Alibris Seller Participation Agreement
Frequently Asked Questions
Listed below are the questions we receive most often from prospective Alibris sellers.
If you have further questions that are not answered here, please contact us.
To become an Alibris seller, you must:
- Be a dedicated seller, with at least a rudimentary knowledge of database creation (only if you plan to use your own program to create and maintain a database file), email management, and order management.
- Have regular access to a PC or Mac with an Internet connection (preferably broadband), an email account, a recommended operating system of Windows 98 or higher or Mac OS X or higher, a currently supported browser application (IE 5.5 +, Firefox 1.0 +, AOL 8 +, Netscape 7.x or Safari 2.x), and an ink jet or laser printer.
- Have your inventory on hand at all times.
- Maintain a fill rate of 85% or higher at all times. The Alibris rating is based solely on the number of orders received during the rating period, versus the number of orders cancelled by the seller or refunded because it didn't arrive at the destination on time, during that same rating period.
- Have a valid credit or debit card. We use your credit or debit card to process your application fee, as well as cover any negative balance on your account resulting from fees or returns that are not covered by your sales.
Remember that each Alibris seller is solely responsible for keeping his or her inventory with Alibris up-to-date and accurate at all times.
If you are unable or unwilling to follow any of the qualifications above, please DO NOT apply.
Notice about e-mail accounts: Please note that some e-mail account services use filters and spam-blocking on all incoming messages. This can lead to some (or all) Alibris messages not reaching your inbox. We suggest (but do not require) that you periodically verify you are receiving emails and notices from Alibris, and contact your Internet Service Provider or check your email settings if you feel you're not receiving our messages.
We charge an application processing fee of $19.99 to become an Alibris seller. This fee is not refundable under any circumstances.
Sellers agree to pay Alibris a minimum sales commission of US$0.50 OR 15% for items priced up to US$500, when sales are made through Alibris's retail sales channels (Alibris consumer and library Web sites).
For sales on our business-partner channels (Barnes & Noble and its subsidiaries and affiliate companies, Half.com, Books-A-Million, Borders, Chapters/Indigo, Ingram, Blackwell, and others), sellers will pay 15% to our partners and either 5% OR US$0.25, whichever is greater, to Alibris. Alibris business partner programs are currently only available to booksellers.
For items priced greater than or equal to US$500, the following commission rates apply on our retail Web sites:
- US$500.00–599.99: 10%
- US$600.00–699.99: 8%
- US$700.00–799.99: 6%
- US$800.00 & higher: 5%
Alibris also provides two fee programs for our sellers: Alibris Gold and Alibris Basic. Alibris Gold Sellers pay a flat monthly fee based on their average inventory levels for the previous month, as outlined below. Note that the minimum flat monthly fee applies even if you do not list any inventory, and even if your inventory is on admin or vacation hold.
Schedule for flat monthly fees:
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Booksellers with fewer than 1,000 items and all music and movie sellers are eligible for our Alibris Basic program. Sellers pay US$1.00 per transaction and a US$19.99 annual subscription fee as an Alibris Basic seller, instead of a flat monthly fee. The transaction fee would be assessed in addition to the commissions Alibris and its partners will charge on each sale. All sellers are automatically enrolled in the Alibris Gold program, with the exception of those sellers who indicate eligibility for the Alibris Basic program during sign-up. Eligible sellers can change their fee option after signing up by clicking the link for Seller Programs.
You may either upload your inventory listings to us in a database file, or enter them individually through our Alibris Inventory Management tools on the seller hub. The Alibris Inventory Manager provides an ISBN, LCCN, UPC, title/author, title/publisher, actor and director lookup, which speeds the entry of items in many cases. It also allows the user to add a listing from scratch, if the appropriate item is not found during a lookup.
You can list your items on other Web sites when you list with Alibris. However, you should ensure that you remove all sold items from your database and send your updated database files nightly to Alibris to ensure that you can fulfill orders at the highest possible rate. If a seller uploads a sold item for deletion from the Alibris database and an order occurs for that item before the upload processes, the seller is held responsible for the cancellation of that order. To reduce these situations, sellers should use the Manage Listings tool available on the Seller Hub to delete sold items in real time.
You may list a full range of used, hard-to-find, collectible, and new book, music, and movie products for sale with Alibris. We accept almost all formats including: hardback, paperback and audio books, CDs, vinyl records, cassettes, VHS tapes, DVDs, laserdiscs, and more. Since eBooks are considered software, we do not support the sale of eBooks on Alibris.
If your properly-formatted upload file contains a product type field (i.e., books, music or movies), we will list it within the appropriate section of the Alibris Web site and will distribute the inventory to our appropriate business partners. If the product type is not specified, we will try to determine the product type from your listing. If we are unable to do so, we will use the primary media type you specify for your inventory listings during the application process.
