Etsy Seller Interview with Steffi of LibrioBooks

How LibrioBooks got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

Hi! My name is Steffi, and I’m responsible for running our Etsy shop, Libriobooks. We create personalized children’s books and began selling on Etsy back in 2020 as an extension of our D2C online store. We initially decided to start out small with just a couple of Librio products and see how things went. Gradually, over the past few years, we’ve added more of them and are thrilled that they’ve all been a success with our customers. At Libriobooks, we combine art and technology to create incredible, personalized children's products. 

We launched Librio in November 2017 and have since created over 450,000 books for children in 102 countries. As creators of products for future generations, we strive to do business in a way that our children, our customers, and we ourselves can be proud of. Through our More than a Book program, we donate 1% of our revenue (not profits) to causes improving the futures of millions of children and the planet they will grow up on. We’re also committed to manufacturing our products as sustainably as possible, printing locally using only 100% recycled paper and packaging materials. As we bring out more Librio books, our goal is to create a library of children’s books that our little ones will remember for the rest of their lives.

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

My personal favorite product that we sell on Etsy is our dad's book, "Lost for Words". Our CEO, Ed, wrote it for his daughter and presented the story to us at a meeting. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house (pun intended), and it’s remained my favorite ever since as it’s so beautifully written and so obviously comes from the heart.

Alongside our Search-and-Find World and Search-and-Find Europe books, it’s our next top seller. I’m also the proud owner of one of each of our Search-and-Finds and can remember, before I started working for Librio, being so excited when I received my own copy in the mail. Surprising as it may sound, we actually get quite a few order requests for adults as well as for kids, which I think is lovely. It’s so wonderful to embrace our inner child, and I think it’s so easy to forget how important it is, especially in these crazy times. It's wonderful to see others sharing the joy a personalized book can bring, and I feel honored to be a part of that.

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

We sold our first book within a couple of days or so of going live. This was massively rewarding for us as we’d spent so much time trying to get our shop to look ‘just right," and it was a nice boost to our confidence. We use a combination of platforms to attract customers, both through our website and Instagram, as well as with Etsy Ads and Pinterest.

Managing LibrioBooks

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

Originally, there was a team of two of us who processed the orders: one for our English customers and another for our German customers. This then changed to three, and now it is back to two again. It’s taken us a while to get the system up and running exactly as we want it and also in a way that works more seamlessly for our customers.

Back when we first opened Libriobooks, we’d ask customers to send us the configuration options they wanted for their characters and then personalize the books ourselves. This was fine in the beginning, as we didn’t have that many orders at any one time, but when things started to pick up and we were getting around 60 orders a day, we knew we had to figure out an alternative solution.

I and my colleague, Jo, now process all the orders, but in a much simpler way for all parties involved. Now, when a customer places an order, instead of sending us their configuration choices, they send us a pre-generated, unique link to the particular book they’ve purchased, and they get to do it all themselves. It’s a much more personal way of them creating their orders, and we felt it was the best solution for us as well.

Once the books are created at our various printers around the world (we ship worldwide from printers in the USA, UK, Australia, and Germany), we get a notification telling us that they've been shipped, which we then add to Etsy. This was another setup that took a while for us to perfect, and we’ve worked hard with our tech team to get our internal Metabase to show us exactly what we need to know about each individual order (which, believe me, is a lot!) but I think we’ve finally got it sussed.

The future of LibrioBooks

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

We’re always working on new ideas, new books, and new products, and we’d love to add them all to Etsy once they’re up and running. We’re trying to come up with some products that aren’t books, so we’d love to sell those on the platform too if we can.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

Be patient. Take the time you need to make sure you get every listing exactly as you want it, and make sure you preview it as many times as necessary before you’re 100% sure you’re happy with it. Also, make sure that the images you use are eye-catching and sure to draw customers in. If you don’t have any photos of a good enough specification, ask someone who could help you to do so, as it makes all the difference to prospective buyers.

Using the Etsy seller tools as well can be immensely helpful in advising you with regards to tagging your products with the correct keywords and stuff like that. If you’re new to online marketing, it can be a bit overwhelming to see all the options available, and you might feel a little out of your depth. That’s where those tools come in.

Lastly, try not to freak out if you don’t sell instantly. We were fortunate enough that we already had an external website up and running, which helped us get our Etsy shop up and running. If that’s not the case with you, don’t let it deter you; try to stay positive, and if something isn’t working, you can always edit the listings to make them as visible and perfect as you want them to be.

Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: 10K+

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 2%