Cheapest way to ship media

[farnorthsid]

I just listed a book that will cost $6.88 just for the shipping with media mail. I seen other sellers offering this same title for $4 with free shipping, one for $6 free shipping.

What is their secret?. As far as I know media mail is the cheapest shipping option, so how can these sellers possibly be making a profit.

They know something that myself, and surely other sellers would like to know as well.

[stainlessenginecovers]

They don't- or they have an account with USPS, Fedex, UPS or they are either just building feedback, or sales for other items or or or......

As a small time seller, you won't be able to compete. 

[nobody*s_perfect]

$6.88 is the postage cost for 4 pounds; that's a heavy book!

The larger volume book sellers probably pay much lower rates for Media Mail than we do, especially since eBay charges the retail cost for MM.

[fm2000]

Some "media megasellers" have access to cheaper "presort media mail rates", something only very large sellers have access to. They also have access to "bound printed matter", which allows cheaper shipping for paper media items that do not qualify for media mail, small sellers do not have access to BPM either (everyone had access to it until the mid-2000s, was a blatantly unfair change and should be reversed but it is another discussion for another time.)

Megaseller listings are easy to identify, if the listing has a poor quality stock photo, or a placeholder image, they are a megaseller. You cannot compete with them. Even more so if they are a "charity", but that is also a different discussion for another time. You may have to just donate the book, or bundle it with other books to make it saleable.

If the seller is not a megaseller, it is possible they are selling it at a loss by mistake. Sometimes people will list items with free shipping, allow them to sit for many, many years and never update the price. One of the risks of free shipping.

[chevymontecarlo88]

Many of my friends that sell books have eliminated many of them that sell for under $20 because it can be tough to compete and many times not worth the effort/reward. 

[mam98031]

@farnorthsid 

How much does the book weigh?  Most ways of shipping are by weight unless you are using Flat Rate Priority mail or something similar.

So the size and weight of the package usually drives your cost to ship.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Some sellers are shipping books at the Bound Printed Matter rate which is less expensive than MM at some weights.

Don't worry, MM presort and BPM are slated to be discountinued/

[lux.ra_14]

---

@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

Don't worry, MM presort and BPM are slated to be discountinued/

---

Source for this? It would be a big change and dramatically alter the book market at the lower end of pricing. The business model of the big megasellers would collapse without presort volume discounts.

[transtraders]

You could sidestep the competition and list it for Local Pickup, no shipping necessary.

[ekmadonna]

Check Ground Advantage with the book's dimensions and weight. If it is in your zone, it may be cheaper than media mail.

[1786davycrockett]

@farnorthsid 

The huge mega sellers purchase unsorted skids of remaindered books at auction for what amounts to pennies per book.

How this works:

The retailers pre-order large quantities of books from their book distributors, and display those books for retail sale.

Depending upon sales, at some point the book distributor permits the unsold and unwanted book inventory to be returned to the distributor, and the book retailer boxes up huge quantities of excess inventory for return to the distributor, for which the retailer receives partial reimbursement.  

If the book retailer includes a section for "bargain books," the retailer can order a limited selection of "bargain books," either directly from the publisher, or through the book distributor.  The original ISBN has been covered over with a new ISBN sticker, and there may be an additional "bargain" sticker on the front cover.  

Months later, depending upon sales, the book retailer may request a return of selected titles from the unsold "bargain books" inventory.  These unsorted titles are boxed up together, and returned to the distributor or publisher, who eventually will offer miscellaneous unsorted skids of books for open auction, which are generally purchased by one of the mega sellers, often for only pennies per book.

Obviously, the mega sellers have NO idea what is contained inside the sealed cartons; but can safely assume that the cartons will contain a large assortment of recent hardcover best sellers, as well as a mish-mash of large "coffee table" books -- so it is difficult to compete with these mega sellers when it comes to selling most hardcover books published over the last 35 years.

Many of these mega sellers, however, use only "stock" photos (or NO photos), which may not reflect the true condition of the book which buyers may receive -- so any seller who attempts to compete with any of the mega sellers needs to provide multiple photos of the books which they are attempting to sell, plus completely detailed information on the overall condition of the book, plus a well-conceived use of the 80-character title line provided by eBay.

And, finally, any seller which dares to compete with the bottom-feeder mega booksellers must seriously weigh the question -- "Is all this extra work really worth the price?"

[fm2000]

Some of the media megasellers also buy out the remaining books from "library sales", probably one source where they get their older books. Our local library book sale (consisting of donations) sells off all of their remaining inventory (which is thousands and thousands of books) to one of the well known megasellers. It is whatever is left after several weeks of both causal buyers and book pickers going through all of it.

The condition of those books can vary greatly, some are like new, some look like they were in a flood. They list them using only placeholder images (I thought this wasn't allowed per eBay rules?), nothing in the description beyond boilerplate fluff (nothing about the book they are selling). They have shockingly bad feedback and get zillions of INAD returns. Different standards for different sellers I guess.