I used to be one of them. This is why I stopped.
You’re listing a copy of Hedge Funds for Dummies. The lowest Fulfillment by
I used to be you. Now I’m on the other side of the country, looking at your listing, and cursing you. I’m going to tell you why.
The #1 Commandment of Selling with Fulfillment by
“Thou shalt not underprice any FBA seller.”
Chant it. Repeat it. Live it.
I think this is so important, I dedicated three pages to declaring it in my first book
I had to write this article because the past month has been the worst. This last textbook season (which just ended) had me feeling hopelessly plagued by shortsighted FBA-price-undercutters.
No one can say these people are just practicing “smart business,” because their practices translate into less money for everyone (as I’ll explain) – not just me.
This season, I probably had more textbooks in inventory than any year ever. August and January are always my biggest months.
As I obsessively repriced my textbooks over the last month, I watched book after book get underpriced by 1 or 2 cents, and found myself constantly yelling to the heavens:
Who are these people?! What are they thinking?!
Truth was, at one time, they were me.
My secret life as a foolish, shortsighted underpricer
Four years ago, I did what a lot of people do when listing books on
And the next week, when I went through and (manually) repriced, I found the lowest price was now $9.95. Naturally, I repriced to $9.93. And so on.
And if I happened to revisit my newly-repriced books a few hours later, very often they were already underpriced by 1 or 2 cents. And so I followed suit, leapfrogging towards penny-book-status.
How one bold FBA seller shamed me into sanity
One day I was repricing and underpricing everyone like I always did, and within an hour received an email. It was from one of the sellers whose books I had underpriced. It went something like this:
“What is wrong with you?! Pricing your book one penny less than other sellers is insane!!! Sellers like you are ruining
Amazon !!! This is insanity!!! Be responsible and match the lowest price! If sellers like you keep acting this way, soon all books will be a penny and no one wins!“
This sounds like an overly-dramatized recreation, but it really was this hostile and riddled with exclamation marks.
But despite the tone, it got to me. He was right. It was totally insane.
So I stopped.
And only when I stopped underpricing other
Why you should never underprice another FBA seller
1. You create a race to the bottom.
You underprice by a penny. The next guy manually underprices you by a penny. The next guy’s repricing software is set to underprice you by a penny every hour, and so on. Instead of three sellers each waiting their turn and getting $10 for a book, they each get $5.
And by the way: They didn’t get that $5 any more quickly than they would have gotten the $10. They just think they did.
2. You’re in business to get the most money, not the quickest sale.
And desperately underpricing everyone is in direct odds with this mission.
Bringing us to…
3. Underpricing is predicated on a false assumption.
The assumption is: “The more often I underprice other sellers, the quicker I’ll get the sale.”
As I’ll explain below, this just isn’t true.
4. You are triggering repricing software that will destroy you.
A lot of sellers have repricing software set to match (or underprice) sellers every hour. And if you or any other seller is doing the same thing, watch the prices plummet…
Sure there are settings to prevent every book from dropping to a penny, but why trigger an accelerated march in that direction?
5. You’re not a drug addict.
No one should be this desperate to get the next sale. You’re (hopefully) not a drug addict. It shouldn’t matter that much.
Remember: You don’t need to be the next sale. You don’t want to be the next sale. You want to be the highest priced sale.
Why you should instead match the lowest price
Actually, there are many occasions where you should price higher than the lowest price. I estimate I price about 25% of my listings higher than the lowest FBA price when I think they’re too low, and wait my turn. But this is not meant to be an extensive tutorial on pricing…
When you match the lowest FBA price, you still have a 50/50 chance of getting the top spot.
And you didn’t have to sacrifice your dignity to get it. You didn’t have to contribute to the deadly “race to the bottom” to get it. You didn’t have to contribute to making FBA unprofitable for everyone to get it.
But let’s say you matched the lowest price and didn’t get the top spot.
First of all: Who cares? It’s not a race.
That aside, not getting the top spot doesn’t mean not getting the sale. Buyers will see there are two equally-priced FBA offers, and make a decision based on condition, feedback, and the product description.
Underpricing to get the Buy Box?
You’re probably wondering about the Buy Box. It’s a common myth that the Buy Box goes to the lowest priced offer. That’s just wrong.
