The 'other' side know exactly what they are doing ... and now is the time to leave

[SalusLibrorum]

I sell there, so yes.

I do too...same name

[moonwitch]

I buy and sell on 'the big river' too

In fact - my first selling experience on-line was there. - I cleared my bookshelves by selling there.

I found it so easy (the good old days) that I decided to start my business.

I only ended up at feebay because they accepted listings of second hand collectables and low cost items - you need a barcode thingy or whatever - or your item has to in 'the big river's database to sell there.

I still buy new books there from penny book sellers and then sell them on at a nice profit - yay!!!

[SalusLibrorum]

I only ended up at feebay because they accepted listings of second hand collectables and low cost items - you need a barcode thingy or whatever - or your item has to in 'the big river's database to sell there.

I still buy new books there from penny book sellers and then sell them on at a nice profit - yay!!!

There are a lot of mega listers there who sell good books at silly prices aren't there? They take the view that they want high throughput for a small profit and don't care if some valuable ones slip through because they reckon that the listing rate slips too far to check each book listed.

You can make your own catalogue entries now, in fact that's what's screwed up the database bigtime - just check how many books "Enid Blyton" has supposedly written. That was a megalister uploading a seriously corrupted set of listings, and the Amazon DB automatically created a new one for each since there wasn't an entry already.

[moonwitch]

That's funny - I was checking out the Enid Blyton listings there recently and there were lots of what looked like identical books - same cover and same publication date but loads of different prices.

Any idea what 'unknown binding' means? - doesnt the seller have the book there to see what the binding is?

I regularly buy my stock of new books there. I buy one or 2 and see how long they take to sell and then buy up lots of my best sellers. The books are all new and, as you say, from people with large inventories.

*rushes off to see if I can grab some more stock*

[SalusLibrorum]

"Unknown Binding" is just the catch all for when whoever is doing the listing can't be bothered to check or if it's not specified on the bulk upload. I think it was originally there for audio books, but I can't be certain.

The database is a complete mess, as you say, hundreds of books that are apparently identical (you'll find they have a slightly different ISBN, or are a different printing date, or have a typo in the title, or similar), deciding which one to place a listing against can be a bit of a nightmare now - you'll notice that there are also thousands of listings of modern books with a publication date of 1905 and also thousands with a publication date of 1000 - also due to a megalister having a problem with a bulk upload and the automatic creation of listings by the Amazon db.

It's total mayhem, I don't know why they're tolerating them.