Selling books on Amazon

Ok, I’ve had a bit of caffeine this evening, I’m going to run on that and try to finish up the questions so far……..

Bookworm said….”The margins have just dried up, and I’m better off getting a book credit good for a book I want than I am trying to sell on the competitive sites.”

I don’t believe the margins have dried up. People will always love books. Again, I think you’re just not looking for the profitable books. The first day I found out about this business, I thought- This is PERFECT!! I LOVE books, what could be a better fit for me than to sell what I love! But I figured out that only maybe one or two books that I’ve purchased would I even think about reading. Oh, and someone mentioned not wanting to do this because the good sellers are raunchy books. I just pass right on by the books that offend me, I don’t want to be a part of something God would not be honored by. Just glancing over at a stack to be boxed up next to me, here are some of the titles- “Dog Showing for beginners”, “How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book”, “Meteorology Today”, “Easy Crocheted Scarves”, “Bringing Representation Home, “Barn Owls”, “The Creator and the Cosmos”….. see, none are offensive. Anyway, my original point was that I’m not specializing, my scanning app is helping me know which books to buy. I would be clueless without it. Oh, and there are free apps out there, but the one I use (FBAScout) is the only one that tells you if there are FBA offers, which is essential.

Bookworm said…….”I AM a seller on Amazon and Alibris, and I’ve done Ebay and half.com also in the past.”

Yes, I am just getting started and you have been doing this a long time. But I think it is important to note that there is always more to learn. I am reading everything I can get my hands on to make myself more knowledgeable and all evidence points to the fact that this bookselling business has no near end in sight.

Bookworm said……”All these places take a pretty good chunk out of what you get.”

I’ll get to the details of that in a bit, but I want to first say, what’s so bad if that’s true? If you are *earning* money you didn’t have in the first place and don’t have any other options for selling the book, how is that bad? I would not be able to do this without Amazon. They can have their fair share.

Bookworm said……….” Also a lot of the books that show up in my area in used stores that have higher resale margins are books that for personal reasons I choose not to deal in (salacious hardcover bestsellers, for instance). “

I know I already addressed this, but I wanted to mention that usually the bestsellers are not the ones that are most profitable, in fact, quite the opposite. The demand drives the price into the ground.

Bookworm said……..”Reselling textbooks is even more mercurial. You can invest and buy some books that seem to have a high resale value, and then the next week the publisher comes out with a new edition, all the schools switch to it and the value of that text nosedives.”

I have only bought 4 textbooks so far, the most expensive costing $1. So not a huge investment. But I would never advise someone to do *only* textbooks, that could be risky. So then what are the odds that even 25% of the textbooks one purchases to resell, the publisher comes out with a new edition? Not a bad risk. Plus, even if it does, not every single college will go with that new edition. When it’s listed on Amazon, it’s available anywhere.

Bookworm said…….”You CAN make some money on the side doing these things, but it’s best if you know the market for what you are doing very, very well.”

With a scanning app, you don’t have to work so hard at knowing the market and one should not specialize unless it just comes naturally. I can spot a good homeschooling or religious book pretty well. I know which ones are too widespread and which ones are going to be worth more. It’s not bad to have the knowledge in your head, but with the live data from Amazon, that’s a powerful tool.

Bookworm said……”I’ve had many conversations with much larger sellers like Jan Bloom and Heather Idoni about the difficulties of the used market.”

I don’t know Heather Idoni, but I know a teeny about Jan Bloom. Doesn’t she only do children’s books? See, I think the problem there is that she is extremely passionate about childrens books. I am passionate about children’s books, too- as a buyer. I am in this bookselling business because I’m passionate about my family and obeying my husband when he tells me he wants me to bring in some income. I soooooo wish I didn’t have to bring in income, but this is what God has for me right now. So I am only interested in the money-making part of it.

Bookworm said………”But I just think it important to realize that everyone is not going to be able to, or even be able to consistently make enough $$ to pay for the data plan on their fancy phone.”

Actually, I believe everyone that *wants* to make enough money to pay for the data plan on their fancy phone *can* do it. If you have faith small as a mustard seed…….

Bookworm said……….”only expand to higher-end options as you start turning a profit.”

This is what I was saying, too. Well, maybe not the only part, but it is wise to take your profit and reinvest it in the business. Again, we chose to invest a small amount in the beginning, but as it grows, we will invest more.

Sara asked…….”BTW, Jenn, was going to ask about the boxes and bubble mailers you had mentioned? How do you work this?”

