By: Susan Scheck

Last week there was a big announcement by Apple that it is entering the textbook market, with “an upgraded 2.0 version of its iBooks app that now supports interactive textbooks, while also releasing a free Mac application, iBook Author, that lets people create electronic textbooks on their computers” according to Cnet.

One of the questions being raised is about pricing: how much cheaper will college e-textbooks be, and how will their sale impact the used textbook market? Apple has priced its high school e-texts at $14.99, however there’s still no word on the price of college e-textbooks. The price of a traditional text can run considerably higher, sometimes upwards of $100 for one brand-new book. (And as many college professors insist on the latest, greatest editions, sometimes there is no choice but to buy it.) Anyone who has a child in college, as I do, cringes every semester at this “cost of doing business”. As a parent, I wouldn’t mind paying 75 bucks or thereabouts for a semester’s worth of e-texts.

But what does all this mean to the online used textbook market? This time, answering as a publishing professional with 20 years in the business (nine of them at a university), I say: Old habits die hard. While many young people might feel comfortable with a software version of their texts (provided they or their parents could cough up an extra $500 for an iPad to read them on, while paying thousands already to attend school), their professors of a certain age may not feel as comfortable. And many professors have preferred texts – which, right now, I’m guessing are not among the Apple offerings. However, if these professors decide to write their textbooks on iBook Author, that could change.

The big three textbook publishers — McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who together make up 90% of the industry – have joined with Apple in this venture, presumably because they see recurring sales of new e-textbooks, and no resale market. E-texts must be bought new and students are not allowed to resell them, as with a traditional textbook. So there would be nothing cutting into their profit margins, as the used book industry does. Right now, though, e-textbooks are not much of a threat: According to textbook distributor MBS Direct Digital, only 6% of textbook sales will be digital this year. But, we can and should expect a heavy push from both them and Apple to open the e-textbook market wide open.

My gut feeling, though, is, for right now and at least a few years into the future, that the online used textbook market will still be viable. There are just too many used texts in circulation and too many students out there that need them instead of their outrageously priced brand-new versions. Still, keep your ear to the ground on this one: the speed of adoption of new technological paradigms can be lightning fast, as we all know.

Hello, all!  Yes, I’m still alive but judging from the last post I would have probably thought I was dead.  The reason for the long post hiatus was simply a strategic time management decision.  You see, this blog, my used book business, my new web app eBizControl, my full-time job and my family take up a lot of time.  Oh, don’t forget about sleep.  I’ve decided to trim some of the activities and regular blog posts was one of them.  I hope you understand.  In any case, I recently received an email from Susan Scheck for a request to write a blog post.  I said absolutely!  You’ll find that Susan’s stories may closely resemble your own.  This is why I really enjoy these types of posts.  Thanks for being a reader!  – Adam

I’d like to share with you a source that, on occasion, can turn up some decent, if not amazingly profitable, books: university and college libraries. Most libraries, as we know, have periodic or ongoing book sales, and university and college libraries are no different.  If you live in an urban or suburban area, there are likely to be several within a comfortable distance. For example, I live within a half-hour’s drive of six colleges and universities, and another three more can be found within a 45-minute drive, so there’s always a ready source of books close by.

Once you’ve called your local libraries to find out book sale details and to make sure they are open to the general public (chances are they are), you can start scouting. I use ScoutPal on my cell phone, which for the last week has been a free trial (I’m new to serious scouting). Yet, in the last week, I’ve purchased about 35 books from one library, all in new or used-like new condition, without the usual library markings. In fact, in speaking to the sales clerk I found out they had been donations—and she also told me that it happens frequently enough that dealers come there to buy books. Music to my ears, even though I have some competition.

