I’ve spent an hour or so each morning this week at a local library book sale and have just totaled up my findings. The main conclusion that I got from the sale is – Why would you not sell books online?? Even though I make my living by selling books and other products online, I am not good at keeping track of anything really – especially profits from book sales.
I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf and actually track my progress from this sale. I am going to use a special SKU # to track books from this sale and will be posting my sales #s on my Twitter account regularly. Here are my estimates and a couple of things to keep in mind:
- All of the books I bought are high sales rankings – 100K and mostly much lower. This means that I can sell these books very quickly, especially if I price the book at the lowest selling point on Amazon.
- These #s factor in estimated Amazon fees
- I price my books high, usually 10-20% below the Amazon price – this is the price used for “high value” minus fees. The price for “low value” is matching the lowest listed price on Amazon minus fees. I will probably sell my books for a total of slightly under “high value”. If a book is listed too long without selling, my repricing program will lower it (these books should sell fast and most won’t need lowered pricing).
- This sale was local so I didn’t have any traveling expenses.
|
Cost |
Low Value |
High Value |
Low Profit |
High Profit |
|
|
Preview Night |
$60 |
$159 |
$164 |
$99 |
$104 |
|
1st Day |
$52 |
$96 |
$193 |
$44 |
$141 |
|
2nd Day – Price Cut |
$74 |
$209 |
$417 |
$135 |
$343 |
|
3rd Day |
$32 |
$91 |
$281 |
$59 |
$249 |
|
4th Day – Price Cut |
$22 |
$124 |
$303 |
$102 |
$281 |
|
5th Day – Price Cut |
$8 |
$209 |
$394 |
$201 |
$386 |
|
Totals |
$248 |
$888 |
$1,752 |
$640 |
$1,504 |
For my $248 investment, my worst-case scenario is a profit of $640. My best case is $1500. I am sure I will be towards the top number and will post my results when most of these books have sold in the next few months.
One thing I have learned from these numbers is that is looks like I did better later in the sale – long after most of the other book sellers had given up. The prices also go down as the sale gets later which is great for me!
If you would like to keep track of my sales with me, please follow me on Twitter.
Authors bio is coming up shortly.
I have been following you for a while now and love the information that you offer in your blog. You have helped me over time more than you realize with your blog. Being as green as I am in bookscouting and bookselling, it seems that I have been leaving a lot of profit potential “on the table” so to speak. I try to get to the preview sales as early as possible. After that however, I do not return to the same sale the following days. I assumed that after the preview sale, with so many other booksellers, that there wouldn’t be anything left and would be a complete waste of time. I see according to your numbers that you did quite well going back each day with just one sale. I am astonished at this. I thank you for your candor and transparency. Thank you again.
Thanks Jason… your probably not going to find the $100 book on the last day but that’s fine with me. The books are usually dirt cheap on the last day and you may be the only one there with a scanner – so nice! I’m actually traveling 5 hours to the last day of a book sale tomorrow (work/vacation combo) – will let you know how it goes.
Thanks for the info. I agree that you should go every day that you can. I\’m also an eBay seller and go to thrift stores and garage sales to get inventory, and I can concur that the early bird doesn\’t always get the best deal. I\’ve found great stuff even late in the day.
Unfortunately for me, the annual big book sales put on by the local Friends of the Public Library in my area (San Francisco) generally don\’t have price decreases until the final day, when everything is $1. This year, though, they did experiment with lowering the prices come the weekend, but I was still paying several dollars for each book – yikes! I have been playing around and experimenting with what books I buy and am still learning, so your blog will be helpful.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, all book sales are a little different. Last week I misread a posting on booksalefinder.com and drove 5 hours to the last day of a book sale (I wanted to visit the city anyway and thought the sale would be a perfect excuse to go). The last day of the sale was 50cents/1 dollar, and a lot of books were priced even higher. I did alright, probably will make about $200 but had to spend $50 when I had $20 or less in my plans. I normally wouldn’t do that unless the sale was in a location near me.