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Table of Contents [updated 10/09/2008]

Why Reprice

What I mean by (semi)automatically repricing is having a computer reprice your inventory where you either accept the results without checking the details (the automatic part) or only making a cursory inspection of the results and accepting the great majority of the price suggestions made by the program (the semi-automatically part).

Before we get started though, let me ask you a question: Do you sell only moderately unique items? If the answer is yes then, IMO, there is no real answer to why reprice. You probably shouldn’t, except rarely, and even then your expertise in pricing is much better than what a computer program can do for you. This article is for the rest of the people who sell (at least in part) new and (moderately) common books. It also means that a part of your inventory should be excluded from repricing unless you only sell new and common books (and even then there may be a few you want to exempt from repricing).

So, why reprice? The obvious answer is “I can sell more books and make more money”. The “and” part of that sentence is important because I know of no-one who wants to sell books just to sell books. They want to make money at it or at least break even. Even those who sell “just for the fun of it” would quickly quit having fun if it cost them several dollars for each book they sold.

However, there is a little more to the “why” than just the simple answer above. Although not necessary for the (less common) used book market, it is becoming much more useful to automatically reprice you inventory in the new book market. Even when you can’t automatically reprice your books, you can get some help by semi-automatically repricing your books. The number of items in this latter category should not be too large because you would then be devoting to much time to repricing instead of time needed to run the rest of your business. Of course “too large” is relative and some businesses even devote a (part of a) persons time to repricing (think of markdowns, sales, “specials”, remainders, etc.).

One article on repricing is available in the IOBA Standard at The Alibris Pricing Tool and is by Richard Weatherford. The article makes the following observations:” It won't help with your antiquarian or highly specialized books - your expertise will be more accurate than our market data.” and “We know who buys books online - and it is overwhelmingly readers, not collectors. We know which copy they pick - usually the lowest priced one that is not torn, broken, or marked up.”

Another reference is a basic pricing presentation Retail Pricing and Repricing of Merchandise which gives several reasons for repricing. Some reasons given are pricing errors, selling errors, and, of course, the demand for the item. It also discusses other aspects of repricing which we will come to later.

Through the above articles, and many others, we come to the major reason why we should reprice our unsold new and common used books – supply and demand. Although we have focused mostly on markdowns, let’s not forget that repricing can also mean markups. When the demand is high and the supply seems inadequate, we might want to price our books over retail. When the demand is high but the supply seems adequate, we can price our books near the same price as Amazon. When the demand starts to become lower and supply starts to exceed demand, we want to lower our price and get rid of what we have. Or put another way, we want to reprice to maximize profit and minimize loss. After all, isn’t it better to make just a small profit or accept just a small loss by selling the books than let the books set around until they are basically unsellable. With the latter, you can get part of your money back by scrapping the books but even in the best case I doubt you could get back more than a few tens of cents on the dollar which is probably less than if you had sold them at a few pennies loss.

Repricing – the Basics

If we have decided that repricing may work for us, we need to implement the repricing and that is our next subject. Before we continue, we emphasize that the purpose of repricing is to maximize our profit and minimize our losses. We do not want to mark down (or up) any item unless we feel we need to and, in any case, we do not want to become a “penny seller” (nor a "scalper"). In the case of markdowns, we would probably do better with our merchandise by selling the remaining lot on eCrater at a steep discount before we got to the point of penny selling or, in the case of individual items either make lots for eCrater or donate them to the local library, nursing home, childrens center, etc. and get back our few tens of cents on the dollar.

For our purposes we want the markdowns to be sharp enough to move goods, that is make the customer choose our book rather than a competitors or conversely, the markdown should not be so small as to be ineffective.

Repricing scripts should try to mimic the supply & demand market place because that is what is really driving the market - at least that is the theory most widely accepted.  To do so they have to have a handle on both for your specific inventory.

Specific Considerations For Books

Before we get to specific considerations, one point needs to be made. The most widely available database of books for price comparison is the Amazon database. It is also the service you see mentioned most often on the net when looking at repricing software for media like books and/or DVDs, etc. Although it does not make a difference in many cases, we will assume that we will be using the Amazon data. Thus we will have available (an approximation to) the “demand for the book”, the Amazon ranking (yes, I know that a snapshot of the ranking just indicates the last time the item sold and not its popularity but we will be assuming that the ranking used is an average over time which does indicate popularity).

However, there is little or no information available for the supply side.  We can look at the number of sellers who have that item for sale but we can't (as far as I know at this time) get the quantity of items each seller has of a particular item.

O.K., we’re ready to lay down some specific ideas:

 

• Consider Amazon sales price.

