for the book. Sometimes paying more is worth it. Loss leading is cool, until loss-leading prices begin to look like cooked books when you know the numbers. We don’t worry about them anymore, if they want to loss lead like that, cool. Most of the more interesting dealers are asking an honest price for the book. Be careful, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Techwag: What is the thing that makes you the happiest about Amazon

Alternating Reality: All the prices are up front, you know what you are going to pay to Amazon for listing an item, you know their cut, you know your credits, it makes pricing stupid simple. No complex formulas to worry about, and that is what we think is the beauty of Amazon. It is not every day you know how to price things, as well you can see what your competition is doing, so you can price accordingly, if your competition is going for 9.99 and you can price at 8.99, you know you can take best price on the item. It’s a great way of finding out what the market is doing, and what the other retailers are up to. Most businesses pay a lot of money for that kind of intel, we get it for free.

Techwag: Thinking of going anywhere else?

Alternating Reality: we think that we will want to open up on other sites, an ebay store is definitely in consideration, as soon as we figure out the whole fee structure. We want to get some profit on Amazon before we start paying fees to everyone else. There are a number of excellent resources for on line book sellers, being in more than one place is a good thing at times, increases your exposure. But we don’t want to undermine our own efforts on Amazon, depends on what we see and how well the business goes from here.

Techwag: What do you think the state of science fiction is on the web

Alternating Reality: there are a lot of web sites out there that have a lot of good science fiction fan information out there for folks. A lot of information is very old, from the dawn of the internet kind of old and many sites that have been abandoned or not updated since 2003. We are looking at how to present information to people so that they have better access to quality up to date information on science fiction. We think that a community setting will go well here, but there is a lot to be said for static content as well. Looking at all the info to see what we can do.

Techwag: Any closing statements?

Alternating Reality: Amazon is defiantly a cool way of getting your feet wet in the world of on line book selling, on line retailing for that matter. It is worth checking out and seeing if you can make it work for you. We are happy with it, but then you know the old adage “your mileage will vary”.