Not all Booksellers are Equal
If I were to post this message on the booksellers' ABE forum, I'd get seriously flamed. It is just a rant, so feel free to skip over it. This is therapy, not information.
I usually browse the ABE forum a couple of times a week. Tonight, it made my blood boil. It's laden with complaints about stupid or fake customers, but it's not this that gets my goat. It's the downright ignorant, stupid sellers who are so pig-brained that they don't even know, or care, that they are.
First, there's a bunch of Alibris sellers shouting foul because Alibris have mistakenly charged them 20 per cent on some sales. Can't these people read? They're booksellers for godsake! Even if they have forgotten the details of the annoucements made not 2 months ago, do they not have the wit to look up the commission structure before shooting their mouths off?
Then there's the fellow who claims to be a UK bookseller, with a business which is not VAT registered. He also claims that books are not vatable items in the UK, so he can't work out why he has to pay VAT on German transactions. Does he really not know that books are zero-rated? Or that he could, if he worked out how, claim the VAT back? Worse - he's asked ABE to explain what services are provided to justify the "infliction" of VAT. Does he really not know that VAT is a national tax, or that ABE is one of the least likely places to find the right advice on it? Perhaps he doesn't even know that he pays VAT on nearly everything he buys? How can people like this run a business?
Then there's the great group of guys and gals debating how many sales per thousand per day they should achieve before considering themselves "average" or "successful". Where does one start? Do they not realise that the nature of there inventory, not to mention proficiency in description and accuracy with data management, will affect their sales rate so significantly that without taking these factors into account, it's all meaningless. And why would they care about their sales rates compares to others anyway. I betcha if I halved my prices, I'd increase my sales rate for a while. But why would I want to that. Are they looking at the wrong metrics, or am I? I'm beginning to think I must be one whose out of step.
Then there's a bunch of "old-timers". Been around since the good old days when ABE was great and there was a rich sucker for every over priced book out there. Now don't get me wrong, if it had been my decision, I wouldn't have encouraged thousands of part-time hobbyists or purveyors of new books to join ABE. But it's not my decision. It's ABE's and ABE will do whatever is best for ABE. Just like I do whatever is best for my business. If it's hurting their sales so much, to the extent that listing on ABE is no longer profitable, then why do they continue listing there?
Then there's a discussion on first edition clarification. It starts with a rather niave, but perfectly logical, question. I can only assume that the rest of the discussion, or at the least the next 18 messages as I couldn't bring myself to read further, was, with some honourable exceptions, a rather elaborate, rather cruel hoax orchestrated by booksellers with too much time on their hands. What possible motivation could they have for perpetuating such half truths and mis-understandings?
Then there's a sweet group of newbies, there's always a sweet group of newbies, who seem to think that all there is to bookselling is listing. "My inventory is there, it's indexed, it's searchable. Why haven't I sold anything? It must be ABE's fault". Do they really think that it's ABE's job to sell their books? Forgive me, but I thought we were the booksellers and that ABE was little more than an advertising hoarding - albeit it a rather large one. What's worse, it doesn't seem to matter how many times some kind soul tries to explain to them that their rather grubby and some what common Le Carre paperback really isn't worth £100, even if it has a complete number line.
Grrr. I must have had a bad day for these things, which are far from unusual, to make me as mad as this. No wonder ABE never listens to its sellers. If the forum provides anything like a reasonable reflection of the knowledge, mentality or aspirations of the average ABE seller, I wouldn't listen to them either.
If you've read this far, thank you. I feel much better now.
