I just got done recording my first screencast showing everyone how advantageous it is to sell on Amazon vs. some of the book buyback sites. It’s pretty basic, but informative nonetheless. I always like showing example and I think it really helps some people grasp the concept a little better if I’m actually showing you what to do and how to do it. I plan on doing many more in the future so please check it out here!

Underselling your books could leave money on the table, but overselling could leave your book hanging out there inevitably.  A good strategy is needed in order to properly price your book to sell and to get as much money as possible from it.  Here are three strategies that you can use to get top dollar from any book.

1. Condition

Check the conditions of the other books that are selling online that are the same as what you are selling.  You don’t want to price your Like New book against an Acceptable one, would you?  If you are trying to compete with a piece of junk with your pristine tome, that will get snatched up in no time leaving tons of money on the table!  ALWAYS price against similar conditions.

2. Feedback

Your feedback and others’ feedback is also very important to keep in mind.  If your feedback is 99% and you notice that you have a huge mega seller on Amazon that has a feedback rating of 85%, as a customer, who are you going to lean towards for the more?  Price accordingly in regards to feedback.  You have the upper hand if your feedback rating is much greater than your competitors and you can generally command higher prices!

3. Descriptions

I can’t stand it when I go to Amazon and look for a used book and the description says something like “Satisfaction guaranteed!” or “1,000,000 orders shipped!”.  I could care less!  I don’t care if you have shipped more books than Amazon itself or your cliche customer service line is true or not.  I want to know what THIS book looks like, feels like and any problems associated with it.  Since I’m online I can’t actually touch and inspect the book so I want to know as much as possible about the condition of this book.  The description box is NOT there to put in flashy statements to get them to buy UNLESS it is AFTER a great description of the book at hand.

Has anyone else ran into any listings on eBay, Amazon or any other book selling site that you thought simply made no sense whatsoever?

1. Ask yourself, why do I want to do this?

Are you planning on selling books online to get rid of some books laying around the house for some extra cash? Are you looking for a modest side income where you will go out and scout for some books to sell and pocket your profits or are wanted to go full bore with a goal of quitting your job, working with books full time and escaping to fianancial freedom? Obviously, the latter is going to require a lot of work, but it is possible. I have approximately 4,000 items in my inventory at the moment and am seeing sales of ~$75/day. Just imaging if I had 10,000 in inventory!

If you don’t have a plan, then you won’t know where to start. I hate planning. Let me say that again, I HATE planning ANYTHING! I have learned 100% of what I know by simply winging it, trying things to see if they work, scrapping the things that don’t work, etc. In the mean time, I implement what works and try to make them better. However, a solid plan if you want to call it that, can be a great idea to see where you want to go. If you don’t like to plan as much as I do, simply ask that quick question, what do I want to accomplish out of this?

2. Knowledge

Knowledge is key! Knowledge of anything you’re starting is an obvious good idea. Fortunately, there are others out there like you just starting out selling books online that have a lot of experience and have seen what works and what doesn’t. You will probably not have a lot of knowledge starting out, but you should still jump in. There is almost no risk at all selling books on sites such as Amazon, Alibris or Half. Many sites such as these have no listing fees so you won’t be out any money if they sell. You have nothing to lose!

• Books – There are a few books published that deal specifically with selling books online. I think I have probably read them all and they all provided me with ideas that I hadn’t thought of yet that have increased my sales. The gold standard, in my opinion, is the book Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips. This books went into a lot of detail and the author tells you many useful tips and processes to go through in order to get everything straight. The second book that I am going to recommend is How to Sell Books on Amazon: The Stay-at-home Mom’s Secret Step-by-step Guide to Selling Used Books on Amazon. This book is very good but more suited for the stay at home Mom. I’m a 29 year old guy that works 50 hrs/week at a full time job other than selling books and I got a lot of use out of this book. Don’t let the title fool you. It is not just for stay at home moms.   That is just a small sample of the books out there. In future posts, I will be doing full reviews of these books and possibly even giving away some for free!
• Blogs – Blogs are great to learn from others’ personal experiences. Of course, the BEST blog to visit is booksbybertram.com! There are plenty of other blogs and sites out there to find which a simple Google search will find easily. I would say the best site other than mine, of course, is bookthink.com. This site has many great resources to tap into.
• Forums – When browsing forums, you will need to take what you hear with a grain of salt. Even though there are some excellent people on these forums, you can’t always tell who knows what they are talking about or who is just full of crap. You can get a lot of great ideas in forums, but first do some background research before trying to implement anything in forums. Example book forums are Amazon’s Seller Boards or the Bookthink Forums. Amazon’s seller boards have a lot of traffic and can be a great place to visit, but just like any other place on the Internet, when you have thousands of people, you’re bound to make a small percentage that will ridicule you for not knowing anything, posting in the wrong forum or simply being unecessarily nasty. Don’t worry about it. My suggestion is to browse the board, use the search function and try to learn as much as possible and if you have any questions, come to me! Now that yet another shameless plug is down, do contact me if you’re curious about anything or just post something on the Help for New Sellers forum. I’m on there as adbertram and will help you on the board just as if I would help you here. You will also get the additional opportunity for others to help as well.

3. Make some contacts!

This is the most important thing you can do to get boat loads of books for next to nothing. Sure, you can go to a FOL sale and buy a few books, hit up a thrift store for 5-10 books, but you will never have the opportunities to find books in bulk if you don’t go out there and start talking to people. However, if you’re goal is to simply make a few hundred bucks/month off of your books without a whole lot of effort is your thing, then this is not as important to you, but if you really want to make the cash you gotta meet people! People such as local FOL presidents, thrift store owners, local university librarians can be great people to know. These kind of people can get you access to thousands of books! There is a caveat that you may have no idea of the value of the books you get and you will have a ton of books you can’t sell, but you WILL have a boat load that can make you big money. This is how I have been able to literally spend a few hundred bucks on 15,000 books, price them and eventually make upwards of $15,000. Get rid of the rest by holding a book sale or simply donate them and take the tax write off.

If you’ve been doing this for awhile, what other methods strategies that you used that have helped increase your sales?

In my upcoming blog posts, I will be showing you exactly how to sell used or new books online for much more than you think books are worth!

Did you ever think books could bring this much money?

• $125 for an old library book that I bought in a huge lot from a library sale essentially paying only $.08 for
  
• $250 for a group of 3 books for about $3 that I got from posting a free ad on Craigslist
• $25 for a book with a great Amazon sales rank bought for $5 in quantities of 20 from a wholesaler
• $17 for a LP (record) given to me (yes I do records sometime also)
  
• MANY old library books with prices ranging from $2 to upwards of $500

People never realize how much money is stored in their books.  That is why my business and possibly yours could seize this opportunity and make big $$$ from books!  I have made thousands of dollars so far selling my personal books, collecting books from libraries, thrift stores, yard sales, etc for pennies on the dollar.  I plan to show you how to do the same.

Stay tuned for upcoming information regarding what books to look for resale, setting up on various online marketplaces, inventorying, packing and shipping!