The folks at Terapeak are always using their research tool to find trending or hot items. Terapeak’s Greg Lewis discusses eBay.com’s best-selling book and its reception in both the British and American markets.
Terapeak is the eBay seller tool that tells you everything you need to know in order to sell more. Among Terapeak’s available features is the Hot Research tool which ranks the best-selling items across multiple eBay categories. The list of top books is unsurprisingly populated by the likes of J.K Rowling and Mark Twain, but there is one author of note that might come as a surprise. Controversial U.S. President George W. Bush’s autobiography Decision Points is at the top of the heap on eBay.com – an impressive statistic considering the book was released in November 2010.
As one might expect, the book has enjoyed a warmer reception in the American market than in the UK. Terapeak shows an average price of £10.53 with an average sell-through rate of 79% on eBay.com. This is nearly on par with Amazon’s asking price and shows a healthy demand for W’s book, with over five hundred successful listings in its domestic market.
The British market does not share this demand. Decision Points currently has an average price of £6.05 on eBay.co.uk, a 58% sell-through rate and a mere handful of successful listings (only 18). For greater perspective on the matter, consider the statistics for Tony Blair’s autobiography “A Journey: My Political Life,” which boasts a near-identical average price of £6.34 with a stronger sell-through rate of 68%. We’ll go out on a limb and guess that the two books have similar target audiences.
You may be scratching your head as to how America’s former leader is now giving the nation its best-selling book – but here’s one final element to digest. We told Terapeak to remove any signed or special editions in order to get the most-accurate idea of the book’s true value. However, the leather-bound, signed copies of Decision Points are going for unfathomable figures, in excess of £350 in some cases.
So how is this kind of information useful? Terapeak has the ability to measure and even predict consumer demand. As a seller, our tool allows you to align yourself with the demand for any product or category, get proven listing techniques to employ, and review the sales of any seller whose success you would like to emulate. The result is that you are able to sell more products, more effectively. We wish you the absolute best of luck.
2 Responses
sell through Rate ? means nowt
its profit rate that matters, its where to get it at the right price thats the big secret
Published in November 2010. This means that the Book is only 3 months old so is still very much a current title. Yet it can only generate an average price of £6-05. This is almost rock bottom price. There are always those who buy a book early in its life even if it is obvious that within a short period of time it will be starring in the Bargain Book Dump Bins around the country. You have to remember that there are many Americans living in UK and many might be Republicans(even a few Democrats might also buy it) So while the volumes might be reasonable at 58% on a successful 18 Listings I would agree with northumbrian that it is likely that just about every copy sold has beeen sold at a loss(probably a significant loss)