Below are some paperback books I found today, typical of what I have found so far:

Exchange Is Not Robbery: More Stories of an African Bar Girl (Paperback)
New: 9 from $17.99
Used from: $7.48 (Used: acceptable)
Rank: #1,954,335 in Books

Religion and Healing in America (paperback)
12 new from $31.41
19 Used from $20.00
Amazon Sales Rank: 347,724

Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of Phenomenology
(Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
12 New from $22.00
4 Used from $22.85
Amazon Sales Rank:1,183,918

And now, the hidden gem:

Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism: Non-conformity in Eighteenth-Century
Politics and Society
List Price: $74.00
15 All from $71.46
12 New from $71.52
3 Used from $71.46

Amazon Sales Rank: 532,574

You will notice that this last book is selling used from within $3 of the list price, and the new and used prices are pennies apart. The icing on the cake: the sales ranking. This is an expensive book that is on track to sell fast. In fact, I suspect it might be on more than a few required reading lists for the upcoming semester.  That’s another plus when sourcing from university libraries: the books are scholarly or semi-scholarly, so they may command higher prices and be in high demand several times a year, at the start of each academic semester. The flip side of this is that it’s common to find rankings in the three or four millions, yet it’s just as likely you may find books with a higher rank and with the potential to command a higher price. When you pay 50 cents or $1 per book, like I did, it’s just too good an opportunity to pass up. So go back to school—and bring a backpack.

If you don’t know who Ted Bundy is, he was an infamous serial killer that killed 30 women in the 1970s.  Could technology; more accurately,ebooks, kill off printed books like Ted Bundy?  Frankly, it’s beginning to concern me.  Not so much that it’s going to completely kill off printed books but that overall sales of books (both new and used) have already started to spiral down.  I know that niches like rare and collectible books will be only slightly affected due to their nature but commodity books like I sell will soon go to the way of the dinosaur.  Even I, a used bookseller, has an iPad sitting right beside me with the Amazon Kindle app on it.  Why?  Because it’s so damn convenient!  I know, I know, you’re going to call me a sell out but I’m sorry!  I just love technology too much!

This is a topic I’ve been stewing on for a long time.  Being a big technology guy way before I was a book guy, I was well aware of eBooks but didn’t think about the impact they had on my book business.  To be honest, I’m doing just fine while Amazon can claim they sell more eBook than hardcover books all they want.  Perhaps I’m just too small of a seller to notice the global trends right away.  Perhaps.  Perhaps the books I’m selling attract the kind of people that still like good ol’ paper.  Who knows?  In any case, I still believe selling used books still is a good way to make a business.

Even though Amazon is and always has been the biggest source of sales for me, they seem to be attempting to leave me.  Amazon has recently announced it’s plans to start a digital library.  Publishers, as well as sellers like me hate the idea for obvious reasons.  It is surely going to affect sales in a very negative way.  Amazon got it’s roots with books and it has always been known as a very technologically advanced company automating many processes and streamlining workflows.  Instead of fulfilling book orders from people like you and me, I’m pretty sure they’d rather just be throwing up a server and opening the gates for people to download at will.  No labor costs, much less equipment and less time equal much more profit at the end of the year.  The must be doing something right and planning for something big if they’re able to report sales of a whopping $9.86 billion for the quarter but profited way less.  Costs in developing the Kindle or this so-called digital library, perhaps?  Amazon…I understand why you’re doing it but I don’t like it one bit.

Also, don’t even get me started on Google’s eBook adventures.  They recently opened up an entire eBook store while at the same time attempted to scan hundreds of thousands of books called the Google Books Library Project.  OK, it’s Google.  I get get that.  They’re a technology company to begin with.  I understand why they’d want to get people reading eBooks instead of print books.  Do you think they might have their ear to the ground and hear what’s coming before we do and try to get in a position to take advantage of that?

I’m also pretty sure you heard about Borders going bankrupt.  However, did you know that you can still browse to Borders.com?  Borders couldn’t hack it in the print world but decided to go all in with eBooks and online-only distribution.  Why pay a few thousand employees when you can have a datacenter somewhere with a few hundred servers and a dozen IT geeks to run it?

I’m at a loss here.  Personally, I’m torn between being a huge fan of anything tech to seeing my book business sales potentially dwindling.  You can’t resell eBooks, right?  For all you other booksellers out there, I’d love to hear what you think in the comments section.  Concerned?  Have a strategic plan to counteract eBooks or do you just not think this is going to be something that can hold up?

This post has been a quick writeup and may have some errors and/or not flow as gracefully as some of my past posts.  I’ve been drastically slowing down my post-writing mostly because they take way too damn long to write and edit for clarity.  I’ve decided rather than give you guys nothing I’ll at least write about what’s on my mind and get flamed for the errors so please, be gentle.