The majority of all sales come through the Buy Box. So if underpricing by 1 or 2 or 10 cents won’t get you the Buy Box, what exactly are you trying to achieve?
To recap: There is no reason to think your offer will sell any faster because it’s priced 2 cents lower than the next guy. And there’s no reason to think it won’t sell next because it’s not the lowest.
Underpricing is a lazy and ineffective practice based on a false assumption.
It’s really easy to just match the lowest FBA price
Go into the “All Inventory” page, select Manage Inventory, and under the settings, select “Listings with Same Fulfillment Method.” Then go through and when you don’t see a green check mark, click “Match Price.” Easy.
Don’t get me wrong: There are times when I will underprice
Basically, if I see a competing FBA offer that is at odds with my pricing formula, I won’t hesitate to underprice them.
For example, a really poorly ranked book that is priced significantly more than $3.99 higher than the lowest merchant fulfilled offer. I don’t think that’s an intelligently priced book, and I’ll price as though it didn’t exist.
There are other examples. But in most cases, I won’t do it.
Remember the Golden FBA Rule
“Do unto other FBA sellers as….”
The #1 reason is to maintain a basic code of FBA decency, so Fulfillment by
In the book category on
And if we don’t all do our part, FBA will be next.
As Fulfillment by
This lengthy editorial is my small part in keeping FBA profitable for everyone.
So… Just match the lowest FBA price and no one gets hurt.
Endnote #1
Does anyone here live near a Hastings? They’re this cool used (and new) book / music / video game / DVD chain that only operates in small to midsize towns (no cities). There’s a few dozen of them all around the Western 2/3 of the US.
They had a labor day sale where I made an absolute killing. All used books – no matter the price – were “5 for $20.” Seriously, they were letting $30 textbooks go out the door for $4. It was insane.
I wanted to send out an email about this, but by the time I caught on to it, it was too late. But keep it in mind for next year.
Endnote #2
Thanks to everyone who cast their vote in the last post for what to do with the six hours of sourcing footage I took.
As a refresher, I talked about how a friend and I got six hours of raw book sourcing footage, and documented what ended up being a $1,000 day. And then how I was concerned if I released the whole thing, everyone would be so bored by the end they wouldn’t watch it.
Here are the results:
- Release the full six hours: 74%
- Edit it down to 90 minutes: 26%
I’ll defer to popular opinion here and put out the full six hours. As to exactly how that will work and in what format, I’m still deciding. (Feel free to comment below with thoughts).
Thanks for the input.
Also, claim your free book:
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love it. books can be written on pricing strategy (have you yet?). it is such a simple thing that can be so quickly ruined because of everyone’s inner drug addict lol. i have 2200 msku’s and havent used a repricer yet, and granted i might miss some sales but i sell enough to know that the sales i make are all quality sales.
I have a long video I made on pricing strategy I’ve been unmotivated to release, but this may spur me to action.
And it’s best to have quantity and quality, but I’ll choose quantity every time.
Thanks for the post Peter, these people drive me crazy as well. It is usually new sellers whose feedback is “Just Launched”, but there are a handful of mega sellers that seem to price $50 textbooks at $6 FBA. Pure laziness!
That’s the best word for it.
Great article Peter, I totally agree. We FBA sellers have to operate like businesses and practice good business etiquette, or we will all be ruined! I have done the same as you for may years, trying be the lowest price, but last year, I started just matching lowest price offers. I actually think my overall sales average increased. I certainly didn’t see any negative effect on my sales by doing this, and I noticed I actually got the buy box more often.
Awesome points! Nothing to lose, everything to gain.
I agree with your thoughts on undercutting. However, I think the sellers who undercut by a wider margin are as big or bigger of a problem. (e.g. 4 FBA offers at $39.95 and above, other seller comes in at $19.99, others follow suit) Not to mention the $4 FBA book sellers. On a brighter note, it was a good textbook season and a lot of that was because of things I learned from your blog and book. Thanks.
I should have qualified it by saying “a penny or more.” Definitely agree.
You can NEVER beat the repricing software that is set to be lower than 1 cent than everyone = is you match their price, they will lower.
So ignore those listing with jerks that do this.
I used a repricer that did this, tried it, does not increase sales. I used match price – your goal is buy box NOT lowest price. Like you said, lowest price is NOT always buy box.
