In this blog post, we want to share some of our shipping experiences with you so that you can get more out of BookVolume this time of year.

It’s always helpful to know delivery estimates so we have provided a chart below. However, we have found from experience that these estimates can fluctuate based on a number of factors: back to school season, holidays, inclement weather, etc.

We’d like to point out that it’s not too late to order hard to find, out-of-print, late adoption or reorder titles! All you have to do is add ‘expedited shipping’ to your BV ‘Surcharge Rules’ to include the $3.00 difference, so that it’s factored into your Max Price automatically. If you place an order today and select expedited shipping, you will receive your package next week!

It’s that time of year again! Adoptions for fall are pouring in and everyone is acquiring inventory left and right! Here are some tips and tricks to help make summer buying faster, easier and more profitable.

• Buy Below Wholesale: Check online listings before going to your wholesalers. Simply set your ‘Max Price’ to fall below or match wholesale prices, so you’re never paying more than wholesale through BookVolume.

• Avoid Returns: Purchase inventory through BookVolume that you know you can sell and source the rest from wholesalers and publishers. This way, you can still take advantage of all the savings online, without all the work and added risk.

• Easy Receiving: Break up large lists into smaller lists to find your items faster, and easily manage the receiving process. This generates more cart IDs, which makes it easier to identify and receive items. It’s also a good idea to include the ‘Custom PO’ or ‘Cart ID’ on the Recipient Name of your shipping address for easy identification.

• Reduce Order Cancellations: The longer your list is, the longer it takes to process. This means that the first book on your list might be bought before BookVolume is finished processing the last book. We recommend shortening your buying lists to no more than 100 titles per list.

• Easy Reporting: Generate custom purchasing reports with the BookVolume ‘Purchase Log’ based on date range, cart PO or ID, ISBN, list name, etc. Once you generate the report, just download/export it as a CSV file to integrate your BookVolume records with the rest of your system.

As always, if you have any questions for BookVolume, please email or call us for customer support! You can also post feedback, questions, or concerns in our forums by visiting www.bookvolume.com/forums.

Happy summer buying everyone!

The Trading Network is an alternative to buying and selling through traditional online venues like Amazon.com. This is an exclusive tool available only to BookVolume users, so you will be trading directly with other bookstores nationwide.

Right now (well…not right this second, but starting Wednesday morning) we need as many people as possible to test the system and provide feedback on the user experience. It’s possible you will find small bugs, so please let us know if you see something unusual or unexpected. After tomorrow evening, you will notice a few new links on the left side of BookVolume after you log in; they are for listing and selling books. Once you see those new links, the system will be ready for your selling lists so please load them up and try it out! Also note the help link on each page to guide you along the way.

Until BVTN has proved its worth and our network of buyers and sellers is large enough to sustain regular trading activity, we will not be charging any fees for the use of this service. Please read this forum post for more information on our proposed pricing plan.

Please Note, tomorrow evening (Tuesday, May 25th) between the hours of 4 PM and 11 PM PST, the BookVolume system will be unavailable. We will be performing the upgrades necessary to support our new Trading Network. No other downtime is expected and we apologize if this causes any inconvenience.

We saw a real need for bookstores to have an outlet to participate in peer discussions, explore new ideas, and share information.

The BookVolume Forums are a great place for anyone in the industry to discuss anything and everything having to do with BookVolume and/or running a bookstore.

We have several forum categories, including; BookVolume Feature Requests, Acquiring Inventory, BuyBacks, and Tips and Tricks, to help you get the most out of BookVolume.

As usual, we want to hear as much feedback as possible so we can keep improving BookVolume to suit your needs. If you have any topic suggestions or something to contribute, chime in on the conversation and let us know. We hope you all like the forums, and we certainly look forward to hearing from you!

Join the discussions at bookvolume.com/forums

This customer is a manager of a textbook store in Indiana and has been using BookVolume for about a year. During CAMEX he came over to the BookVolume booth to check out some of the new system changes, and we all got to talking.

He mentioned to us that, “BookVolume single-handedly funded his trip to CAMEX!” Unclear at first on what he meant, he explained that since he has been using a credit card to purchase the book orders he’s found though BookVolume, he had acquired a significant amount of credit card points. He then redeemed the points to buy a round trip ticket to CAMEX!

We thought this was pretty neat, and a story worth sharing. There is plenty of time before the next CAMEX, so when you are buying books online, use a credit card with points and you may wind up getting a free plane ticket!

The BookVolume team is back from our first experience at CAMEX! We are thrilled to have met many of our customers face to face, and enjoyed meeting many new faces as well!

BookVolume participated in the first CAMEX Digital Zone, and BookVolume was also a featured system in an educational session titled, Marketplace Tools: A Closer Look at POS System Tools for Textbook Managers. We are also flattered to have been mentioned in other educational sessions as well.

Despite a few rainy days, we are so excited with the outcome of the show. There was plenty of fun even after the trade show doors closed, and yes, we even did some dancing!

BookVolume would like to thank everyone who supported us and helped us to make our first CAMEX experience a success! We had an amazing time meeting each and every one of you!

#1 Create a separate e-mail account to receive all e-mails associated with your online buying accounts.

• We suggest using Yahoo! Mail because it’s free, easy to use and has great folder options.
• You can create an account in seconds. Just click here and then click Sign Up!

#2 Create a separate folder for all your order confirmation e-mails to be filed in automatically.

• In Yahoo! Mail you can set up your e-mails to be automatically placed into the appropriate folder by following a few simple steps.

1. Click on Options (small link in the upper-right corner).
2. Scroll down and select Mail Options.
3. Click Filters, located on the left menu.
4. Click the link to Create or edit filters.
5. Click Add.

• Once you click ‘Add’ you will be prompted to create a filter name and set rules to distinguish which e-mails will be sent to this folder.

• For example: order confirmations from Amazon will contain the words “Your Amazon Marketplace Purchase” in the ‘Subject’ section of the e-mail. To have these e-mails automatically sent to a order confirmations folder you would create the rule to read, Subject: contains: “Your Amazon Marketplace”. This will now direct e-mails containing these subjects into your order confirmation folder. You can create a filter for each marketplace.

#3 Create a second folder for all e-mails pertaining to refunds. You can have e-mails filtered into this folder automatically as well.

#4 Create a third folder that will store all e-mails that need to be saved or have a high priority.

We hope that these tips will help you! Let us know what you think and feel free to post a comment below if you have any other advice on how to organize your e-mails!