As a book seller you may have already worked out that having an online presence is a great way to reach more and more potential customers and while you’ve had great success in your own country, maybe you’re looking overseas for more sales.
Find out more about how Asendia's supports booksellers with international shipping services
First of all, don’t be put off with how daunting this might be. As a bookstore based in the UK, you may be limiting yourself to just targeting other English-speaking countries, but there are more English speakers elsewhere than you may think.
In fact, there are 1.5 billion English speakers across the globe, and only about 400 million of them have English as their first language, so look at countries who have English as their second language too.
Interestingly, there are 55 countries who have English as their second official second language and that gives you access to over 1 billion people who could become customers too.
Is going international really worth it though? And can it work for you? Well, the short answer is “yes” and “yes”, but here’s some proof as well.
The Book Depository promises free delivery worldwide, which in their terms is about 100, countries. They have a large selection of many types of books and a great website with a Bargain Shop too.
Taschen.com are a niche book seller specialising in big, quality coffee table type books covering everything from photography to comics, architecture to celebrities. They offer international shipping with four different languages to choose from and varying the shipping cots based on the destination country.
Zavvi sell lots of indie, and pop culture books, comics and magazines with film/TV and gaming their most popular genres. They also have a good selection of science fiction, music, and graphical novels. Catering to the comic fan or film buff they pretty much have every book you are looking for with worldwide shipping as low as £3.99.
Better World Books aren’t just improving the online bookstore market they’re helping improve worldwide education too. Selling a combination of new and pre-loved books they have warehouse in the UK and the US covering free shipping worldwide.
Some of their profits are invested to help literacy programs and grants, and funding literacy grants.
We couldn’t talk about book selling success without including Amazon, which was built on selling books online. They now sell new and used books either directly or through third party suppliers which means their selection is the best available from a mainstream store.
Love them or hate them, they are the pinnacle of eCommerce and have warehouses across the world shipping to almost every country you can think of, with varying shipping rates that start at free.
Now it’s your turn to sell your books internationally
Of course, none of these stores was an overnight success just because they are selling overseas online, you’ll need to do plenty of research to make sure you are compliant with packaging requirements, border taxes and anything else that might need to be covered should you ship to a different territory of culture, including books that might not be legal in some countries.
The best option here is to employ a third-party handler who can cover everything from storing stock, packaging, shipping, last mile delivery and returns.
Asendia, does all those things and already worked with book sellers of all sizes to great success. Maybe you could make the most of the benefits on offer too.
Just drop us a line and see how we can help you become a best seller for book sales.