There’s a lot of info out there about the Buy Box, and I’m surprised at how few people know it doesn’t automatically go to the lowest price.
Great article Peter, couldn’t agree more. When I first started selling books on Amazon in 2005, I read a really great book on the subject (I won’t mention names) which was really helpful to beginning online sellers. One of the tactics mentioned in that book was to look for the lowest price and go a penny lower. I really think that’s when this whole mindset began. Of course this was before the age of auto repricing software, FBA, and mega-sellers who can sell books for a penny and still make money. Things have changed a lot since then, but people still have the idea that always being the lowest price is the key to being a successful seller on Amazon.
Unfortunately, Amazon has actually encouraged this behavior, especially when it comes to books (you’ll notice that Amazon NEVER sells any of their books for a penny – they can get others to do it and still make $1.35).
When FBA first began a few years ago, it really looked like a way around dealing with the race to the bottom. Unfortunately, it looks like even that’s starting to change and go in the same direction as sellers still think all they have to do is go a penny lower. So I appreciate when voices like yours try to educate sellers about the folly of this kind of business model.
Sorry for the long-winded comment, but you really struck a nerve. And as a sorta related aside, check out this link about what’s happening in the bookselling biz on eBay.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks man! Agree on all points.
That linked article is interesting and concerning.
Have you ever raced to the bottom with an undercutter (im lookin at you Renttext) and then bought up all their stock? That is the sweetest revenge imaginable against these idiots. Use their size and overconfidence against them like a martial arts move. I have done this in a big way on numerous occasions and it feels great!
I have done this incidentally, but never as a deliberate move to halt the “race to the bottom.” But I bet that must feel really good.
I disagree with you, Peter. It’s a supply and demand game, and the price of the book will eventually plummet if there isn’t enough demand. That has little to do with FBA undercutters, and a lot more to do with e-book market exploding, as well as The publishers of the books, who are our vicious enemies. Publishers/sellers of new books absolutely hate used book sellers. They hate your guts, because as far as they can see, you are stealing money from them by selling their books as used, cheaper. So what do they do? First, they print a huge amount of copies for the book, in order to flood the market, and make it harder to resell this book as used and make money and it. Then, they start cutting the price of the new book. Whenever you see “Amazon” lowering their price on the book to compete with the used book sellers, that’s not actually Amazon doing it. That is the gal, or the guy who wrote the book, owns it, control the price, and some of them are very vicious. Have you ever come across a book where the lowest offer was the Amazons, and a bunch of used offers were all higher? That’s not because those sellers intentionally priced their used book higher than Amazon’s offer. That’s because the publisher of the book undercut everyone. I appreciate what you’re doing, Peter, trying to save the world and everything, but it won’t work, because the natural forces pull heavily in the other direction. The used book market is shrinking (some people don’t wanna believe that) and the competition is growing. The used book business is not dying, but it will get harder and harder to make money in it. That’s just the truth, it’s the reality, and smart businessman and women who want to continue to stay in business, should keep that in mind, and have some plans for their business’ future.
I think the situation you refer to, with publishers / authors manipulating prices, applies to only a very, very small fraction of the used book market on Amazon.
Peter,
I agree with you here, also respect to the Poster too, most successful FBA Sellers for Books look for niche Non-Fiction, Self Help, out of the way Books to sell, not the Fiction “We only have a 2-4 month Market Romance Novel” Book Publisher. If the Customer could find the selective Book they wanted so easily, they would have gone to Walmart to buy it ??
If I have posted a Book for over 9-12 months and no movement, I’ll price it down but extremely rarely below the Competition.
Hi Peter,
Great article, thanks.
On the subject of the video, I think splitting it into 30 or 60 minute chunks might be a good idea, rather than one 6 hour file which would be a large single download.
Cheers, Mike…
Got it. That’s the plan right now. Thanks for the feedback.
I find that I can’t trust the match price function in “manage inventory.” MANY of the books I’ve checked that were priced lower than me were actually in a lower condition – good while mine were very good, etc. I have the settings set to same fulfillment and same condition but it is OFTEN not the same. I basically do not trust it any more.
Peter, your articles are always logical and insightful. Thanks!
