Anyone use Craiglist to search for books to add to your inventory?  If not, you should!  It is a great place to find people wanting to get rid of their old books. You can generally find some great deals.  Craigslist separates out listings in almost all of the major cities in the US and also internationally.  I would recommend Craigslist to put on your list of usual places to check for sources of books that you want to sell online.

One thing I hate about searching Craigslist is that it’s all manual searching. I had no way to really get notified of things coming up for sale. I had to go to the site and just periodically check what was newly listed. It was a major pain and, at the same time, was sometimes beat to the punch by people that saw a super good deal before I did and had already bought the books.  Imagine my frustration if I see a huge lot of books coming from a closed bookstore that was listed three days ago to find that they’ve already been sold!  Ah!

Luckily, I was doing some Google searches today because I thought there had to be a better way to do this and stumbled upon a great service called Heycraig. This service is absolutely free and is as simple as you can get which is everything I was looking for.  Heycraig is a service that allows you to input a search term, an email address and a city you want to search and it will send you an automatic email notification whenever a listing meets your search term.

It’s a great little app that you can use to find some great deals on books or really whatever you’re looking for and never again will you be beaten to the good deals or have to go to the site over and over again searching.

Valore Books

When I first starting selling books on the Internet I picked Amazon.  The reason had nothing to do with the number of sales I wanted to make, how many people I thought bought on the site on a monthly basis or even how much money I thought I would make.  The sole reason I did was because it was the only website I knew of that sold books and allowed other people like me to sell books as well.  I had bought a few things on eBay here and there but had never really thought of it as a place to actually sell books.  In fact, I had a buyer’s mentality; I was going to go where I was most familiar and the site that I associated with books and that was Amazon.

Amazon allowed me to get my feet wet and learn a ton about selling things online in general.  I was introduced to the world of  ecommerce and I loved it!  I was working my full time job and after my personal library sold I would then venture out to yard sales, thrift stores, book sales and just about any other place that I thought may have some cheap books for me to sell online.  I was making a few hundred dollars a month which then I thought was amazing.  Amazon’s marketplace was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.  However, little did I know that the hole went much, much deeper and by browsing the Amazon seller community forums and by Googling different strategies I could use to sell more books my eyes were thrust wide open by the potential that I saw out there.

Continue Reading…

It’s cold outside.  I mean, really cold, especially where I live at.  Currently, there is an eight degree wind chill.  At this time of the year, I envy those living in the southern states.  This weather sucks and I hate being out in it.  I know I’m not the only one that lives in the midwest or the northern states freezing their tails off.  I also know that I’m not the only online used book seller that depends on their income no matter what time of the year it is.  Because of this, I thought it was only fitting to write up a few tips that I do to stay warm yet still maintain and even increase my sales during this time of the year when I’d rather not brave the cold at a used book sale, head to the post office, drive to the thrift store to check on the book stock or anything that gets me out in the cold.

1. Buy Your Book Inventory Online

Buying books online is very different than what a lot of used book sellers are used to, however, it can still be very profitable, much easier to find inventory if you know where to look and the best part of all, let’s you stay in the comfort of your warm home with a hot cup of coffee while you search the entire globe for book inventory from your armchair!  Buying online requires a different mindset because A. your profit margins are going to be lower and B. you might have to buy in bulk.  Gone are the days of throwing a few bucks at the proprietor of a yard sale and getting a few dozen, highly salable books.  Buying books online requires you to do your research, but because you have plenty of time you can be 100% sure you’ll make the profit you’re wanting before you buy.  I discuss buying online in Chapter 2 of my eBook, Used Books: Big Business.

