Hardcover children books

Lot of 5 Hard Cover Childrens Books.


ended - Friday, March 28, 2008

Auction grade: C-

Starting bid: $0.99

Final selling price: $0.99


Up for sale in this eBay auction is a small collection of five hardcover books for children. Seeing the titles, it looks like these are for early children or those looking to help their kids start reading.

The title isn't bad, but it'll need a few changes to help draw in more potential buyers. First, I would combine "hard cover" into one word (hardcover) and also remove the "s" off of "childrens". A lot more people will search for "children" rather than "childrens". eBay does not consider the two words as being the same, so you'll have different search results depending on which version you use.

The seller will also benefit from having the following key words in their title: "early", "young", and "kids". "Books" is the most important key word, and any other relevant terms describing the target age would be helpful.

The auction's description is where the seller gets sloppy and inconsistent with their work. Four of the five listed titles are either misspelled or missing a word. Surprisingly, it looks like all of the author's names are spelled correctly.

"The Wind in the Willow" should be "The Wind in the Willows"

"Danny the Dinosaur" should be "Danny and the Dinosaur"

"Songs of Shiprock" should be "Songs of Shiprock Fair"

"The Horroble Book" should be "Horrorble Book"

Check your work before you post an auction!!!

Despite the stupid mistakes with the titles, I like how the seller listed the books and their respective authors. I also like how one of the books has a short little description. That's also where the seller is inconsistent with this auction. If you're going to tell us about one of the books, then why not also write a sentence telling us about each of the other books? Remember that you don't want to have your customers go somewhere else to research a title and see what the book is about.

The picture is pretty good and all of the books are visible in the image. It's just too bad that the camera's flash is reflecting off of the bottom book. That can be corrected through proper camera techniques.

Overall, this isn't that bad of an auction. The main reason for the low score is from the seller being sloppy and not checking their work. The picture is pretty good and the low starting bid should entice some people to place a bid. The $4.50 shipping cost is a fairly reasonable price for five hardcover children books.

The only serious issue is whether or not to sell books like this on eBay. Unless you have rare out of print, first edition, or autographed titles, it's hard to make money by selling used books on eBay. The best approach for selling common titles is to sell them by the lot in either random collections (like this one), or by a common author/genre/theme.