Here is a link to an extremely simple, efficient and cost effective way of shipping.

http://bookshopblog.com/2008/02/03/how-to-package-books-for-shipping/

I googled paper and my city name and I live in a larger city, but found a source for buying B Flute cardboard rolls. This is if you are going to self-fulfill. I plan on self-fulfilling the rare books that I find and sending most of them to Amazon, but this is great for self-fulfilling.

Linda said……….”and few people if any are going to make $3000 a month at it and still have a family life. “

I just want to address this again. I think the farm life thing is a good example. My dream one day is to live on a farm and have cows and chickens and all that, oooh, I just get goosebumps thinking about it, to live out in the open and be able to have *real* nature study instead of trying so hard in the city? Oh, boy, don’t get me started….anyway- that is hard work! There would never be any “free time” for “family life”. We would all be working all the time! What a joy! God created work *before* the fall!! I always tell my children that. So maybe someday my husband will make enough money that I won’t have to sell books and we can move to the country, but for now, the work which equals family life will be partly doing this bookselling thing. My children can help erase marks in books, remove all the interesting things found in them, the older ones can help with the computer part of it, even little ones can put the barcode stickers on the books, we can go to UPS to learn more about how the packages get to where they’re going, but most of all, I can teach my children how to earn a living maybe. If this isn’t what they chose to do when they’re grown up, at least they will kind of know how to run a business. My husband is also a kettlecorn vendor and when we all go to help him as a family, we have some of the best times as a family!

Doug said……”Jenn, the link you posted to the free e-book may or may not have been good information. “

Yes, those free ebooks are abnoxious, I just assumed people would be able to get past the glitter and just read about it to get the gist of how the business works. Sometimes I just don’t explain things very clearly, and I remembered really understanding it more after reading through that ebook.

Linda said………”and you are right the link to the ebook was my red flag”

I just wish you would have said that in the beginning. I could have addressed it then. 🙂

Rebekah said…..”I have to say I am surprised at the response you recieved (I had to go back and re-read your posts several times to see what I was missing to set off such cautions, I did not see any cause for alarm). I think Doug has offered a generous insight as to why others may have a strong opinion, but it certainly provides a chilling effect to others that might want to share ways to make money from home.”

Thank you, Rebekah. I’m still at a loss.

Rebekah said………”I personally would love an update as to how you’re doing with this, as I am very interested in looking at this type of venture (you’re not in NE Kasnas are you??? I’m in SE Nebraska!) We have LOTS of goodwills here as well as some of the BEST garage sales I’ve ever seen – not to mention several colleges… might even be worth it to post craigs list ads for used text books – hmmm or flyers on campus. See, you’ve got my wheels turning!”

Yes, I will update, good or bad, but I just know it will be good! And YAY! that I’ve got your wheels turning!! In case you didn’t see it, I live in Wichita, so not too far. We are from Topeka and that’s where my heart is as my two sisters and Mom and Dad and dh’s Mom and Dad and my Grandma live. I really would love to move back there. Anyway, you can do this, and please don’t hesitate to contact me privately and I will call you or vice versa. May God bless your efforts and may you do His will! 🙂

Rebekah said…….”. From my experience with the ladies that replied so passionately to your post, I know that their intent is truly to offer support to other home educators – they are wise and experienced and graciously spend hours replying to teary eyed newbies and frustrated posts touching every aspect of life”

This is awesome. Thank you Bookworm and Linda for blessing others in this way. It’s very important work, especially for us CMers who are sometimes in the minority. Thank you for having such servant hearts. Really. 🙂

Rebekah said…….”Too bad we weren’t all in a room as I’m sure the tone would be different, especially if we could read each other’s expressions to our responses as we share our opinions.”

Oh, how I hate this about forums. I haven’t been on forums in about 15 years for this very reason. Plus I think people can get sucked in and away from blessing their real life neighbors and church family. I just don’t like to have virtual relationships. I love getting advice and learning things, but just try not to become dependent in any way. We need facial expression, body langauge and voice inflection too much. So forgive me if because of the lack of this I let myself get too caught up in it. I just know if you all had been in the room with me it would have gone differently. Hugs and peace again.

SarahCPA said…….”You almost have me motivated to go ahead and at least list on e-bay the stack of books that have been piling up.”

Oh, please do look into Amazon before spending all that effort on eBay. I just think it is the wrong platform for the average book. EBay is more for rare and collector type books.

SarahCPA said…….”Could one just buy those obscure, non-fiction books and then list them for sale? Are there many out there that really are not worth much?”

Yes, this would be risky. Maybe just set an amount you are comfortable using as experiment money? Like $1 or $5. Look them up and see what you think. I really don’t think this is the best thing, though. Only if you really can afford it. I would encourage you to just look through your house and look up on Amazon’s catalog to get an idea. Then maybe go to a friend’s house and do the same? Yes, there are some you might guess would be good but then you look them up and they’re not. I picked up on it pretty quickly.

