GRIFFITH, Jim

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Office—eBay Inc., 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125.

CAREER:

eBay, customer relations, 1996—, Customer Support Training program, manager, 1999—; eBay University, traveling training program for using the Internet auction services, trainer, "dean," 2000—.

WRITINGS:

The Official eBay Bible: The Most Up-to-Date, Comprehensive How-to Manual for Everyone from First-Time Users to People Who Want to Run Their Own Business, Gotham Books/Penguin (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jim Griffith became an ambassador for the online auction service eBay in 1999, after organizing the company's first customer support service. Thereafter, he began traveling the country providing seminars on how to use eBay not only to sell the occasional item, but also to set up a home business. In these seminars, part of what is called eBay University, Griffith covers the basics of posting an item, from taking a picture to deciding on price to choosing the right descriptive words in order to get the most responses or "hits."

Griffith put his expertise between the covers of a book with the 2003 The Official eBay Bible: The Most Up-to-Date, Comprehensive How-to-Manual for Everyone from First-Time Users to People Who Want to Run Their Own Business. Noting that "an object sells on eBay every 1.7 seconds," a contributor for Publishers Weekly pointed out that Griffith "dexterously walks readers through the site, with impressive practical know-how about buying and selling." The same reviewer praised the "depth of Griffith's commonsense knowledge and the clarity of his writing." Mike Maza, reviewing the title in the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, commented that Griffith's guide would "get newbies up to speed quickly," while Ann Lloyd Merriman noted in the Richmond Times that Griffith's "detailed instructions on use of the site" make his book "more comprehensive" than earlier guides to eBay. "'If you're going to sell on eBay, you're going to have competition, so you need to know what you're doing,'" Griffith told Sue Kidd of the King County Journal Online.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, June 4, 2003, Mike Maza, review of The Official eBay Bible: The Most Up-to-Date, Comprehensive How-to Manual for Everyone from First-Time Users to People Who Want to Run Their Own Business; February 20, 2004, Terry Jackson, "eBay University to Help People Become Active Sellers."

Publishers Weekly, April 28, 2003, review of The Official eBay Bible, p. 58.

Richmond Times (Richmond, VA), June 22, 2003, Ann Lloyd Merriman, review of The Official eBay Bible, p. E5.

ONLINE

King County Journal Online,http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/ (February 6, 2004), Sue Kidd, "eBay University a Primer on How to Sell Your Stuff."

The Official eBay Bible,http://pages.ebay.com/griff/ (March 25, 2004).*