Selling Children's Series Fiction. Or Not.

[callmemadam]

Most people in the UK who are interested in girls’ stories will have read at least some of the American series books for girls: Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, Pollyanna, Sue Barton, the Miss Billy and Friendly Terrace books have all had British editions. I don’t collect them myself but was interested to find this blog, Series Books for Girls. Now there’s someone who really knows her Nancy Drew!



If you read the blog, you can’t fail to notice that the author is very disenchanted with selling books on eBay. Spot the poll, which shows that buyers are happier than sellers. I so understand this. I recently started selling on eBay again in a small way, after several months’ break. As usual, many changes had been made and none for the better. Listing gets more and more complicated. Business sellers are given preference over what Series Books For Girls calls hobbyist sellers. I was horrified to find that *I was not allowed* to charge the full postal rate for a heavy book because eBay had imposed a limit of £2.75 on UK postage for books (obviously with Amazon in mind). I had to list it as being sent ‘freight’, which it was not. How many more ways will they think of to make it impossible for a seller to make any money at all on a low value item? By the time you’ve totted up listing fees, final value fees, Paypal fees (outrageous!), postage and packing plus your time and trouble listing, packing and posting, it’s hardly worth selling anything for under a tenner.

Series Books for Girls is using Bonanzle. I’d never heard of this so checked it out. A search drew a blank on both Brent-Dyer and EJO, so it won’t be a useful site for collectors of British series fiction. Anyone can see that there’s a gap in the market, the question is: is eBay’s hold just too strong? People who sell books, either commercially or just to offload spare copies and fund your habit, are you happy? Which sites do you prefer?

Comments

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

I've been doing fairly well on ebay lately - mostly Chalets, but quite a bit of other stuff too. If you list in the antiquarian and collectable section you can increase postage to about £4.50, which is much more reasonable. Not sure why old books are deemed to be heavier than newer ones, but I've long given up expecting logic from ebay.

I've tried Amazon and abe in the past, but in the end I do prefer ebay - I can put lots of photos on (hosted on photobucket, no point giving ebay more money than I absolutely need to) and set my listing out how I want to. And I don't have to renew my listings every 60 days like Amazon make you do. Last time I had to relist something on Amazon, they'd changed it and it was much more complicated than it used to be. And as for abe - their listing software is stuck in about the mid-1990s, you still have to upload your (one!) photo separately and wait for them to get round to linking the two together. And Heather from Peakirk was telling me that books randomly disappear from listings altogether.

I wish someone would start an alternative to ebay, I'm sure there is a gap in the market.

To link to your post - I found a nice Cherry Ames in a dj at the car boot this morning, and I'm glad I did, because it made me look through the rest of the unprepossessing box, and lurking at the bottom was a first of Carbonel and Calidor in a dj. Which should pay for yesterday's trip to the vet after Moll got herself bitten by another cat. Hopefully.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

*sighs* the problem is that at the moment nothing is better than eBay. I like having plenty of room for accurate descriptions, my own pictures and that buyers can easily check my feedback.

Well done you on the Carbonel! I've had a lot of these series books at one time or another and then got rid of them. I painstakingly collected all the Pollyanna books, frex, but sold them in the end. All the photos with this post are of books I actually own but I don't expect I'll keep them; no room! Poor Moll, I hope she's not feeling too sorry for herself.

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

Oh, Moll's fine now - it's my bank account that's hurting! She was very sorry for herself on Thursday night though, crying every time she moved. Poor thing.

Thankfully Carbonel isn't something I've ever felt a desire to read or own, it's always a dilemma when I find something I could sell on but want to keep. But I don't do fantasy, so it's going on ebay this afternoon. Or as soon as I get round to it.

I also found a couple of thin biographical books about O Douglas, which seem to be a nice find - for the time being they're in the loft with the books until I get round to reading them. One day....