NOTE: For the most accurate uploading results, Alibris supplies three standard Excel templates for uploading Book, Movies or Music. If you are not using one of these templates, we recommend that you include or add a product type field in your upload file to ensure that your listings display in the appropriate database.
Yes. You may use your own image for a listing using our inventory management tool, or you may use the image supplied by our catalog (if available). In some cases the catalog image may not represent the exact copy, edition, or condition of a specific item, however, we display a disclaimer with these images.
Yes. Alibris adds the following amounts (in US dollars) to the price of each item listed by sellers outside the United States on www.alibris.com:
| Country | Books | Music & Movies |
| Canada | $3.00 | $2.00 |
| United Kingdom | $9.00 | $6.00 |
| Europe | $11.00 | $8.00 |
| Australia | $8.00 | $6.00 |
| Rest of World | $12.00 | $9.00 |
Alibris adds the following amounts (in US dollars) to the price of each item listed by sellers from outside the United Kingdom on www.alibris.co.uk:
| Country | Books | Music & Movies |
| USA | $5.00 | $2.00 |
| Canada | $8.00 | $5.00 |
| Europe | $1.00 | $1.00 |
| Australia | $8.00 | $6.00 |
| Rest of World | $12.00 | $9.00 |
Alibris can process the following file types:
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UIEE (Universal Information Exchange Environment)
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Excel
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HomeBase (exported to a HomeBase txt file, which is the default export from HomeBase, or uploaded via FTP. Sellers must ask for FTP to be enabled after the seller account has been created). )
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Tab-delimited (a tab-delimited file contains a number of fields, each separated by a tab character)
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Character-delimited (only acceptable if the character is a tilde "~")
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Amazon Open Listing Report files uploaded "as is" (these are Excel files from Amazon, available to Amazon sellers with a Pro Merchant account)
Note that Excel, tab-delimited or character-delimited files MUST include the names of each field on the first line of the file and in the order in which those fields appear for the actual listings in the subsequent lines). If the field names are not present, the file may still be processed, but could contain errors in placement of data from the fields. Also, programs such as Works or FileMaker Pro can generate tab-delimited files, either by saving the file as a tab-delimited (or text and tabs) file, or exporting the file to a tab-delimited (or text and tabs) file. See the Help files of your program to find out how. Alibris can provide a sample Excel file on request.
Once a seller has uploaded their first file and that file has processed, all subsequent files must remain in exactly the same format, with the same field names, number of fields and field order as that first file. If any change, even a slight change, is made to the format of the uploaded file, the seller MUST then create a single, accurate and complete file containing ALL items in the new format, then upload that file to Alibris one time using the PURGE option.
Note that files from Word Processor programs such as Word, WordPad, etc., are not acceptable.
The following table shows where your inventory will be available for sale. Please note that there may be qualifications and exceptions to each. If you have questions, please contact us.
| Alibris Web sites |
Alibris for Libraries | Amazon.com* | Barnes & Noble.com** | Blackwell | Borders | Million |
Chapters/ Indigo |
Half.com | Ingram | |
| Books from North American sellers |  |
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| Books from all other sellers | |
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| Music and movies from North American sellers | |
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| Music and movies from all other sellers | |
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Once you add your inventory to Alibris, you can use the Alibris Pricing Service to easily compare your books' prices against those of other online sellers. With this tool, you can quickly search your listings and see which are either over or under priced. By looking at Benchmark Prices that are based upon current market information, you can update your own prices more effectively. The Alibris Pricing Service enables you to increase your sales on the Alibris retail and library sites, as well as through the sites of our business partners. Note that this tool is not currently available for movies and music items.
With Alibris you can manage your inventory and orders for multiple sales channels within our simple Seller Hub. Once an item is ordered from an Alibris Web site or from a partner Web site, it is automatically removed for sale on all appropriate sales channels. We post the Purchase Notification on the Seller Hub, and we send you a Purchase Notification by e-mail for backup. Many of our partner orders will have the partner's logo and order numbers on the purchase notification, as well as the partner's return instructions. US, Canadian, UK, and European sellers will receive two types of orders from Alibris:
- Orders that "Ship to Customers", which you ship directly to the customer using the mailing information provided in the Purchase Notification.
- Orders that "Ship to Alibris", which you ship to the Alibris distribution center using the mailing information provided in the Purchase Notification.
Shipping instructions for each order are outlined in the Open Order details on the Seller Hub, as well in the e-mail Purchase Notification. The Purchase Notification gets printed from the Seller Hub, and is then used as a packing slip.
Alibris shipping credits are designed to meet market standards and credit the seller on average more than the cost of shipping items. For multi-volume sets and oversized items, it may be appropriate to adjust prices to cover incremental postage. If you need to request incremental postage, you must contact Alibris Seller Services via the Seller Hub, before you mark the order shipped. We will then initiate communication with the customer to determine whether the customer is willing to pay the incremental postage. You will receive a reply as soon as we have heard from the customer. If the order has already been marked shipped, we cannot contact customers or adjust shipping credits.