I sell a lot of books without being in the buy box. I THINK the used book buyer goes to the list page and picks according to buyer feedback ranking and book condition notes. I ALSO THINK that is is important to be on the first page if possible. I will often not buy a book if my pricing will not put me on the first page. I can’t prove this statistically but I sell a lot of books that I”m on the first list page but not the lowest price. Our question is, “How high can I price this book and make a sale?” Plus, we’re thinking 6-12 months out for the sale is acceptable.
Hey, how do I make my picture show up on these replies. I’m not shy.
Allen,
I agree with your Comment, I match if possible with the Condition on the lowest Book UNLESS I feel their Price is way too low, I’ll determine if my Book can sell for a maximum Price over the next 6-9 months. If so, I’ll Price higher and wait. I’m not always to lowest Offer but the best Condition Book for a reasonable, fair (higher) Price…
Great Article, our thrift store in Long Beach NY regularly leaves New and Like New books outside the door for free. Feel free to come pick them up. New Like New Thrift Store, 515 Long Beach Blvd, Long Beach NY
Here, here!
The FBA book business is not an easy biz to be in and I think the weak minded (re: pricing, biz practices) fall by the wayside as they can’t maintain a sustainable business to pay their bills.
Peter, your effort to educate and sway the educated few who follow you will pay off!
_jerry
Hi Peter I read all your articles and as a small time bookseller I can’t afford the fees to be an FBA merchant but, I also do not like the low pricing on a good book and I wish they could block the penny bookseller. Even if they have a large volume of books it’s just not fair to hurt other sellers from having a chance to make a few bucks. Carry on the great articles and looking forward to your 6 hour video
Wayne I think you cannot have read all of Peter’s articles. If you had you would know that as a ‘small-time” bookseller you most definitely CAN afford to use FBA. That’s the whole point…FBA IS a way to get around the merchant fulfilled penny booksellers by offering something they can’t.
Thinking the FBA fees are too high is the first mental barrier that needs to be got past.
Really good article, thanks for posting it. It seems like the people who complain the most about how penny mills are ruining the market are often the same ones who use the “one penny cheaper” strategy.
Like Serena, I also think my sales and income went up after I dropped the strategy (after reading Peter’s book.)
Peter,
I love selling Books on Amazon, I’ve learned A TON from you over the past two years, with the main mindset of QUIT PRICING YOURSELF AND YOUR EFFORTS TOO LOW!!! As Sellers, if you keep the Statement “You make money when you BUY, NOT when you SELL” , know some Books will take 6-12 months to sell, some will move 3-6 months, and some quick sells in 2 days-3 months. If you mentally place your Book in one of these Slots, you won’t mentally drive yourself NUTS worrying what a knucklehead is doing trying to squeeze out a lousy $.50 on a Book. Grab your half-dollar, get out of the way….
Well stated.
Great post. I got my start in books on Amazon. I still dabble in them but not very much these days. Between the penny-book leaches and the lowballing noobs a ton of money is being left on the table unfortunately. Ironically, I wrote a similar post in a Facebook FBA group a while back and got pummeled by all the sellers who think they’re experts in economics now and defend this stupidity.
The less money you make, the more of an “expert” you pretend to be on Facebook.
There is nothing evil about pricing so long as the price is set voluntarily by the seller and accepted voluntarily by the buyer. So long as no force or fraud are used, any price is fair game and has no moral connotations.
The usage of “evil” was tongue-in-cheek / not literal.
Right on the money Peter. Your advice is priceless. (Little pun) I appreciate everything you share. I had good textbook season this past month and I credit much of it to your advice. Thanks!
Love hearing that.
Thank you for another great post, Peter!
More to come!
For the video, what if you uploaded it to a steaming site like YouTube, vimeo, etc?
Thank you for the great article! I’ve only been selling on Amazon about 3 months, and haven’t listed much in the book category. But I’ve noticed a lot of listings dropping penny by penny in every category. I didn’t understand the process until now, so thank you for the great advice. I will not become one of those penny people! 🙂
This isn’t just true for books, we’re seeing it everywhere else too. The worst is when sellers lower prices into add-on territory. How do they not see how stupid that is??!
Good Article. It’s only working if all FBA Sellers are thinking the same way. Some Sellers just want to sell their stuff quickly to be able to buy more. This is the same with books. I tried with 25% of my books to just match the lowest FBA offer. This worked well until a few others (New and small sellers) came in to the play.
