A Hard Inventory

One year ago today I bravely stated in the foreword that I intended to perform a hard inventory.

“My New Year’s Resolution is to physically inspect all of my online listings one storage box at a time. Do I actually own the book; is it in the proper place so I can find it right away; do I have any that are not showing up online; did I describe it well back when I was in such a rush to hit the first 1,000; are there any typos or glaring errors; and have the search services or meta-search engines messed with my listings. Above all, however, extremely common titles will be removed and marketed elsewhere (in the antique shops, at auction); and I will donate others. Most of the keepers will probably come down in price, though some will go up. Anything added in the last couple years has been subject to these deliberations, and is lightly checked in pencil as an indicator of same. I expect to lose one third or so of my online stock, though I am surrounded by hundreds of good uncataloged keepers anxious to take their place. I am going to finish this work in just a month or two without uploading. When everything is ready, I’ll ask the wife for a special dinner, ftp the file, turn on Eudora’s old New Mail sound, and hope to recapture a little of that magic from the early days of online bookselling.”

I had uttered a one-sentence version of this same vow on the BookFinder Insider list a year or two earlier and somebody privately responded with, “Yeah, right.” Little did I realize the import of this sneer at the time, because this project is definitely easier said than done.

Before we proceed, a word or two about my business model is in order. I went online in the days of old when we dug up the gold, in the days of Bibliofind. Then ABE. Things were sweet, my new additions could barely keep up with the pace of my sales, and I envisioned listing 25,000 to 50,000 books for sale to the world at the going prices. Thanks to The Glut of overnight booksellers and unearthed books, that era did not last too long, so I adjusted my strategy. My current goal is to carry 3,000 to 5,000 very good books. That is to say, fairly uncommon, sought after, in great condition, and averaging $50 or so each for now. When I hit those numbers I can replace the cheaper stock with better items rather than getting much past the 5,000 inventory mark. As a colleague once said, I can’t afford to be the National Archives, especially if it all just sits there and doesn’t sell.

Bookselling is not my primary occupation right now. I have a so-called regular job, and I also sell antiques, so that puts me in a different category than those who make a living strictly from selling books. My small potatoes book operation is helping to put the kids through college though, among other things. I also sell second tier books and paper in a large amount of space in two antique centers, so I have a good outlet for commons. I am building up part of a retirement business, and most of my learning curve and big mistakes are behind me rather than in front of me. Ultimately, I hope to leave these books to my children as sort of a well organized good income producer that can go into and out of hibernation at the click of a key and the flip of a switch.

The biggest business model difference however is probably the fact that I tend to run books and ephemera I think will do well on eBay there first, so those many thousands of items never hit my catalog. EBay allows you to “force” some sales. You know it will probably sell there during the auction (ten days insures maximum exposure), and you might make less than the item is worth, but you have moved the merch. Other times the auction environment works its magic and you are pleasantly surprised. If the items don’t get any bids, I simply cut and paste the work and images over, so nothing is wasted. I usually list these higher than the eBay price, and they often sell on AbeBooks or IOBAbooks shortly thereafter. Other no-bid items go right to the shop or get lotted out to auction or donated to charity book sales. My own website does not get much traffic and it’s half busted right now, though that’s a project for another day.

So, because of all that, I don’t think I’ve cracked the 2,000 title catalog barrier. That made the job at hand much easier than if it had been a larger amount of books. Even at less than 2,000, this took a month of pretty hard work, so 20,000 would take around a year. For me at least, the way I did it.

The sad truth of the matter is that my online sales through ABE had virtually ground to a halt, and they would not have been much better on Amazon or Alibris or one of the independents. I knew the reasons why, but just didn’t have the time or inclination to tackle it. I suspect that most of us are suffering from the same problem to one extent or another. When I finally got started, that first box was like the first step of a long journey. This is the perfect time to do it though. The tsunami waves of unearthed books have subsided, and a very large percentage of known titles have settled into a natural price range. Determining just what that is can be like reading tea leaves, but most professional booksellers are good at this by now, which is a natural advantage. If you made all these adjustments four or five years ago, you would probably have to do it all over again, but the prices you determine today will probably be in the ballpark ten to fifteen years from now.

The very first thing I did was pare down the number of subject headings I use, from 80 or so down to around 60. I combined such topics as Geology and Geography under the latter, for example; Textbooks are now in with Reference; and Ceramics, Glass, and Furniture all went under Antiques & Collectibles. There were quite a few superfluous headings which would probably never fill an entire box at the new lower numbers and higher standards, and the whole process enabled me to get a better handle on the classification scheme. Unless you have some fame and some deep specializations, chances are that most books are located online as the result of title and author searches, rather than the old category search.

