Loading ...
Online Bookselling: The Next Few Steps
Category Adam's Pick
To continue with my series posts to help newcomers to the online book-selling world, I’m going to discuss the next steps that a newcomer needs to understand and grasp before you will ever notice any kind of success with this business. In these series of posts I will be concentrating on the basics. These posts may be old hat to people that have been selling online for years but they are excellent for newbies navigate the sometimes perilous waters of the online book-selling world.
As always, if you have a comment on this or any post please feel free to input it at the bottom of the post. I don’t want this blog to just be me rambling on every week but a community where everyone can learn from others so even if these concepts are too basic for you write a quick tip that I may have forgotten that may help others out as well.
1. Begin thinking of a business model.
This is a step that I haven’t read anywhere regarding online bookselling. It seems to me that most if not all people talking about online book-selling seem to assume that you will be going to book sales, used bookstores, flea markets, etc and buying books the old fashioned way. Find a few books, pay a buck or two for them, take them home and list them on Amazon. Throw in some book scouting gadgetry in the mix to help you make more informed decisions and you’re well on your way to making money selling books on the Internet. This is what I read over and over when I first started but soon (only after a few months) of selling books that I chose NOT to do that at all!
If you’re brand new to selling books online you probably think I’m crazy in thinking that I don’t actually go to these sales, stores, etc and buy books, right? “If Adam doesn’t buy books, then how is he supposed to sell them?” I’ll answer your question this way. I DO buy books for resale obviously but I don’t buy them in a conventional manner. I’ll admit that there are those times where I will go to an occasional book sale and see what I can find but it’s not the lion’s share of my inventory. I buy books in bulk. You can see a quick video that I shot at my warehouse titled “What’s 20,000 books look like?” to see exactly what I mean. I’ve chosen to buy leftover books from book sales, buying out used bookstores and other sources of large quantities of inventory. Keep in mind that I didn’t start this way because I sold individual books for a few months until I decided to jump all in with this endeavor and really try to make something of it.
Examples of inventory acquisition business models include:
- Attending book sales and buying individual books (typically low quantity, high quality books)
- Buying remainders from online sites to get literally new books (high quality but high price)
- Buying leftovers from book sales (mostly low quality, high quantity, dirt cheap price)
All have their advantages and disadvantages so it’s best to at least begin doing your research on what you think how you’d like to get your inventory.
2. Find possible local sources of inventory.
This is a topic that seems to be beat to death because this is probably the biggest question that newcomers ask. Take a stroll over to the Amazon seller forums and you’ll find dozens of threads relating to where to find inventory. The old-timers that have been around a long time hate it when newcomers ask that question. 
There are hundreds of different creative ways to find inventory but as to not overwhelm a newcomer, I always recommend starting local. This means used bookstores, your local Friends of the Library book sales or bookstores if they have one, thrift stores such as Goodwill or Salvation Army, yard sales, flea markets, consignment shops, etc. Just about any place that may sell used goods is a good place for looking. Bring up Google maps and do a search around your area for thrift stores, consignment shops, etc. Be creative with your searches because there just might be that hidden shop with tons of great books for cheap that no one knows about.
Another great way to find sources of inventory around you is to get on your local city’s craigslist page. Take a look at the books section and while you’re there browse through the yard sales and free section as well. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that people GIVE away sometimes. If you don’t want to visit the page all the time, I recommend subscribing to your city’s RSS feed that way everything that gets posted automatically comes to you. It’s a little technical for the non-techie but here’s a nice video on the basics of RSS.
I offer an entire chapter in my eBook Used Books: Big Business to this topic alone which would prove invaluable to the newcomer. I was also introduced to the program Creative Sourcing for Booksellers that also addresses this topic and offers a lot of unconventional ways to get books that you’ll be kicking yourself that you hadn’t thought of them before. It’s a short read (or listen) because it’s so highly targeted at just inventory sourcing but it has some good ideas in there that I had never thought about.
3. Begin playing with the prices your charging.
You can make a pricing scheme as complicated as you want and I’ve been there.
“I got this book for nothing so I could sell it quick because I could undercut everybody!”
“I think I could get some more money for this book because my feedback is pretty good.”
“There’s no one else on the Internet that’s selling this book, I’ll charge a MILLION (my best Austion Powers impression) dollars!”
It’s tough to really decide how much you’re going to charge for the books you list and I still struggle with this all the time. There’s never a static sweet spot to where you get the most money yet still sell. However, there are some guidelines that you can follow while you begin manipulating your prices.
- List books around the cheapest price (+/- the lowest 10%)
- Be aware of other sellers’ repricers
- Match condition
For example, let’s say you have a book you got for a dollar in like new condition and it’s going anywhere from $20 to $50 on Amazon and there are 20 different other sellers competing against you that all offer the same book in different conditions with the lowest price for a like new book for $30. You have some choices to make here depending on your goal with this book. Do you just want to sell it and make some quick cash? Match the lowest possible price which is $20 and watch it sell in an hour (depending on sales rank). Are you not in a hurry and want to get quite a bit more? Since you’re a new seller you really don’t have this option due to your lack of feedback (high positive feedback numbers give you this luxury). Or do you want to put it “in the ballpark”? My suggestion would be to put it at $30.01 to get as close as you can get to the lowest other like new copy and also get a decent spot on the listings on the page.
Some sellers use repricers to automatically price their books on a regular schedule. It’s too time consuming for someone with thousands of books listed to individually go through and price all of them on a consistent basis. These repricers have rules in them that sellers set that reprice all of their inventory depending on other competing offers.
Again, here’s another example from the scenario above. You want to really get rid of this book so you decide to list your book for $20 and think that it’s going to sell in no time. That is until 12 different other sellers’ repricers come along, detect that a competing price (yours) is way lower and set their price for a penny under yours thus undercutting YOU like you did them. Other repricers follow suit and soon you find your book is the HIGHEST! What happened? What happened is that these other sellers had rules setup so that they always undercut a competing offer. They saw each other’s listings and noticed that you undercut all of them. They also want the sale so they all followed suit undercutting you and each other and soon the price is a few bucks! What a drag!
As a beginner, don’t worry about repricers but just be aware that there are programs out there that can automatically see when you make a change and then undercut you in a literal few minutes. Never undercut a price that you’re wanting to be around. Always price a few cents more at the least.
If you liked this post "Like" it via Facebook with the button above. Also, I love getting comments and discussing these issues with readers. Feel free to leave a comment below.