Over the last few weeks as ABA staff has spoken with booksellers about the new Book Sense electronic gift card program, a number of booksellers have asked the question: "In purely financial terms, how many more gift cards will I have to sell to achieve the same number of gross profit dollars as I would have selling paper gift certificates?"

To provide an answer to this question, ABA has prepared a three-year analysis of potential returns comparing paper gift certificate and electronic gift card sales.

The assumptions are:

1. Figures are based upon gross year-one sales of $3,000 for gift certificates.
2. There is a cost of $0.41 each for paper certificates.
3. The costs for the electronic gift cards are those included in the financial analysis found at http://www.bookweb.org/read/6336. [5]
4. All cards and certificates are used.
5. Set-up fees are included, but equipment costs are not.

Note: If the starting figure of $3,000 is not appropriate for your operation, we invite you to download this spreadsheet [6] (Excel format), which will automatically calculate the comparison results based upon any gross sales amount that you supply.

Year 1:

Year 2 (10% increase):

Year 3 (10% increase):