eBay’s latest announcement has both buyers and sellers threatening to quit the platform for good. Is this finally the news independent booksellers have been waiting for?
Amongst the many reasons I had for launching my own website, and becoming an official ‘bookseller’ [including, but not restricted to pricing books properly to start with, and not adding the premium we all know exists to allow for a bartered price to be arrived at], was my genuine belief that there was room (and growth potential), to be had from selling direct.
Until officially launching, I tended to sell the odd Ian Fleming duplicate on eBay – mainly to pay for upgrading my own personal collection.
As my standard of books improved, and I acquired more (very good condition) duplicates, I naturally wondered why eBay was, at the time, taking 10-15% when I could instead build a brand myself, and sell direct.
I also felt that when it came to selling really fine-condition books [my stated USP], eBay was no longer the right platform for me – catering (as I sense it still does), for the more mass-market, lower-spending segment of the market. The one thing I didn’t want to happen was for my really fine books to sell at under-valued prices because eBay wasn’t attracting the right well-heeled eyeballs.
Independent booksellers vs eBay
To a large extent, I think this strategy had mostly paid off. Before Christmas I sold a £1,200, fine condition Dr No, a The Spy Who Loved Me, a You Only Live Twice and a The Man With The Golden Gun.
A book I also sold at the tail end of last year was a very rare (only three are known to exist – and I’ve found two of them), advance binding Octopussy & The Living Daylights. This latter book went to a specialist collector in America. The many emails we exchanged to make this sale happen means I already count myself as having a direct, personal relationship with him. In fact, he's given me instructions that if I find other advance bindings, I should seek him out first (I will be doing a blog post on advance bindings soon, by the way).
As any direct seller of premium goods will confirm, cultivating a bespoke list of people who are receptive to future suggestions is where they want to be.
I say all this partly because the personal touch is one of the best benefits of buying through small, independent sellers, but also because I’m realising more and more that eBay is really doing an increasingly good job of destroying its user base - both sellers and buyers.
The latest nail in its coffin – I feel – was announced only this week.
From next month (in the UK at least), any eBayer who purchases from a private seller will now face a premium of 4% (plus a 75p fixed charge). Think of it along the same lines as the premium that buyers at regular bricks and mortar auction houses have always had to pay.
Disappointingly, I say this was always bound to happen.
Why? Well, late last year, eBay trumpeted another big change – that for sellers, all listings would henceforth be free. There would be no more listing fees and no more final value fee percentages taken from sellers.
At the time, commentators all wondered how its valuable ‘lost’ listing revenue stream would be recovered.
It ‘had’ to come from somewhere – and low and behold, it’s buyers that will soon be footing this bill.
Apparently, it’s all in the name of providing a better buyer experience, and being able to fund buyers talking to eBay 24/7 to resolve any issues they might have.
Right….
It's the 'wrong' strategy...
Both private sellers (they represent the majority old book/collectables sellers), and buyers alike though, are rightly up in arms about it.
There are several reasons why I think this is the wrong strategy; why eBay will probably live to regret this; but also why (hopefully) I feel it will hasten a transition that’s already happening of people moving away from this platform, and returning to buy from small independent resellers:
For starters, eBay – ever since it first launched in 1995 (as 'Auction Web') – has always been free for buyers.
This is a big heritage-USP that can't simply be discarded so easily.
I don’t think buyers will (at all), like paying what is effectively a sales tax for something they probably won’t feel any benefit from (and which they've never had to do before).
It’s a bad move for another reason though: eBay has long been hemorrhaging users, with a declining number of active buyers. As such, I can’t for the life of me understand why making things more expensive for buyers will arrest this decline.
Data reveals that eBay's gross merchandise volume fell by 0.9% in 2023 – OK, not massive, but more worrying for the sales platform is the fact eBay’s active user base peaked in 2018 at 180 million users. Now it’s only 135 million (see chart above - source Statista).
Overall, it’s number of active users has fallen by 2.2% since 2022 alone.
At the same time, eBay’s annual revenue has remained pretty much static – at in or around $9-10bn – since as long ago as 2016. In other words, it’s been flat for nearly a decade. Hardly the sign of a healthy organisation, in my opinion.
It’s bad move for another reason too:
Not only have buyers been declining, but sellers have already been abandoning eBay in droves (see chart below) – mostly because they feel unsupported, and because eBay always tends to side with buyers when there are any issues.
Sellers are fed up because there have also been criticisms that sellers’ listings are often not as visible as they could be, and only become-so when they pay more to have their items ‘promoted’. Meanwhile, last year there was confusing messages whether private sellers could even sell their unwanted items without facing tax liabilities.
But now sellers have just been given another reason to boycott eBay:
At the same time as the 4% buyers’ premium was announced, came the parallel announcement that private sellers would now only be paid once confirmation had been established that their sold item had been successfully delivered.
