Requesting extra charges, revisited...

The fine folks over at Fine Books have an interesting post on requesting extra charges on ABE (and, one suspects, on all the aggregators). Now I will preface the following by acknowledging that I advertise with Fine Books, absolutely love the journal and genuinely like the men who run the magazine. That said, I really disagree with the overarching premise of the post, "that the "extra charges" feature is plain bad business." Further, I must also disagree with his apparent belief that clearly stating that sales tax must be collected from certain state is somehow "hostile" For that matter, since I am on a roll, I object to the final statement: "Such practices make the book trade look unprofessional."

Regarding Shipping Charges: All of the aggregators require shipping rates to be stated in a matrix. That is, each dealer has to set a "standard shipping price" for given options (e.g. media mail, priority mail, airmail, surface mail, etc.). Dealers try to pick a price that makes sense and, one assumes, covers their expenses. [N.B. Many dealers appear to try to "compete" on shipping price...proud that they offer shipping for $2.50 or less...personally, this makes no sense to me, I would much rather see someone ask a fair price for a fair service than receive another $500 book in a padded envelop. This, however, is food for a different post.] The problem, of course, is that all books are not the same. Thus, you try to pick a price point for shipping where most of your books can be shipped for the stated price +/- a bit.

The fact is, however, that between the wide variety of weights of insular volumes (ignoring, for the moment, multi-volume sets) and the impact of insurance costs for higher value items, there can be a very wide range in what any given package costs to ship. We ship our books with all new material (wrapping paper, tissue paper, bubble wrap and crush-resistant boxes) and insure all packages. We have attempted to capture the cost of materials, shipping, insurance *and* some aspect of our "time" in calculating the shipping price. It is, after all, *not* part of the price of a given book (which might sell in our shop or at a show). The shipping of a book to a client is a service provided to customers and I suggest you get what you pay for (I am so tired of getting valuable books *very* poorly packed...and I hear about it over and over from customers and other dealers).

As an example, our "standard" shipping is $6.50 for Media Mail/Insured and $10.50 for Priority Mail/Insured. For most books, these prices hit pretty close to where they need to be to cover our costs...sometimes items fall a bit below or a bit above, but on average, they work...which is the point. We have a reasonably high percentage of large (4to and fo) volumes and, as a result, need to adjust our shipping charges to reflect the increased cost. A 10lb package with a $250 book to VA needs about $5.63 in shipping and $1.95 for insurance, so we are at $7.58 without including any cost for packing materials and time (the shipping for priority mail would be $13.30 plus the $1.95 for insurance). I feel strongly that it is not unreasonable (or unprofessional) *at all* to seek to capture these added costs.

This would obviously be different if you could calculate shipping on a per books basis...but that is not how the systems work (or, I think, could work...it would just be too labor intensive to calculate the insular costs, in all their iterations, prior to a given sale). This is also not really relevant if the vast majority of your inventory is $1-10 reading copy books...where people are genuinely looking for the least expensive option available and do not care if the book comes in a padded envelope...or just an envelope. ABE has made this issue even more of problem by mandating that they process VISA/MC charges, so any change for a client using those cards requires an added layer of annoying hoop-jumping.

It is not, as suggested in the Fine Books post, an issue of "bait and switch." It is an issue of capturing the cost of performing a service [well]. I do believe that shipping increases should only be sought where it can be clearly justified. We have, despite a reasonably high number of shipping adjustment requests, lost only one sale (and that was on a shipment to France where the matrix price was $20US and the direct shipping/insurance cost was just over $54US...for a $65US volume). We have never had a customer complain about our shipping prices and have received literally dozens of emails and notes from clients thanking us for our care in packing our books...many wishing others took as much care.