No, Alibris does not support or condone drop shipping. If you do not have an item in stock, you must cancel the order. Sellers who do drop ship orders will have their accounts put on HOLD and may be subject to termination.
Due to the geographic diversity of our sellers, and in some cases the shipping preferences of our customers, required shipping methods vary depending on the specifics of the order. The chart below covers most shipping scenarios.
Books, Music and Movies
US sellers| Order destination | Ship to Alibris | Ship to customer US standard | Ship to customer US standard (additional items) |
Ship to customer US expedited | Ship to customer US expedited (additional items) | Ship to Canadian customer | Ship to Canadian customer (additional items) |
| Method | MRS (Merchandise Return Service) pre-paid labels (or Alibris UPS account if preapproved, via Ground only) | US Postal Service Media Mail | US Postal Service Media Mail |
US Postal Service Priority | US Postal Service Priority | US Postal Service First-Class Mail International | US Postal Service First-Class Mail International |
| Credit | Labels provided by Alibris. No credit. | Books: US$2.65 / first item; Music & Movies: US$2.20 / first item | Books, Music and Movies: US$1.20 each additional item |
Books: US$5.65 / first item; Music & Movies: US$4.40 / first item | Books: US$2.70 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$2.20 each additional item | Books: US$8.95 / first item; Music & Movies: US$3.00 / first item | Books: US$4.95 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$1.50 each additional item |
| Frequency | M/W/F at a minimum | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately |
| Order destination | Ship to Alibris | Ship to customer US standard | Ship to customer US standard (additional items) | Ship to customer US expedited | Ship to customer US expedited (additional items) | Ship to Canadian customer | Ship to Canadian customer (additional items) |
| Method | Canada Post USA Small Packets | Canada Post USA Small Packets | Canada Post Expedited Parcel-USA for packages over 1kg | Canada Post USA Small Packets Air | Canada PostUSA-Xpresspost-USA for packages over 1kg | Canada Post Regular Parcel | Canada Post Regular Parcel |
| Credit | US$6.40 / per item | US$6.40 / first item | US$6.40 each additional item | US$8.40 / first item | US$6.40 each additional item | Books: US$6.90 / first item; Music & Movies: US$3.00 / first item | Books: US$6.40 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$2.00 / each additional item |
| Frequency | M/W/F at a minimum | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately |
| Order destination | Ship to Alibris | Ship from UK to UK customer standard | Ship from UK to UK customer standard (additional items) | Ship from UK to Euro customer standard | Ship from UK to Euro customer standard (additional items) | Ship from Euro to UK or Euro customer standard | Ship from Euro to UK or Euro customer standard (additional items) |
| Method | UPS program through Alibris | First Class Mail | First Class Mail | First Class Mail | First Class Mail | First Class Mail | First Class Mail |
| Credit | None. Print labels from the Seller Hub | Books: US$4.90 / first item; Music & Movies: US$2.00 / first item | Books: US$3.90 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$1.50 each additional item | Books: US$6.90 / first item; Music & Movies: US$3.30 / first item | Books: US$3.90 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$2.70 each additional item | Books: US$6.90 / first item; Music & Movies: US$3.30 / first item | Books: US$3.90 each additional item; Music & Movies: US$2.70 each additional item |
| Frequency | Consolidate and ship weekly | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately | Ship immediately |
| Order destination | Ship to Alibris |
| Method | Consolidated program through BiblioQuest International: Sellers will write or print the BiblioQuest address on the outside of the package. |
| Credit | None (Alibris pays for all books shipped through the BiblioQuest International program.) |
| Frequency | Consolidate and ship every 5 days or when you have 5 items to send, whichever comes first. |
| Order destination | Ship to Alibris |
| Method | Any |
| Credit | Books: US$10.00 per order; Music & Movies: US$6.10 per order |
| Frequency | Consolidate and ship weekly |
We strive to deliver the best shopping experience to our customers and business partners, so our primary requirement is that sellers fill the orders they receive at a rate of 85% or higher. If this minimum is not being met, we will work together with you to resolve the issue. If you continue to fill at less than 85% fill rate, we will remove your Alibris account.
Alibris offers a generous returns policy and provides a venue for sellers and buyers to negotiate refunds and/or returns. Returned items must be received by the seller or the Alibris distribution center within 60 days (75 days for buyers returning items to the distribution center from outside the contiguous US) of the item's shipping date. The authorized reasons for a return are:
- Condition not as described
- Incomplete set
- Incorrect item
- Item is illegal or a pirated copy
- Movie or music item is damaged or unplayable
- Item is priced > $100.00
The seller may negotiate an appropriate refund or dispute the return. Disputed returns will be mediated by the Alibris Client Services team. The seller's number of disputes will be monitored and limited based on the percentage of orders disputed in a 12-month period. If the seller refunds the order, his or her account will be debited accordingly and his or her seller rating will be affected.