Selling on Hyraxia
Welcome to the Hyraxia Seller's Guide.
The Hyraxia marketplace is designed to provide the maximum availability and visibility of collectible books. There are plenty of sites where you can buy rare books but more often than not you have to wade through pages of cheap paperback copies. Many of these sites also make it difficult or too expensive for people who aren't really sellers to get their items on there and there are often too many restrictions. We've tried to bear this in mind whilst designing the marketplace so here's a couple of our ideas. For more information on the business model click here.
Note: To sell on Hyraxia you need to set your profile to that of a seller. Click "My Profile" and then click "Edit Details" and change the seller drop down to yes. This will give you access to the Seller Home.
The Order Process and Handling PaymentsThere are currently two methods of payment available: PayPal and Offline Payment. Paypal is reasonably straight-forward, you put in your Paypal email address to your account and the money gets sent straight to your Paypal account. So here's how the offline payments work.
When the buyer clicks the checkout button an email is sent to the buyer notifying them of the order they placed and the seller also receives an email notifying them of the order. Payment details are also sent automatically to the buyer (this can be configured - see the Seller's Home section below). Once you receive an order, you should instruct the buyer on how to commence with the purchase. Once the buyer has made a successful payment you should ship it as soon as possible, and mark the item as shipped in your Seller's Home. Marking the item as shipped effectively completes the transaction.
Now, if you or the buyer wants to cancel an order or part of the order then mark the book as cancelled instead of shipped. But do note that once a status is changed it cannot be undone. Hyraxia will check to see if any items are marked as cancelled and if all items on an order are marked as cancelled the order will be cancelled and any fees will be taken from your bill. Occasionally we will follow up with buyers to understand why they cancelled.
Hyraxia's Fees
6% of the final value*.
*Sellers who contribute to Hyraxia get three months of free fees for each article contributed.
Settling Your Bill
We'll send you an invoice at the end of every month. It will show a break down of all your fees and details of how to pay the bill (Paypal, Cheque etc.) Feel free to contact us if you have any queries about any items on the bill that you think are incorrect. Gold sellers won't get any bills at all.
Seller's Home
The seller's home is the main place to set up your selling account. There are currently nine sections in this area.
My Account: This section has three subsections:
Shop Description: This contains your shop name and a short description about your shop.
Contact Details: This contains the details of your shop or home address. You can also enter your terms and conditions of sale and any extra information.
Payment Instructions: The payment instructions are basically the details explaining how your customer should pay you which is sent via email. The email address is your email address.
Postage: The postage section is where you set up your shipping rates. Here you have a shipping method and shipping schemes. A shipping method is for example, Royal Mail or DHL and the schemes beneath it are the different shipping options (first class, international etc.) Most sellers will likely set up shipping by creating a generic shipping method, such as MyBookShop Shipping and have different schemes beneath that. When you set up you shipping method you must set it to 'published' otherwise it will not be available.The schemes are accessed and created by clicking the lorry icon beneath where it says 'schemes'. Here you can set up the costs associated with different shipping schemes. A simple example would be a price per kilo for domestic shipping and a price per kilo for international shipping. The form has the following fields:
Scheme Name: The descriptive name of the field, e.g. UK Domestic
Scheme Description: A short sentence describing the scheme - this will appear with the name on the checkout screen
Weight: The weight range in kilograms within which the scheme is applicable, for example if you charge different rates depending on weight
Price: The price in a currency. The final box is used to determine whether you charge the price per kilo or just a flat amount.
From: Where the item is coming from
To: The countries where the shipping scheme is applicable too.
Published: Whether this scheme is currently in use or not.
Don't worry though, if you're stuck with the postage section, let us know your rates and we'll fill it in for you. Shipping schemes can also be imported.