So what’s my strategy here? I will add more and more books and use a repricing software, adding a min and max price with smart rules. I will not really look out for the others for the first 3-5 months (eg. MIN $9.99 MAX $13.99). After 3-5 months I check the item and adjust to e.g. MIN $7.99 and so on.
Peter, luckily I started reading your blog soon after starting FBA, so I tend to match, but even in the past 8 mos. It does seem that more fba sellers are undercutting. Thanks for the reminder. I am looking forward to seeing the sourcing video & glad that it will be the 6 hrs. IMHO, this would be one of the most valuable things you have offered, and that is saying a lot. Also, I would love to see the pricing video you mentioned. Pricing is such a tricky thing because its part science, partly art, and part experience, and I need to learn more. Please strongly consider offering the pricing video also.
Thanks
Ed
Thanks Ed. My concern with both videos is boring people to tears, but I do think it’s valuable info. I’ll be putting both out there in the next 3 months.
I pretty much follow your lead here Peter. The only time I undercut is on low ranked books where the other seller/s are out of touch; otherwise, depending on rank, I match pricing.
Most of the time, the other sellers sit there with me, but there are a few who just have to have the lowest price and drop a penny. Sometimes I back off (sometimes getting the sale anyway); sometimes I play with them and see how low they’ll go and how fast– depends on the item and my mood.
BTW, being eligible for the buy box does seem to make a difference. Anecdotally, I saw a significant uptick in sales when I initially became eligible for the buy box and an equally significant slowdown, last month when I was inexplicably shut out for a few days. So, it’s not surprising that some sellers will undercut to get the box.
The only thing I would add to this is that underpricing by a penny (or five) would have little-to-no impact on getting the buy box.
I don’t know the factors involved, but I see the buy box change hands over a penny all the time. In fact I just went and change a half dozen prices from a penny behind, adjusting up a penny to match the current box holder and I took the box. If I leave those prices, I can expect the other sellers to drop a penny to get the box back.
How do you deal with Amazon when they lose your items? When running an arbitrage, Amazon often loses my items at their warehouses. You are then expected to provide invoices and receipts to get a fair reimbursement. Amazon recently lost a shipment of 25 books, many penny books I stood to profit 4-5 dollars each from. Amazon’s policy is to reimburse the average sale, so in many cases I was reimbursed 13 cents and 15 cents. Emailing back and forth to Amazon got me nowhere. They don’t budge on this policy. How do ya’ll handle this?
Maybe it’s time we start to send letter to everyone following this bad habit!
I agree with what Peter says: Undercutting in 95-98% of situations is just plain bad business.
Here is something that I don’t think was called out, but is worthy of understanding if you are getting started in this: In most cases, your competition is as “small” seller like you. When I say small, I mean they will likely have very little inventory of that same title – often very likely just one copy! Why would you want to beat them to sell ahead of them at a lower price?
Let them sell out their 1 or handful of copies, and as long as a bunch other fools don’t come in at the same dumb price, the market will sweep that inventory out of your way and the price will “float” back up to your level… As long as you don’t have 20 people in front of you of course because you price crazy high. Keeping this in mind, a reasonably ranked book (say 100-300k) without 100s of sellers that has a low price of $7, you can likely squeeze a few more dollars out of… maybe more.
Second: I would suggest a tweak on Peter’s “price match” strategy: When setting a price in a situation where you feel you have to be right in there with a close price – don’t match, go higher. Setting a match will still trigger the repricer to potentially drop the price, because if they are using the silly strategy of “lowest price by a penny”, technically your match makes their repriced need to lower the price yet again. If no one else is doing the same thing on that item, will no biggie, but if others are all set to the same “go lower” mentality, you may have helped to speed up the race to the bottom.
I read that a safe margin – if you are concerned about Buy Box – is at least 1.5%, my guess is that it can be bigger, but for safety sake, based on what that expert said – may have even been Peter, can’t recall – set your price to * 1.015. This will keep you in the game, not trigger the repricer (in most cases) and keep you in rotation for the Buy Box.
And one last note: I sell some books – maybe many – each month that are penny books and I have them priced anywhere from $7 to $13… So, no Virginia, price is not all that matters, especially to FBA buyers… Just keep telling yourself that FBA buyers are special, and price accordingly!
what’s with that “satanic” image on this article? Sometimes trying to make point could be just simple as saying it, that imagine doest cut it or make this article anymore different.
just say what you ‘ve got to say and lets get on with it and not get things mixed up with distractions peter.