   

• If new book, consider Amazon’s lack of copies.

   

• Consider the demand (minimum and maximum Amazon ranking) for repricing or allowing only raising/lowering the price.

   

  • If the rank of the item is low (a good seller), then you may not want to lower your price since it will probably sell fairly quickly anyway assuming your initial price is in the ballpark of a good price. If you have a large ranked item (slow seller), you might lose a sale over a couple of dollars if you raise the price.

     

• Consider the sellers, i.e. don’t include inventory from buyers “you wouldn’t buy from” (Amazon feedback and specific sellers) nor yourself and, maybe, specific sellers you consider your “easiest competition”.

   

• Consider the last time you modified the item (initial listing, price, condition,...).

   

  • Some services don't provide information you might want nor a method to store it directly. For example, the last price change direction or how long the item has been at a "minimum price".  However, you could do something artificial with the price.

     

• Consider the condition of the item against the condition of items for sale.

   

  • If the condition of your item is Good, do you want to price compare against New or Like New copies?

     

• A flag to exclude particular books.

   

  • After all the other considerations such as price, rank, type (used, New, collectable, ...) there might be some you want to exclude from automatic repricing.  Lets say a copy you really would like to keep but, if someone pays you enough, you would sell. So you price it a bit high and exclude it from automatic repricing.  BTW, if you do this make sure you keep up with prices,  They will creep upward if it is a "good book" and you copy might just sell because you forgot to keep an eye on it.

     

• Flags to indicate special conditions, i.e. only raise price never lower or vice versa.

   

  • Flags can also just be something as simple as a date listed.  Possibly you might not like to reprice until you've at least given the original price a few weeks try. And maybe you don't want to price those newer listings as agressively as the older ones, say those which have been around a year.

     

• Exclude based on Price.

   

  • Maybe you would like to only look at items over $50 or under $5 individually instead of running them through the automatic repricer.

     

• What should the minimum and maximum prices for the item be.

   

  • You might want different minimums depending on whether the item is new, oversized, hardcover, paper, etc.

     

• Just what repricing rule should be used, i.e. 2nd lowest price, Amazon minus $0.25, harmonic average, what interpolation rules are to be used, what about don’t drop by more than 9% or $5, don’t raise by more than 11% or $5. How and when would they be applied.

   

• Number of copies held. If you have many copies, consider whether lowering the price will start a "race to the bottom" so that most of your copies will be worthless by the time they come on the market. Maybe you will want to price a little more aggressively after you have ensured a profit.

   

• Consider rules for culling.  Sometimes you just have to give up on a book.  Maybe, as a last try, you might put together lots and sell on ecrater.

   

   

Repricing Programs/Services

Alibris You have to be a seller on Alibris and belong to their Gold program monthly fee. Although several years old, the article in the IOBA Standard by Dick Weatherford still has some good discussion on (re)pricing, see The Alibris Pricing Tool

AmanPro Listing, (Re)Pricing and Order Management system for Marketplace sellers.

Book Repricer will save any Amazon Pro Seller hours making sure your books/CDs/DVDs etc, are priced correctly.

BookTrakkers Grabit Used for comparing current prices to the competition and resetting your price.

Fillz: A web based system offering Standard, Premium or Customized accounts.

SellerEngine: If you are an Amazon ProMerchant selling books and media, SellerEngine Plus offers the tools and the speed you need to price competitively and keep all your listings up to date.

The Art of Books: The Art of Books is a complete inventory management system for today's busy bookseller.

RepriceIt: You're in control with 18 configurable repricing parameters, with unique features such as, Positive Repricing, and the ability to exclude competing sellers with poor Feedback ratings, and many more options.

Simple Repricing Scripts

The following repricing script snippets are provided on an "as is" basis. Versions of these scripts are available at some of the repricing services mentioned above.

Repricing scripts should not, in general, directly change your database.

Don't reprice on flag

    if($flag =~ /(NORPRC)/i ){

      $vout->(comment) = "NORPRC flag set. Not repricedn";

      $vout->(modify) = "n";

    }

Don't Reprice for greater than Min or less than Max price

    if($my_price < $min_reprice || $my_price > $max_reprice){

      $vout->(comment)  = "Less than minimum or greater than maximumn";

      $vout->(comment) .= "repriceing price. Not repricedn";

      $vout->(modify) = "n";

    }

Don't raise price if flag is set

    if($flag && $new_price > $my_price) {

      $vout->(comment)  = "Flag - don't raise price - set. Not repriced.n";

      $vout->(modify) = "n";

    }