Sunday, December 4, 2022

The Trouble with Selling Bulk Lots

I use bulk lots in order to get rid of books that I don't want to sell individually.  Many of the books are not in good enough condition or collectible enough to sell in individual listings.  Other books placed in the bulk lots are ones that I already tried to sell but no one was interested.  I also sometimes include books in the bulk lots which would be fine to sell but I have way too many copies.  Sometimes I might have six to eight extra copies of certain Nancy Drew titles, so I place some of the duplicate extras in with the other books destined for the bulk lots.


The goal with my bulk lots is to sell the books fast.  I try to offer a good value proposition.  Sometimes the bulk lots are listed at my cost plus eBay fees plus the expected shipping cost.  Other times, I write off what I paid for the books and list the lot at eBay fees plus the shipping cost.

This means that the books are cheap.  I want them to sell.

Unfortunately, I quite often have buyers request that I break up the lot so that they can have one or two books.  I believe that these people are expecting to get the unit price from the bulk lot and then pay a minimal amount for postage.  Most of the time, I do not answer the messages since I'm not going to reset the lot so that someone can have just one book for cheap.

In one recent case, I decided to respond.  The request concerned this bulk lot.  I only have the thumbnail, so the image is a bit blurry.


The buyer said that they wanted eight of the books but didn't specific which ones.  Since the lot had 10 matte picture cover books in it with one trashed and another in rough shape, I was pretty sure that I knew which eight books the buyer wanted.  

At first I was going to ignore the request.  I then decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to break up the lot and sell one-third of it to this buyer.  That is what I did.


Meanwhile, I have had multiple requests about this bulk lot.  The buyers all want a certain green book.


I was hoping that placing the green APC Nancy Drew book in the lot would help sell it, but my plan backfired.  The funny thing is that I have a second copy of the green APC Jewel Box book that is available in an individual listing.  To me, this just proves that the buyers are looking for a cheaper copy and think that they can get the book for the unit price of $3.52 plus postage.  

Meanwhile, I have had requests about the green APC book that is available by itself.


Do you want to guess what the buyers want?  

They want me to lower the price.  In the most recent message, the buyer asked what my lowest price would be.

I'm not desperate to sell the book, so I'm ignoring the messages.

Since the bulk lot of library editions ended up a dismal failure, I broke up the lot and split the books up into multiple lots and added other books to the group.  These are the listings that I created.



So now I have two different green APC copies of Jewel Box up for sale.



Now they can have their pick.  The books are different shades of green!  I am not desperate to sell either copy.  After all, in five days I will close my stores for an extended period of time.

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

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