Adam

Standard Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (203)

When I started selling books on Amazon, about 3 ½ year ago, my life was a lot slower than it is now. Yes, I was married, had a house and a full-time job but my job was a lot different than it is now and it didn’t keep me as busy. The most important and biggest difference between now and almost four years ago is my beautiful daughter. Things in life just seem to take over and get busier and more complicated as each day passes and this is the main reason I decided to hire an employee. About a year and a half ago a lot of things came together at the same time to make this happen. I’d like to share with you briefly as to how I finally made the decision to hire my first employee.

About a year and a half ago my mother got laid off during this wonderful economy we are in right now. As luck would have it, her husband, my step father still had a good paying job and they were able to get by just fine without my mother’s income. Previously, she had expressed some interest in helping me out with the books and since I was always trying to find time to do everything myself I thought it was a great time to bring my first employee on board, my mom. The one reason I was able to afford this was because I had built up my business to where I had plenty of sources lined up and I was making enough money to pay an employee. At first it was a little difficult for me to let go of certain aspects of the business as I was used to doing everything on my own and my own way. After training my mother on how to do the tasks, I began transitioning more away from the day-to-day activities and was able to concentrate more on my full-time job, my family and taking more of an ownership role.

As time went on my mother began to feel overwhelmed due to all the tasks she had on her plate; from picking up the books, scanning, creating FBA orders, listing, fulfilling orders and customer service, it was just too much for one person to do by herself. While she was doing everything just as I taught her, she didn’t have the experience I had. We began looking at the possibility of hiring a part-time employee to help out with scanning. I hired a good person and things went really well. Now I have two employees working for me.

So, the question I want to help you answer is how do you know when to hire your first employee?

There are three very important guidelines you should consider:

1. Make sure you have a consistent recurring amount of income that can warrant an employee. You may have more things to do than you have time to do them but if you’re not generating the income to support an employee then there is no way you can hire someone. So, first be sure to have a consistent and reliable amount of income. Be sure to have regular sources lined up and make sure you are going to be able to generate a consistent amount of income to hire that employee.
   
   
2. Decide what pieces of your business you want to hand off to someone else. For me, as I mentioned, I didn’t want to do the day-to-day scanning anymore. I wanted to be dealing more with the executive decisions. If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I buy books in bulks and not singles. The process is to find the books, a couple thousand books at a time from big dealers, bring them in and just start scanning them and see what we have. Frankly, it bored me to scan book after book, look at prices and throw them in the pile they needed to go to. I would rather give that task to someone else and it really didn’t require a lot of training. Once I had someone reliable (and who could be more reliable than my mom!), it didn’t take long to do the training. Once trained to do the scanning, hook up the laptop and know what to do and when to do it, it was smooth sailing from there on out. Now it was just a matter of me transitioning off that responsibility and I could focus my time on lining up more sources.
   
   
3. Figure out if you value your time more than money. The reason I say this is because labor is by far the biggest expense I have in my book business. I spend around two to three hours a week maximum working on my book business. This process came about slowly and gradually while training my mom and the other employee on how to run nearly all aspects of the business. At this point, I simply act as a consultant and steer the business in the right direction from an owners’ perspective. The time that has been given back to me by hiring employees has been wonderful. Prior to bringing them on board, I would spend close to 20-30 hours away from wife and daughter as my office is away from my home; my family time was definitely neglected. I also didn’t have time to do anything for myself.

Being able to hire an employee has also given me the opportunity to not only grow a successful business, but to also look into other ventures, such as, eBizControl and my new inventory receiving project yet to be named that I will have more information about later. I am beginning to transition and merge my technology background with my Amazon seller background. I will soon be offering some services that I have been wanting ever since I became a seller and it will benefit other book sellers. I can’t wait!

In conclusion, hiring employees is what has made my book business so successful today. I believe my book business would have been closed down a long time ago without them. Just like with most things in life, when you get bored with something, you end up becoming uninterested in doing the routine tasks and move on to something else. There were some aspects of my business that I simply grew tired of; like I said, with the scanning and picking up the books. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing you may as well not be doing it. Instead of simply throwing my arms up, saying I quit, this sucks, I found someone who would like to do those tasks. My mother loves scanning books and she enjoys trying to find treasures, as she calls them. So it was a win/win situation for both of us; my mom is able to find the “treasures”, make some money and I was able to progress onto other ventures and leave the things behind that I would rather not do.