• Browse the Craigslist book listings in your local area as well as areas around the country.  Normally, Craigslist is meant for local-only transactions but I’ve had some great success with simply asking the seller if they’re willing to ship books to me if I pay for the shipping.  Craigster.net, for example, is a site that allows you to input any category that you wish, put in a search term and search every single Craigslist posting.
• Browse the eBay books category.  Specifically, check out eBay wholesale book lots to see if there are any listings going for cheap.  A word of caution though with the lots is that some are online booksellers like yourself just getting rid of penny books so your mileage may vary.  Also, pay attention to the individual listings.  By clicking through to a listing you can typically get the ISBN which you can easily plug into Amazon to get the current market price.
• Consider buying your books from wholesalers.  This method requires a little planning and an official business tax ID, typically, but these wholesalers sell to all kinds of booksellers.  They sell off remainders, hurts and other books for very cheap sometimes and you can get steals.  However, there might be a minimum you can order.  Check out sites such as Book Depot or the American Book Company to get an idea of what they have.

2. Take Advantage of Online Postage Printing

I’ve been blogging about this topic for a long time and still am surprised with the amount of people still going to the post office, standing in line and even paying higher postage fees.  Printing your postage online can save you money, create a more professional looking package and again, going with the theme, keep you warm!

• Read my newsletters.  I know, this is a shameless plug.
• Use a service like Endicia.  This service is the most popular online postage printing service as well as the easiest to use.
• Buy yourself a new or used Zebra LP-2844 printer from Amazon or check out these search results from eBay.  This is again a very popular label printer and a purchase that I made that I would make again in a heart beat.  I made a real short video review on the Zebra label printer on YouTube.

3. Have the USPS come to you

Unlike UPS, the United States Postal Service will pick up any of your packages for FREE!

• Go online and schedule the USPS to pick up your books.  They have one catch though and it’s unfortunate for us booksellers.  There has to be at least one Priority Mail package in the group.
• Make friends with your mail person.  I’d been scheduling pickups for months and months and finally just asked my mail lady if I had to keep doing this since I ship orders every day.  She confirmed that it was OK and that she would just pick whatever I had on the doorstep every day.  Not only did I forgo the Priority Mail only stipulation, I also didn’t have to remember to actually schedule it all the time!

I’ve used these tips for a long time now and have been able to stay warm when others are out battling the awful winter weather making the same kind of money I’m making.  I love to think that while I’m sitting in my relaxing armchair watching the snow fall, laptop on my lap, hot cocoa in one hand and a mouse in the other, I’m able to maintain a constant flow of inventory and orders all while keeping toasty warm.  I hope that you can use these tips and others so you can do the same!

I hope everyone had a great holidays.  Welcome back!  Now get back to selling those books, you slackers!

I’m excited to officially announce the *almost* availability of the revised edition of my eBook, Used Books: Big Business – The Secrets to Selling Books Online for Big Profits.  It is currently in the editing phase but I hope to have it available in a few weeks after the holidays.  I’m so excited for this new edition because I’ve added so many new things to it.  New chapters include book scouting, third party services such as Aman Pro, Fillz, The Art of Books, etc along with a chapter on customer service and a ton of other great info.  In this edition I’ve also included screen shots and pictures to give the reader a more thorough understanding of the concepts in the book.  Current eBook customers will get a significant discount and I promise the price will be very reasonable to new buyers.

Here are a few tid bits of what to expect:

Also, I’m excited to announce the *almost* availability of my first Amazon sales/fees spreadsheet.  I have worked many hours on this spreadsheet to give the Amazon bookseller the most easy to use and yet thorough view of their entire Amazon bookselling operation.  In this spreadsheet you can keep track of sales, fees, book costs, all Fulfillment by Amazon fees including inbound shipments as well profit percentages and a whole lot more!  This spreadsheet is truly the only thing you’ll need to see how much money you’re making, how much you’re paying Amazon and overall how well your Amazon sales are doing.

Here are a few quick peeks at the spreadsheet:

As you can tell, I’m VERY excited about this new addition to the few products I have available.  These will most likely be offered in a package deal and also on an individual basis for you.  I know that this post sounded very salesy but I simply couldn’t contain my excitement and wanted to share these new products to my readers.  Stay tuned for the official announcement when it is available.  If you haven’t signed up for my email list yet now’s a good time.  I will be emailing the group as soon as this is available so get it while the gettins’ good!  Sign up for the email list along the left under the Newsletter heading.

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.