While eBay has championed this as being ‘good’ for sellers (it claims it will end the perennial issue of claim and counter-claim over items that allegedly haven’t turned up, or have been lost/delayed), sellers have already reacted angrily (see just a selection of irate responses below):
It's totally understandable.
In the same way buyers have long enjoyed the fact buying was free, private sellers have long enjoyed the fact they got paid first – typically the very next day – before they needed to send their item out. After all, this made selling on eBay the same as every other form of transaction. ie that a buyer can’t receive their product until it’s actually been paid for. It's the way of the world. How very common sense!
Now, sellers have to send their item out first; hope that it arrives, and then they have to wait until they get paid.
eBay claims this will typically be within two days of confirmation that the item has been delivered.
Realistically however, this probably means that for most items posted in the UK, sellers will be in arrears for at least a week until they’re paid. It also puts a lot of power into delivery companies hands, to properly record that parcels have been dropped off.
For any items posted abroad – items that can sometimes take many weeks to arrive – this delay in payment will take even longer. It’s no wonder sellers are up in arms about it.
Where does all this leave us?
Although it's probably no bad thing that sellers will now be forced to use tracked delivery solutions (I’m sure the parcel delivery providers all collectively cheered) – what most sellers really depend on is cash-flow, or certainly instant cash. Immediate payment to them was a big draw, even if there was the occasional contested item from a buyer.
But there's something else too that's been niggling me.
I’ve been saying for a long time; that eBay selling – once a fairly predictable sales channel (especially with items like James Bond first editions) – has been becoming increasingly less-so.
Over the years I’ve continued - in a private capacity - to sell the odd less-than-fine book on eBay because they're my own books, and I need an outlet for them that's different from www.jamesbondfirsteditions.co.uk (mostly because they wouldn't meet my site's quality standards).
But I’ve increasingly found that even these (still OK), books have not been getting the sort of predictable prices I’ve been used to recently.
Other eBay sellers have been saying the same thing – moaning that buyers just aren’t flocking to the platform as once they were. Now, the prospect of buyers having to pay a further 4% will hardly be an incentive for them to keep returning and keep spending.
Is this good news for small independent booksellers?
It could reasonably be argued that if cost-conscious buyers really will quit eBay, then they’re hardly likely to be transitioning to off-ebay, direct-selling independent sellers either – sellers who tend to have more specialist and more expensive stock.
As I initially started this blog by saying, some years ago I was already feeling like eBay buyers were not the direct-buying customers I was seeking.
Yet, there is good data to show people do want to support small, customer-service driven sellers, especially if they are people they can get to know, and can trust.
The good news is that recently data confirms the number of independent UK booksellers is now at a ten-year high.
The second-hand bookseller market is also experiencing significant growth – with latest research suggesting it will grow in value from $891 million in 2023 to $1,382 million by 2032.
Finally, well-established consumer polling has long-concluded that people will spend more when they know they have a trusted relationship with an independent reseller – preferring to spend with these sellers, rather than lining the pockets of the big (a'hem greedy), corporates.
So... why not make 2025 the year when you try and buy direct
It feels to me that with certain online sales platforms, an inflection point is now being reached.
The long-pent-up frustrations of eBay users has just been added to by its newest announcement.
On many of eBay's own community groups that are discussing this latest move, the consensus from sellers seems to be that with buyers being charged more, and sellers having to wait potentially weeks to be paid, this will be the final the straw that will break many collective backs.
The person/people at eBay who thought this was a good idea has – in my opinion – massively under-estimated long bubbling user consternation – frustration that was already impacting the business.
I took the decision to ditch eBay and sell direct when I first launched www.jamesbondfirsteditions.co,uk. While I might not get the numbers of visitors that listings on eBay still generate, I still feel I made the right choice.
The customers I attract are certainly more discerning - but that's OK, as my books are at the top end of the market.
My customers are higher-spending. But most importantly (I feel), they want to be there for a long run, using me as their trusted partner for sourcing and presenting fine-quality James Bond books. They're true collectors, and they want to to deal with someone equally interested in their collecting goals.
Of course, eBay can sometimes be great, and it can turn up some bargains, and some real 'finds' that we can only normally dream about.
But if there’s one resolution I hope people can commit to this year, it’s maybe that they join the growing ranks of people that don’t want to feed the corporate machine, but instead want to know they’re supporting sellers that are just as passionate about tacking down, and selling exquisite books are their customers are buying them.
I’m not saying buy from me (although that would be nice!).
What I am suggesting is that you could be more mindful about trying to rely on the services of small business sellers - people that have bags of knowledge, enthusiasm, skills, and who are truly passionate about what they're doing. Use them or lose them!
Let’s hope eBay’s latest miscalculation creates the sort of reset booksellers have all been hoping for; where buyers connect with proper, fervent sellers of rare and collectable books.
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