Sara said………”I was reading a blog the other day, and now for the life of me I can’t find it again (figures…). But it was talking about online bookselling with Amazon. It was warning about those storage fees you have been saying are so low. So do be careful. I think the pros that have been doing it a long time realize the price went up quite a bit and to triple-check current pricing to reflect that. They mentioned something about if something is there for a year, but I’m not sure if that’s when the fee starts, or if it goes up at that point, or what. If you are figuring for current fees, though, I think you will be fine.”

and Doug along those same lines said……….”So what does Amazon charge for warehousing? Is it by the amount of space used like they do for sellers of other products?”

I have to tell you I am not a numbers person. My husband is, so that is good. But anyway, rather than me trying to explain it since I mentioned I am not always very good at that, here is a link to a discussion on a forum that will help clear it up. It proves that we can get nit-picky over these little details, but if one will just run with it and not worry over these details, it is such a small piece of the big picture, it will all work out in the end. The fees are worth it is the bottom line. Here’s the link……..

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/BookSellersFBA/message/12375

This is a great group to join to read and learn more about FBA and selling books online in general, it just focuses on FBA. I would highly recommend joining and reading- they know way more than I do. I can tell you the names on there of people to learn from if you’re interested.

I will also try to get a better answer to the storage fees question. Like I said, I learn enough to know it’s worth it and the numbers just fall out of my head. So let me get back to you on that one.

Good night all! I hope this has cleared up any confusion and maybe even made Bookworm and Linda more comfortable with the whole thing? If not, I understand. And I do wish I could just give you both a hug and smile and laugh. 🙂

Jenn in KS

Suzukimom……….just came across this today……..

http://fbapower.com/home/fba-canada/

Hope it helps you! 🙂

Hi Charlene! 🙂

Don’t know if I have much more to add to this, since I am the type to not care so much about the details as long as it’s working and I’m profiting. (not that I’m profiting from this yet, that’s just how I’ve worked in the past. Once someone shows me how it works and I see it, I forget the details and just work it.)

But I will try to help-

First thing I noticed, I think the shipping seems high- I may be wrong but I think it would cost about 20 cents a pound to ship to them.

I really thing if you (or anyone else) is apprehensive at all about doing this, you shouldn’t invest in much until you have convinced yourself it works. You can get free apps instead of FBA Scout. Just remember they won’t show you if there are any other FBA sellers.

I would suggest this also- don’t worry so much about how much Amazon gets when you sell a book. Concentrate on how much you’re making that you wouldn’t have been if Amazon wasn’t there to assist you.

If you are going to do FBA, you are going to need to send them tons more books than just the $50 you’ve budgeted to spend buying books to sell. You need to send them at least 40 books to make the Pro Merchant fee worth it anyway. Honestly, I think sending them about one 50 lb box a week is minimum how much you should send in to make it worth it.

Bottom line- if you don’t have a little money ($200/month) to invest in this business in the beginning, it would be wiser to self-fulfill and do it getting mostly free books donated to you in any of the ways I mentioned earlier.

What I keep hearing if you have to keep feeding the machine. Don’t just send some books in and watch if they sell, send books in, send some more books in, send some more books in, and then after that send more books in. Oh, and send more books in. 😉 They will sell if you know which ones to buy. Don’t worry about it. If all of this stresses you out or sounds “too good to be true”, this isn’t the right business for you in my opinion. God made us all different. 🙂

Enjoy the Sabbath!! 🙂

Blessing,

Jenn in KS

funfamilyof7~ Yay!! So glad to help! 🙂

If you are a Pro Merchant, you pay $40/month so the $.99 fee is waived that is usually charged when a book sells. I wouldn’t advise anyone to be a Pro Merchant that isn’t planning on selling that many books. If it is close, just wait until you’re sure it will be over that. But if you are pretty sure that many will sell or you will be mailing lots of books to Amazon through FBA, it is a wiser decision and will SAVE you money.

So it doesn’t matter if you are a Pro Merchant or not, really. You can be a Pro Merchant and still self-fulfill some books, and if you do, Amazon will credit you $3.99 to cover shipping costs. If you are selling a book through FBA, you do NOT get that $3.99 credit, but it is wise to price your book accordingly. Most FBA sellers add 3.99 to their listing price, is what I understand.

Yes, anything fulfilled by Amazon gets free shipping on orders $25 and over. So Prime members would choose FBA over self-fulfilled every time!

Praise God that this will help you! Ask any more questions that you’d like! I’d love to help! 🙂

Grace and peace,

Jenn in KS