Regarding Sales Tax: I am the first to agree that putting anything is ALL CAPS is really obnoxious. It is "shouting" and, in my opinion, visually jarring (and rude). That said, clearly stating that residents of a state where the dealer has nexus (sorry, I am still a *recovering* (not recovered) lawyer) must pay tax is not unreasonable and it is certainly not "hostile" (though the "shouting" is...er...annoying). Again, if you are selling a $5 book and the tax is $0.25...you should probably just eat the tax (or build it into the price of the book. However, when most of one's books are on the higher end of the spectrum, those costs begin to be "real." We are registered as a business in two states, as we have nexus in both...and we collect tax for sales in both states...not to be "hostile", but because it is...you know...the law. There are a lot of "dealers" selling on ABE and the like that are not...er...businesses. I doubt very much they collect tax on anything they sell anywhere, are registered to conduct business in their state or have Fed/State tax ID's. We are, however, incorporated...and must obey annoying things like tax laws.

I think in this area, how you phrase things goes a long way. Polite and professional go a long way. This is especially true in a silly state like Maine where, if we are selling to a dealer, we have to maintain a physical copy of each such dealer's resale certificate (for, presumably, seven years *sigh*). Taxes are annoying...but they are also just a function of life (and, again, pretty much required by law). I am sorry if the fear of getting "hit with an extra charges request" made the author pass on the book. Again, I suggest that this has more to do with ABE's poorly executed (and overpriced) charge processing "service" than an issue with a dealer trying to comply with their state's laws. It is not the dealer's fault that ABE ignores state tax law. It would not, I suggest, be particularly burdensome to add code to the checkout process that would add the correct tax where appropriate. The problem, I wager, is that ABE (and others) do not wish to collect tax on behalf of "dealers" who are not...you know...paying it to the appropriate revenue service(s). The noted exception is Tom Folio, where you can establish your home state and set the tax rate for that state and have it integrated at checkout (N.B. they do not, however, have the ability to add additional states).

Finally, regarding "Such practices make the book trade look unprofessional": I really do not feel this is true...or at least I hope it is not true. Expecting to be paid a reasonable fee for carefully packing and shipping a book to a client is not unreasonable...and certainly not unprofessional. The same, I think, is true of collecting tax as required by law. Just the opposite is true...the unprofessional are the myriad of "dealers" who sell books *without* collecting (or paying) sales tax. I suggest that what makes "the book trade look unprofessional" is the number of "dealers" who marginally or poorly describe their books...is the number of "dealers" who scrape other dealers listings, mark up the price by several orders of magnitude and then ask that the book be drop shipped to some unsuspecting client...is the number of "dealers" who list book club editions as Firsts, dog-eared copies as "Fine" and/or state in all their listings that any given book "may be ex libris."

Charging a reasonable fee for good service and collecting taxes is, I suggest, a good sign that you might be dealing with a professional. It would be nice if the aggregators would have processes in place that made it easier for professionals to behave professionally...instead of effectively rewarding those who play fast and loose. There are certainly differences between the various aggregators. Unfortunately, there appears to be an almost an inverse relationship between size/traffic and the aggregators' interest in promoting best practices. As I've said many times before, the biggest problem the aggregators have is that they effectively have to treat all "dealers" exactly the same...a forced egalitarianism that seems good in concept but applies very poorly. Simon Finch, Powells, the neighborhood paperback shop and the all volunteer library association run *very* different business...but all appear and are treated the same by the aggregators (as are the myriad of hobbyists; high volume/low margin shops; flea market dealers and/or outright thieves/fraud artists).

What makes the book trade look unprofessional is that, increasingly, the "book trade" is not defined by open shops, antiquarian fairs or catalogues...but by page after vapid page of poorly crafted descriptions of marginal books that are then sent in an envelope with an invoice that is the bottom half of a single sheet of paper, the top half having been taped onto the front of the envelope. But, hey, they only charged me $2.50 for shipping and "waived" the tax...

This is long and rantish...but I do not have the time or inclination to clean it up. I leave you with the wise words of Blaise Pascal (Lettres Provinciales, xvi (1657)), "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." [I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.]