Sales: This is where you view all your orders. It is important to note here that you may see orders with a status of cancelled that you weren't aware of. We include these as they allow you to see orders that were made but the checkout was never completed. We do this simply to allow you to get a view of how many people are getting to the checkout and changing their minds. Each order here has three links, the first is a link to the order, the second to the items and the third to the invoice. The order details are most important and it is here that you can update an item's status from accepted to shipped or from accepted to cancelled. Note that once an item is set to shipped or cancelled it cannot be reverted.
Your Books: This is a list of all your books.
Add a New Book: This is where you list your books (see 'listing' section below)
Personal Profile: This is the same as your profile that you access from the main menu, and not really related to selling.
ListingWe've tried to make selling as quick and simple as possible. To list a new book just click on 'Add a New Book' in your seller home. This will present a simple form for creating your listing. Here are the separate sections:
Title: This is the title of your listing. We recommend that you adhere to the following format: Author - Title - Edition, for example: Stephen King - The Green Mile - UK First Edition.
Weight: Depending upon how you've set up your shipping charges this could be very important. If you have set up your charges to be 'per kg' or 'per lb' then this weight will be used to work out the shipping costs. If you have a book weight 1.5 Kg and charge £2.00 per kilo, the shipping cost will be £3.00.
Copies in Stock: This is also important and must be set. This number will be reduced by one every time a transaction is completed; i.e. shipped or cancelled. If the value of stock on hand is zero the item will not be displayed in listings. We recommend that you delete listings once they've sold.
Description: This is the body of your listing. You need to be as accurate as possible in describing the item; list all flaws, publication details and edition details. The editor is a full HTML editor, you can put hosted images on here from your own site or from hosting sites such as photobucket.com. Try to keep the formatting simple, fancy colours and graphics generally detract from the actual details, we'd rather maintain a professional approach and have listings look neat basically. But if you think it's important then feel free.
Properties: These must be set, especially the 'price-clipped' and 'owner inscription' boxes, these properties appear on the search listings and are used to provide easy identification of the primary properties.
Price: This is the price of the book, not much to say there really. Minimum amount if £5.
Add to Cart: This should be left at one, the only reason for it is if you're selling things in batches. So if the minimum quantity of that item that can be sold is five you would put five in this box. The price will be multiplied and items can be removed in the shopping cart.
Image: This is the primary image for the item and will be shown below the description and as a thumbnail on the search results page. The images should be 480x640. There's a good little program called 'prish resizer' which allows you to right click and resize a picture. This is useful if you have large files. Also, try to have just a plain white background for the image.
Seller Details: These are pieces of extra information (populated within the 'seller configuration' section of the seller's home) that will be displayed on your listing. As a bare minimum it's recommended that you put your Shop Name on there but you could put all your details on there if you wish. It may also be useful to put your terms and conditions on there, or payment details.
Feedback Process
The feedback process at eBay got a bit silly. Other ones seem to work but it's all a bit too strict. Of course we don't want our buyers to not have their expectations met, so here's our plan. The most common complaints are long postage time and inaccurate descriptions. So, post the books as soon as you can, if it's taking too long then inform the buyer. If the buyer complains to us then we'll forward the complaint on to you. If you get a lot of complaints we'll probably tell you to pull your socks up, but if it's persistent then we'd reassess your selling situation. Similarly, if there are a lot of complaints about description of a book's condition we'd give you a warning and so on and so forth.
But remember this, because this is important, whenever we get a complaint it is up to you and the buyer to figure it out. We're not responsible for any loss on either side. If the buyer isn't happy - it's the seller's responsibility not that of Hyraxia.com. If we receive complaints about a seller, we'll forward them but we won't get involved in the individual transactions.
Terms and Conditions for selling on Hyraxia.com
When selling on Hyraxia.com your transactions are with the buyer only and all interactions are with them directly and are governed by the terms and conditions between you and that buyer. Hyraxia.com is not involved in the supply chain, we simply offer you a place to advertise your books and let you deal with the buyer directly. We are not an agent for you, the seller, or any other sellers. We provide no guarantee for your transactions nor for the availability, supply or delivery of the books. All payment is handled directly between you and the buyer.
