M
mapiman
- Original Poster
- #1
Hi there,
I joined this forum for help with some tax issues but am finding it presents me with the opportunity to find out about other matters.
Here is my query:
Over a period of time I have built up a large collection of books on several different subjects. I travel a lot now and am thinking of moving my main home to Spain and move my UK base into a small flat in the next year or so. No room for anything like the number of books I have.
Dealers would only offer me a fraction of what the books are worth so I wondered about selling them online. Have done a bit with eBay and Amazon but they charge too high fees and the postage Amazon allows is far too low so either I have to overprice (and fail to get the order) or loose out on some cash.
Ive tried AbeBooks and Alibris but you are selling against so many other dealers that sales are slow. With all these guys there are delivery timescales that Id find hard to always meet as if Im nor around I have to rely on my sister to go and pack the books for me and she only can do that once or twice a week.
So, I thought about setting up my own site to sell the books directly to the public. Problem I have is that lots of the shopping cart sites can take my catalog (csv format) but they dont handle stock control. I want a system that once a book is sold online the system wont allow any other orders or, in some cases where I have more than one copy (I used to buy half a dozen copies of interesting first edition especially if I could get them signed at Waterstones in London), keep track of how many are left.
Any suggestions?
I joined this forum for help with some tax issues but am finding it presents me with the opportunity to find out about other matters.
Here is my query:
Over a period of time I have built up a large collection of books on several different subjects. I travel a lot now and am thinking of moving my main home to Spain and move my UK base into a small flat in the next year or so. No room for anything like the number of books I have.
Dealers would only offer me a fraction of what the books are worth so I wondered about selling them online. Have done a bit with eBay and Amazon but they charge too high fees and the postage Amazon allows is far too low so either I have to overprice (and fail to get the order) or loose out on some cash.
Ive tried AbeBooks and Alibris but you are selling against so many other dealers that sales are slow. With all these guys there are delivery timescales that Id find hard to always meet as if Im nor around I have to rely on my sister to go and pack the books for me and she only can do that once or twice a week.
So, I thought about setting up my own site to sell the books directly to the public. Problem I have is that lots of the shopping cart sites can take my catalog (csv format) but they dont handle stock control. I want a system that once a book is sold online the system wont allow any other orders or, in some cases where I have more than one copy (I used to buy half a dozen copies of interesting first edition especially if I could get them signed at Waterstones in London), keep track of how many are left.
Any suggestions?
