Have you heard of Fulfillment by Amazon?  Do you even know what Fulfillment by Amazon is?  If you’ve just started this crazy business of selling books on the Internet, it may be new to you.  For all you old timers, you may have heard of Fulfillment by Amazon and know how it works but may have been skeptical to try it.  I’m here to explain a little about what this service is and to share my experience with everyone on the process it takes to get started.

Fulfillment by Amazon, in it’s simplest terms, is a service that Amazon offers that allows you to send books or many other different kinds of inventory directly to Amazon so that they will fulfill your orders for you.  You send your books to Amazon, they store the books in their warehouse for you until they sell and when they do, Amazon ships them directly to the customer for you.  They also handle any customer service issues with the book if the customer is dissatisfied in any way.   The only thing you need to do is go through the FBA process that they setup to get them ready for processing by the Amazon warehouse and shipping them off.

Why I started to use Fulfillment by Amazon

The reason I chose to start this service is because of the website Book to the Future.  You’ll notice that Nathan, the owner of the site is also a sponsor of the blog and for that, I’m grateful.  It is from my conversations with him and from my perusing of his website and reading his eBook on Fulfillment by Amazon that I finally got motivated enough to try.  The eBook is a little light on content but it’s what really got me inspired to give it a try and see what I could do.  I always found it exciting to think that I didn’t have to send any orders out if a book sold.  That could free me up to do more important things such as finding new inventory and streamlining my business.

However, I did not just sign up and start learning Fulfillment by Amazon on a whim.  I had a problem with one piece of my business and knew there was a better way to approach it.  The problem was that I would end up with tens of thousands of books in my garage that were already processed and deemed to be not salable online.  Most of these books were still in great condition but were what you’d call “penny books”, which to me meant any book with a value under $3 per Amazon.  If I would list and sell these books, I either make a few cents or even be negative due to the cost of postage, shipping supplies, commission, etc.   Books that looked brand new and had a very low Amazon sales rank were just being tossed in with the old encyclopedias, musty novels, magazines and whatever other junk that tends to accumulate after processing.  I was doing this ever since I started and knew there had to be a way to make some money on these books.

I learned from Nathan’s eBook on Fulfillment by Amazon that he was selling these penny books by using Fulfillment by Amazon and actually making a few bucks by directly competing with the big boys AND could charge much higher and still maintain a top position to get maximum exposure.  This was very exciting!  I could now make some cash on the books I’d since been simply discarding and not even fulfill the orders when they came in!

Benefits to using Fulfillment by Amazon

There are many benefits to selling any kind of book on Amazon; not only penny books.  Here are a few reasons why I chose it and am currently very happy with it so far.

• Your orders qualify for Amazon Prime
  • Amazon customers can sign up for a program that can get them unlimited FREE 2-day shipping and 1-day shipping for only $3.99.
• Your orders qualify for Super Saver Shipping
  • Any Amazon customer gets free shipping if a purchase of over $25 is made.
• Your listing can get the top spot in the listing
  • This is my favorite part.  With Amazon FBA, you can charge up to $4 for a book and sit atop all of those hundreds of 1 cent listings!  The reason for this is because Amazon ranks the listings by price plus shipping, which if not using Fulfillment by Amazon, the lowest price you can go is 1 cent plus $3.99 shipping.  With Amazon FBA, since customers qualify for free shipping, your listing is put at the top because there is no shipping fee.  This means that I now have many books that were previously unsalable for me because I couldn’t compete to now being able to compete PLUS make even more money than what a penny book seller can make!
• You don’t have to do anything if your book sells
  • Another great benefit because once you ship the books to Amazon’s warehouse, you’re done.  Amazon takes care of the rest.

First impressions of the Fulfillment by Amazon program

My first impressions of the program are stellar.  I’ve read other accounts of people having a terrible time with it at first when they first started out, but it looks to be smooth sailing so far.  I’ll be sure to keep you up to date if that changes though.

The process is pretty straightforward for me.  Sort the books by condition, scan all the books to get the 10 digit ISBN, input the ISBNs into Amazon Book Loader spreadsheet, condition, SKU, etc and upload to Amazon.  I will then go into my inventory, convert them to “Fulfilled by Amazon”, place stickers on the books so that Amazon can inventory them, pack them up and drop them off at UPS.  If I get some time, I might make a short tutorial in more detail.

After only about 3 days, Amazon will notify me the inventory has arrived at their warehouse and shortly after, it’s up on their site.  So far, I’ve had about 100 books listed for less than a week and have already sold 25 books.  The best part is that these books, in the past, have been shooed out into the garage to be donated!

I haven’t had that much time to do a full evaluation of the program yet but so far, it’s been going great and am very excited to keep sending more inventory their way!