SPACE COAST WRITERS' GUILD

Topic: Credit card sales

SES - 9/10/2007 8:26:40 AM OK....amazon wants 55% of my book price, justbookz wants only 25%. Any ideas on ways customers can charge my book to their credit card without me losing 25% to 55% of my price?

9/10/2007 10:05:17 AM - Pat McDonough If you use Quickbooks, you can pay them about $29/month and that would allow you to accept sales using thieir Visa and or MasterCard on orders sent to you by email, telephone orders, fax,or direct sales (without buying or renting a credit card machine)by writing down the credit card information. If you have a website, for a modest fee, you can enter into an agreement with PayPal. They offer tiers of service with cost based on volume of sales. PayPal gives you the buttons to appear on your website for "Cart" "Buy Now" and you sent up a little spread sheet for them with book name, ISBN, Author, Retail Price, Shipping (flat rate or a percentage of retail price.) They charge a modest monthly fee and about $1.15 for each sale from the webpage (unless you sell millions of books). When a book has been ordered, and the payment for it cleared, they send you a clearly written email form letter saying who ordered it, what their email is, and where to ship the book. In Quickbooks or through PayPal it is an easy matter to move your incoming money from the PayPal account to you checking account. Some PayPal orders coming through my website have had the order processed, payment received and cleared, and notice sent to my email to give the ship to instruction -- all in as little as twenty minutes. PayPal was also vigilant when the Nigerian skam was hitting book publishers and tried to hack into my website and PayPal account. They flagged it. Notified me. And I was protected. http://www.terrasanctapress.com books4you@cfl.rr.com Bank of America also offeres merchant services to accept credit cards for orders you receive. Their program starts at about $50 per month.

9/10/2007 7:37:29 PM - Valerie Allen You can contact your local bank and request they set up a merchant credit card plan for you. You will have your own slide machine and charge slips. You can either rent with a fee each month or buy the slide machine. The bank will also charge you a fee per charge. Also remember, charge card purchases can be canceled after the buyer has your merchandise. Good luck trying to get your book back! Think this through. It may sound convenient, but you have the cost of your book, postage, rental fee for machine, and cost per charge, and your time involved in keeping track of it all. How much profit is left over?

9/17/2007 9:30:34 PM - SES Thank you for the answers. They both helped.

1/17/2008 7:03:09 AM - SES I decided to go with PayPal. Easy to set up and use.