One of the first tasks you are going to be faced with when trying to start an online book business is where to get your inventory.  You have a plethora of choices here and I will try to explain where I have had success.  These are only a few of the great places I have found great books at.

1. The Friends of the Library

Ah, the Friends.  These people will be your best friend in finding the best inventory at the cheapest price.  The Friends are nonprofit groups of people usually at each library that get together regularly and discuss how to better promote literacy, promote their individual libraries that they are a member of and overall try to be the public relations for libraries around the United States.  To explain it better, the Friend’s national website says:

The mission of FOLUSA is to motivate and support state and local library support groups across the country in their efforts to preserve and strengthen libraries, and to create awareness and appreciation of library services by:

• Assisting in developing Friends groups in order to generate local and state support.
• Providing guidance, education, and counsel on issues and concerns relevant to Friends, Trustees, Foundations and Libraries.
• Promoting the development of strong and effective library advocacy programs.
• Serving as a clearinghouse of information and expertise.
• Establishing locations of historical literary significance around the country as Literary Landmarks.
• Promoting reading and literacy through our national Books for Babies program.

So, the Friends basically do many good things for the libraries and feel free to go sign up at your local FOL by talking to your local libraries.

Now that you are familiar with the FOL, we need to get down to the important stuff, buying books!  The FOL hold many sales all over the United States many of which are listed on booksalefinder.  Once you hear about a sale either through the online channels or through your local newspaper, you need to be there!  These sales are typically goldmines for books of all kinds!  You need to be careful when choosing your books though as the books range from the uber junk books such as romance mass market paperbacks to the pure treasures which are typically current nonfiction books.  You’ll occasionally find an older first edition in there that is worth $$$, but as a novice, I would concentrate on more current nonfiction books.  Once you’re there, you’ll have a lot of competition from other booksellers with fancy gadgets such as book scouting tools which we will discuss later or your average Joe that just wants some cheap books to read!  Get in there with both elbows out and do your best to hunt ‘em down!  In a later post, I will explain some strategies to use when going to these sales.

2. Thrift Stores

This is probably my number two pick trailing greatly behind the good ol’ Friends.  You can find a great directory of thrift stores in a thrift store directory.  Thrift stores typically don’t provide as many books as the FOL sales, but nonetheless have some good selections if you get there at the right time.  Depending on where you live, you may have online booksellers around you that already know about the treasures in thrift stores.  They may typically have rounds that they do so if you get there after them, the pickins will be pretty slim.  You need to have a strategy, which we will touch on in a later post.

If you’re going to thrift stores for the first time, simply feel the place out.  Where do they store their books?  Are they all in one place?  Do they store some with other departments?  Sometimes, these thrift stores will bunch some books related to a particular subject with other things such as putting books on lamps where they have a bunch of lamps on a shelf.  Even though you may see a large set of books on a shelf doesn’t mean that’s all they have.

Is the quality of the books good?  You don’t want to be picking up books that are moldy, have pages missing or are simply really beat up for one reason or another.  They will never sell if you accurately describe them and even if they do, you will most likely have a pretty pissed off buyer on your hands if he wants to read page 230 and it’s missing!

Talk to the people working there.  A big strategy of mine is to actually talk to people and make connections.  Browse the stores for a little while and start up a conversation.  After a little chit chat, bring up that you are interested in books.  Your goal here is to see if they can tell you if they have regular donations of books, how long the books are usually there, etc.  Eventually, if you’re there enough and make some friends, they will sometimes hold back their loads of books for you to get first chance at them.  See?  If you scratch their back, they’ll scratch yours.  A good in with thrift stores is to donate your unwanted books to them.  They will, in turn, return the favor.

3. Estate Auctions

Estate sales can be sparse when it comes to purchasing books for resale.  Sometimes you’ll get lucky and sometimes you won’t.  It’s best to check with the auctioneers prior to going to ensure that they have a sizable amount of books up for auction.  You don’t want to make the trek 50 miles to see that the auction said there were books, but they only meant 1 measly box.  It’s always best to get clarification prior.  The last estate auction that I went to, they did have a big selection of books and typically, you won’t have much if any competition because your average person probably thinks they are junk.  Little do they know, some books could have great value.  This auction that I attended, the auctioneer was mentioning using the books for firewood.  Little did he know, I picked out a great $40 book on Astronomy out of that and listed it on Amazon.

That’s all for now, folks!  In future posts, I will be mentioning other places to get books and the strategies that come with them.  I hope you enjoyed this post and I look forward to sharing many more!