You have to be kidding.
Antitrust laws – also referred to as “competition laws” – are statutes developed by the U.S. Government to protect consumers from predatory business practices by ensuring that fair competition exists in an open-market economy.
What you are suggesting is borderline ILLEGAL!!!!
Says the 1-cent underpricer.
THOSE WHO UNDERCUT ARE STUPID!
Peter,
What do you do with a seller who underprices you say by $30 and has hundreds of the book in his inventory? Should you wait until he’s sold out?
Thanks!
Unless it’s a really well-ranked book, I might have to match their offer.
In this case, what would constitute “really well ranked”?
How do you know how many of a book your competition has in stock?
Two ways:
Add to cart, update to 99 copies, then update. Or use the “How Many” Chrome extension.
I was on the right track when I started to wonder why penny books exist while their their fba version yield more wonder. Then I realize people are starting to “undercut” sellers by a lot. Then I read this blog and it all comes full circle. Thank you for shining this to me. I was totally doing this. I saw a book being sold for 19.99 so I would lower it by a dollar. Then the next day the set price would now be 18.99 then 17.99 then finally 9.99…. I am glad I was able to read this and understand this before I became part of the problem. I don’t know why I didn’t stick to my eBay mentality. I am in for making money not lose money but sell it quick. On eBay I would price my auctions for 20% more the last sold varian and still made a sell. Then Amazon comes and I started doing the opposite. Big mistake books move a lot faster than clothes
do you actually have a tutorial on pricing? If so, I sure would like to read it!
It’s coming very soon…
What is “raw book sourcing footage”?
I purchase many, many books from Amazon – many of them used. I do not strictly go by price. I look for a combination of price, condition of book and proximity to me i.e. speed of delivery. It does not matter to me within $1.00 what I pay for a book. If one book is marked “very good” or “like new” and it costs 40 cents more than the cheapest book, it is no big deal. I go for the book in better condition up to $1.00 or so. If Amazon is selling the same book new within two dollars (often the case) then I buy new. If all things are equal, I will go for the Amazon prime seller but commonly all things are not equal. Much depends on how interested I am in the book. if very interested and will read as soon as it arrives, price is not relevant. If I am not esp interested and will read the book if and when the mood strikes me, price is the driving force.
I Know I Need it! Please Release It! Most of my time in listing is spent in debating with myself an whether to price with grade or do i want to match lowest or 2nd. or third, or higher, so please release it!!!!!
Dave
Good article, true to a point……however, too many FBA sellers, esp. newer sellers, do no set a realistic price for their books. How can you expect folks to pay a big premium price for your FBA book when the average price the last 180 days is 50% lower than your price. Perhaps in some cases, this might work, but often it does not. I see this quite often, and do not hesitate to price at whatever price I deem appropriate in that situation. Also, if you price too high, waiting for your sale at the higher price, other copies can hit the marketplace, at lower prices, before your higher price is hit. I recommend folks read Peter’s materials on repricing, and thoroughly understand how to price, instead of picking and choosing what you agree with, and do not set unrealistic high prices that you think will bring you from rags to riches in one year’s time. It does not work like that. If book selling was that easy, everyone would be Peter Valley. Be flexible, and form your own opinions based on your experience.
I agree with a lot of the things you’re saying, but I also believe undercutting is a good move in some cases. Most people who undercut prices don’t do it out of stupidity, they do it for a valid reason. For example, I’m a new seller, and selling books as quickly as possible is important to get my cash flowing faster. I don’t have a lot of money to invest on books, and I want my books to turn quick so I can continuously buy more and add to my inventory. I’d rather make $5 profit on a book sold in a week than waiting 2 months to sell the same book for $20 profit, because with that $5, I can buy at least $30 worth of books, and potentially sell those books before the 2 months is up (when I could’ve sold the first one). Then with that $30, I buy $180 worth of books, and now I have $180 within 2 months by undercutting instead of $20 by waiting for the long sale with higher profit. It does not matter to me to lower my price repeatedly a cent at a time if I know I can sell it faster. I don’t know if that really makes sense, but that’s my thought process as a new seller with limited funds to spend.