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Should I Sell My Inventory Internationally? 09/03/06 Return To Online Bookselling Home Page |
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Many new booksellers are confronted with this question as soon as they sign up with a marketplace to list their inventory, and believe it or not, many of the veteran booksellers regularly ask themselves if they really want to be selling their inventory internationally. Personally, I do list my books for sale through Amazon.com internationally, but recently I have been questioning whether or not it is really worth it. The reasons for my doubt are: 1) When you sell a book for international delivery on Amazon.com, they send an email to the customer telling them that most deliveries arrive in two to three weeks even though the customer has placed an order for standard delivery, i.e., Economy (Surface) Letter Post. This forces you as a bookseller to send your international deliveries via Air Mail or Global Priority, or risk negative feedback for deliveries that take 4-6 weeks which is what the customer paid for. 2) If you send the customer an email explaining that the Amazon.com email is misleading and that the book will probably arrive in 4-6 weeks, you will find yourself refunding a lot of customers when the book actually takes 6-8 weeks, which is quite often the case for books sent to Australia and South America via Economy (Surface) Letter Post. 3) The US Postal Service has come out with some threatening warnings lately regarding the value declared on the Customs Form required on most international deliveries. While I have always put the real value of the sale on the Customs Declaration, I find it disturbing that the Post Office would put out such intimidating correspondence. Apparently, random searches of international product packages revealed that the invoice enclosed with the product being shipped did not match the value declared on the Customs form. 4) It never seems to fail that international customers will order the biggest and heaviest books that you have in your inventory and expect you to pay the appropriate rate to assure delivery in the 2-3 weeks that Amazon.com tells them in the email. I had one customer order a book that I was selling for $4.99, and to ship it to Brazil would require $36.35 in postage via Air Mail or $25.05 via Economy (Surface) Letter Post because the book plus shipping container weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces. 5) It is a lot of hassle to pack and prepare books for international delivery. My advice would be that if you choose to list your inventory as being available internationally, put the words, “No International Delivery” in the listing description for all books over a pound or those that will not fit in a large Global Express envelope. This will eliminate the probability of an international customer ordering a book that is going to cost more to ship than you are getting for the book and postage reimbursement. I am also bothered by the idea of not selling internationally just because it is not convenient to me. I like the idea of customers all over the world having access to the books I sell and in many cases they could never find the books they are looking for if I and others quit making their inventory available internationally. You are visitor:
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