Do you currently have employees?  Are you thinking about hiring one?  Let us know in the comments!

I started selling books on Amazon about three and a half years ago. During this time of my life, things were a lot slower than what they are now. Sure I was married, had a house,  and a full-time job, but my job was a lot different than it is now. I had less to do, was not quite as busy, and more importantly, I didn’t have the beautiful daughter that I have today. Needless to say, my life has gotten a lot more complicated and a lot busier since then.

This is one of the reasons I decided to hire an an employee. I hired my first employee about a year and a half ago. A lot of things came together at the same time to make this happen.  My mother is the first employee who I hired. About a year and a half ago, my mom got laid off from her job. Luckily, her husband, my stepfather, still had a good paying job, and they were able to get by just fine without my mom’s income. She had expressed some interest in helping me out with the books, and due to the responsibilities I had, I thought it was a great idea. I had built the business to an extent where I had plenty of sources lined up, and was making enough money to be able to afford an employee.

So I decided to let her start. Things were a little difficult while trying to transition away from the day-to-day activities at first. I was not trying to concentrate more on my full-time job, my family, and basically take more of an ownership role. Things were going well until my mother began to feel overwhelmed by all the responsibilities: picking up the books, scanning the books, creating FBA orders, listing the books, fulfilling orders, customer service etc. She was doing everything, just as I would, but without the experience that I have. It was a little rough at first. During this time, we decided to hire another part-time employee to help my mother with the scanning. It turned out well. I hired a good person the first time and things were going well. So now, I have two employees working for me.

Now that you know my history and my story, how would YOU know when to hire your first employee?  Here are a few reasons to help you decide.

1. Make sure you have a consistent and recurring amount of income that can pay an employee. You have may have a lot things that you know you can have someone else do.  However, if you’re not generating the income to support bringing on additional help, there is no way that you can hire one.  So first, be sure to have a consistent, reliable, amount of income. Line up your regular sources (here’s an eBook that just might help) and have your ducks in a row before you think about it.
2. Decide what pieces of the business would you rather hand to someone else. For example, I didn’t want to do the day-to-day scanning anymore. I was tired of reaching in gaylords of books and scanning each and every one that came through the door.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I buy books in bulk. I don’t buy singles. The process is to find the sources, get a couple of thousand books at a time on a truck, bring them in, and start scanning them to see what’s there. I wanted to deal more with more the technical and executive decisions. I wanted someone else to do the scanning.  Hiring someone to do this freed me to do an FBA shipment, or line up more sources; that sort of thing.
3. Decide if you value your time more than money. The reason I say this is because labor is by far the biggest expense that I have in my book business. It accounts more more than 50% of my expenses.  However, I now only spend around 2-3 hours maximum for my book business. I’ve done this by slowly but gradually training my mother and the other employee on how to run nearly all aspects of the business. I simply act as a consultant now, and try to steer the business in the right direction from an owner’s perspective. The time that hiring employees has given back to me has been wonderful. Prior to that, I would spend close to 20-30 hours a week away from home because my books are at a separate location. I was spending time away from my wife and my daughter; family time was being neglected. I also did not have time to do things for myself; I wasn’t able to ever relax.

Hiring an employee has also given me the opportunity to essentially put my book-selling business on autopilot but to also have the time to work on other things such as eBizControl, and my new project project that I’m calling codename “easy receive.” I’ll have more information about these later, but I’m beginning to transition to try to merge my technology background with my amazon seller background. Soon, I’ll be offering some services that I’ve been wanting to offer since I started as a seller.

In conclusion, one of the most important reasons why I hired an employee was because I believe that my book business would have been closed down a long time ago if it wasn’t for that. In life, you can sometimes get bored, uninterested, and just tired of doing a task. There were some aspects of my business that I simply grew tired of and was ready to just quit. But instead of simply throwing up my arms saying “I quit, I’m not doing this anymore, this sucks!” I hired someone to do it.

If you don’t enjoy a business, then you might as well not have it. I was able to offload those tasks to somebody else that actually enjoys it. My mother loves scanning books.  She calls it finding treasures. It was a win-win situation for us both. My mom was able to go treasure hunting and make some extra money despite losing her job, and I was able to invest my time elsewhere.

Standard Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (167)