- Image by FrauBucher via Flickr
Alibris is an interesting if small site that draws about a tenth of what Amazon pulls in, in terms of shoppers. What makes Alibris interesting is that they also provide many of the services that Amazon provides, such as warehouse space. They also provide a unique spin for Amazon pro merchants; they offer to manage both your Amazon and Alibris inventory from one interface.
The traffic in relationship to Amazon is small, but there are reasons to be there, and that has to do with the affiliations that they have with Barnes and Nobel, as well as other bookstores. Your inventory shows up on those sites listings, meaning better coverage for your inventory. There are also some other interesting things about Alibris that merchants need to know.
The seller community at Alibris is very small, and in no way comes even close to Amazon’s seller community. Many times, you will find Alibris questions on Amazon rather than finding Alibris questions on the Alibris seller community.
Alibris will charge you for inventories over 1000 (used to be 500) items. That is something to consider if you become a bigger merchant, or have an inventory over 1000 items.
You will not sell many books at Alibris, not in comparison to Amazon or other venues. The traffic that is required for many sales just does not happen. With Alibris averaging about 1.6 million people per month, in comparison Amazon averages 55 million people per month according to compete.
They have a floor of 1.99 dollars per item; no item on the site is under 1.99. That floor means that when automated repricers come along, there is a known bottom that might actually mean you could make a profit on the book. This is a contrast to Amazon that has no floor and has penny books. If there is a run on the market, and you see many items for 1.99 that means that they are penny books on Amazon.
Postage is much less than Amazon, Alibris only pays 2.65 for postage, where Amazon pays 3.99, you might need to add that extra dollar to your price to make sure that you can still meet all the postage costs you have when shipping items.
Alibris also sells on Amazon, there are times you will get a warehouse order, and they provide a free prepaid postage sheet that you can download and print off. Alibris does not pay for postage to the warehouse, but you have to find the prepaid postage on your own. Look down at the left hand column down near the bottom to find the link to the form.
Otherwise, Alibris is a nice place to put your 1000 items, just do not count on near the number of sales you get at Amazon.
Tags: amazon, alibris, differences, gotcha’s, shipping, money, price, floor, penny book
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Alibris dropped me this message as a correction to the article:
Saw your post about Alibris this morning, and thanks for mentioning us. (As you can see from my email address, I work here and specifically work with – and for – our sellers.) One correction I would make – we reimburse sellers $3.99 for domestic shipping, the same as Amazon (this is a new policy, effective as of early May this year).
Both Amazon and Alibris charge a variable closing fee in addition for each order. In fact, when you net out the fee from the shipping reimbursement, Amazon gives $2.64 ($3.99 less $1.35) where we reimburse $2.74 ($3.99 less $1.25) – this is for domestic US shipping. This can be slightly different if the sale happens on, say, BN, or for dealers not located in the US, but by and large this is the case. If you’ve made a sale on Alibris in the last two months or so, you may notice the difference on your Payment History.
Feel free to use this information as you’d like, but thought I’d make sure as a seller on Alibris you knew about this change. Thanks for selling with us, and nice work on the blog!