The summer and winter textbook seasons are two of the busiest times of year for AbeBooks booksellers. The summer season runs from mid-July through mid-September, with peak sales in mid-to-late August, while the shorter winter season runs for the month of January.

Seller Performance Expectations

All textbook sellers are required to meet the following performance goals:

• Completion Rate:
  • Sellers with less than 1 million listings online: 90% or better
  • Sellers with 1 million or more listings online: 96% or better
• Return Rate 5% or less

Textbook sellers who do not meet these goals will be suspended from selling for the duration of textbook season.

Top Tips for a Successful Textbook Season

Provide Tracking

Providing tracking information for your orders is one of the best ways to reduce both customer contacts and refund requests. You can add tracking through your AbeBooks account or in bulk, through our high-volume order processing tools. Contact Customer Support for details.

Process and Ship Efficiently

AbeBooks requires that you process and ship your orders within 48 hours but during textbook season, we strongly recommend that you process and ship in under 48 hours, to exceed buyer expectations and reduce customer contacts.

AbeBooks offers two volume order processing tools (Asynchronous Multi-order Processing (AMP) or our Order Processing API) to assist you in processing a large volume of orders quickly and efficiently. Contact Customer Support for details.

Keep Inventory Up-to-date

During textbook season, it is imperative that your inventory remains up-to-date. Orders for books that are no longer in stock result in a poor buyer experience and will negatively impact your Completion Rate. Failure to maintain a Completion Rate of 90% or better will result in account suspension.

Keep AbeBooks Informed

If you experience any technical or operational issues that affect your ability to process or fulfill orders, please let us know immediately, by contacting AbeBooks Customer Support.