We own and operate a full-fledged, fully operating brick and mortar book store. We are part of the BookRack Franchise, but have developed unique computerized trading and selling methods and policies. Our trading policies go something like this:
We accept, in trade, almost anything that comes into the store. We fill a medium sized dumpster every week or so with rejected books. We love our customers to have credits (lots of them), that's why they shop here (to buy used books at a great price). On each individual transaction, it makes little or no difference to us whether the customer brought in books to trade, because we have set a nominal inventory value of 15% of the trade value to each used paperback book. In other words, except for rare exceptions, one can readily purchase these used paperbacks at about $.30 from various sources.
When books are presented for trade, an employee just scans the books' ISBNs with a bar-code reader.
Scanning Hardbacks
Scanning Mass Market Paperbacks
BookAccents looks up the ISBN, calculates the trade values (for customers' credit), the selling price, prints a credit slip for the customer, then prints a bar-coded label with that and all other information. We normally issue credit of 25% for books with a retail value of less than $12.00 and 15% for books <less than $25.00 and 12.5% for books with a greater value. You may configure BookAccents to use different trading break-point parameters. These values may also be changed on a book-by-book basis. Configuration Pricing Defaults
New Feature: By using the Configuration Pricing Defaults, BookAccents not behave identically when printing used book labels as well as when using the Book Trading Screen.
All of this is more or less automatic when you use BookAccents. The only input required from the computer operator is to specify the books' categories (General Fiction, Horror, Romance etc.), for titles not previously processed. The obvious benefits to this method is that only minimum training on using your software is required, thus eliminating the requirement for book selling experience. It is now quite easy to hire and train employees.
Our customer is then issued an Itemized Credit Slip with his total credits listed. We do not keep a running total of a customer's total credits in our computer.
During our point-of-sale process each book's Inventory Number Label is scanned. The computer knows if the customer may or may not use credits on any particular book. Our trading and selling policy is that only 50% of a customer's credit may be used towards the purchase of any given, qualified book. The remainder of the book's stated selling value is due in cash (or other negotiable payments).
It is not necessary for you to do business in this exact way. You are able to configure parameters in BookAccents allowing for a wide range of choices!