Last week I was able to take place in a 30-minute radio interview for the “Ask Janelle” show on wsRadio.com. We talked about some of the basic BookScouter usage and how eBay and Amazon book sellers can use it to sell some of their books. We also talked about some of the “Pro” features suited toward larger users. You can listen to the show over at wsRadio.com. I first met Janelle at the Amazon Sellers Conference (SCOE) in Seattle in July. She is a popular and well respected radio host and runs a bunch of classes and training programs to help sellers optimize their online sales through eBay, Amazon, and on the Internet in general. She is also behind the OSI Rock Stars program and training material.
BookScouter has launched a bookmark design contest over at 99Designs.com. If you are a graphic designer or know of one, please send them over to create a design. The winner will receive a $200 reward and will have their design distributed across the country!
With an increasing number of users visiting the mobile BookScouter site at http://bookscouter.com/, the site was due for a little touch-up work. I’ve just modified that site so it has the same feel as the full site. The colors, logo, fonts, and sizes now match so that using the mobile site is a more pleasant experience. It also displays a small image of the book so that you can double-check that the book matches the one that you are expecting.
For anybody who isn’t aware, PaperbackSwap.com is a really great site that you can use to swap books with other people around the country and around the world. After posting your books, other people can request the books from you, and you pay to ship them off. You receive a credit and can then request books from other users in the same way. Essentially, you can trade out books for just the cost of media-mail postage. A couple of years ago, I created a tool that would look up the value of your PaperbackSwap.com bookshelf. Perhaps they changed something, or maybe it never completely worked in the first place, but it was only looking at the first 10 books on your bookshelf, which obviously is not very useful.
I’ve just fixed the tool so that it goes 100 books at a time through all of the books on your PBS Bookshelf. This should make it easy for you to evaluate the value of the books that you have listed on PaperBack Swap to make sure that you aren’t trading any valuable books away for free.
Check out this great deal that I just found! A website is selling this book for $11.00 and buying it back for $63.00. I wonder if they charge shipping if you have them send it to themselves? Even if they do charge your $5, you could still earn $47.00 with a few clicks.
This deal is currently available as of the time of this writing. You can also Buy the book on Amazon for around $12.
Anybody interested in seeing more of these?
I made a few minor modifications to the feedback process a couple of months ago which has prompted a major revamp of the feedback process. Vendors have been asking for ways to monitor, respond to, and validate some of the negative feedbacks that have been left for them. I’ve put a lot of thought into this and have just released some changes that I think will make the entire feedback system on BookScouter more useful for both users and vendors.
The most noticeable change will be that vendors can now respond to negative feedback. They may first respond privately to the user, perhaps asking for transaction information so that they can identify the situation. I suspect that most of the reputable companies will be able resolve the customer’s problem directly. After working with the vendor, if the user decides to post their negative feedback anyway, the vendor may then post a response that will be visible right next to the negative comments.
Unfortunately, there has been quite a backlog of feedback while I’ve been working on making these changes. We have been trying to do the same system manually via email, but keeping track of and following up on all the messages was becoming overwhelming. I apologize if some comments have been very delayed or if we’re having to contact you again regarding a comment that you thought was already resolved. There will probably be a week or so of confusion as we work through this backlog and as vendors learn how their new interface works. Moving forward, this should be a much cleaner process for everybody.