The next step, the “hard inventory,” was plowing through one box at a time, physically comparing the books in hand to the newly organized catalog lists. No matter what kind of storage system you use, there should be a way to check on each and every book. It became immediately apparent that most of my once reasonable prices were wildly high in the post-Glut era. There were less than five copies on when I listed, I established the lowest price point at $25 or so, and now there are 150 copies available starting at a buck or two. Even discounting all the ex-library, mega-lister boilerplate, and phantom listings, it was no wonder that my books were no longer being reached. This is not only wasteful, but sort of embarrassing as well. And if savvy buyers see a few out-of-whack prices like that, they become suspicious of your entire inventory. So if the common $25 book was any good, as in desirable, I removed it from the active inventory by marking it sold and priced it much lower for the shop shelves. For the vast majority of these, I didn’t even have to check prices online. For awhile there my office was a danger zone of flying books, and the dog had to lay elsewhere. When the dust settled, I had reduced my inventory by more than one third, down to an even thousand books I could be proud of.

Actually, the makeover wasn’t complete until these survivors were given new marching orders, and that part took much longer. My bibliographic descriptions have evolved and become more uniform, and my grading more conservative. I found typos and mistakes. In terms of inventory control, I discovered books in the wrong boxes and quite a few uncataloged items. I also identified others that are missing altogether. The most important part though was adjusting prices. I estimate that I lowered about two thirds of the prices (nothing below $9), raised them for perhaps 5% of the listings, and left the rest the way they were. I would guess that my average remaining title is one of five or less copies listed. If the group is larger, my copy is usually at the top or at the bottom. Few if any have more than ten or fifteen “real” competitors online. I am going for uncommon titles that are also desirable. To each his own, but I don’t enjoy packaging and schlepping dozens of cheap books when a few choice items will produce the same financial result.

In the period April through July, 2007 I only sold 21 books directly through ABE (a pathetic figure compared to the good old days, and most of those were newer listings) for a total of $654, which averages out to about $31 per book. With more than 1,500 titles online, I really should have sold around 180 books in those four months, using the perhaps optimistic yardstick of one per day for every thousand listed.

I finished my hard inventory at the very end of July. In the period August through November, 2007 I sold 40 books through ABE (still nothing to write home about) for a total of $2,037, which averages out to around $51 per book. With about 1,000 titles online, I should have sold around 120 books in those four months, using the same yardstick, so I narrowed that gap from 159 books short to 80 books short.

Thanks to the hard inventory, I sold nearly twice as many books on ABE, and I more than tripled my ABE income. And by reducing some pricey overpriced titles, I also raised my average sale by more than one third. If you calculate this annual income and multiply that by a factor of five for the 5,000 title inventory I am shooting for, $30,000 or so isn’t a bad addition to the revenue stream. And for those with 10,000 to 25,000 “better” books online, one could almost make a living at this!

One other practical effect of tackling this big job is that I was holding off on new listings in order to make it easier. I recently added 200 good keepers, and I have a large amount of unexplored boxes in storage to go through as well now that I am ready to do so.

I had to abandon one goal of this inventory, and that was making sure each and every title showed up on ABE, IOBAbooks, and BookFinder (but not, thank God, Amazon). It was slowing me up too much, and there were more problems than one might expect. This will be a separate project and report some day. I’d also like to attach an image to each record, which should not be too hard.

In closing, those who have not adjusted their prices over the years can probably increase search service and website income by a significant 25% to 200% after such a hard inventory. Even if you list cheaper and more common books, you’ll do a lot better in the bottom five price range than in the highest fifty. It’s very cathartic too, like clearing snags out of a creek or pruning fruit trees. Good for the old fulfillment rate as well, not to mention saving time and pleasing customers.

Just to prove that no process or system is perfect, my copy of The Illinois State Geological Society Bulletin No. 2: The Petroleum Industry of Southeastern Illinois (1906, $25) just up and disappeared, questioning authority like books should do, or perhaps in opposition to the abolition of Geology as a subject heading. I had it in hand and it got into one of the other boxes somehow, where it knows I have no stomach for further pursuit. Before the inventory it might have slumbered or inspired further rebellion within the ranks for years, but now I’m pretty sure it will regain For Sale status fairly soon as I come across it filling new orders.

Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com