The key to online book selling is obviously having a large inventory. What happens when your favorite thrift stores are dry, yard sales are slow, and there are no library sales coming nearby anytime soon? You still need to get inventory somehow. It’s time to get creative. There are people out there who will literally give their books away – It’s time to find them!
First step – print up some fliers and business cards… keep them simple… your name, phone #, email, with the heading “I Buy Books”. You might want to list what kind you buy – I pretty much buy anything so this is easy for me.
Second step – post your fliers anywhere you can. If you live near a college, post one in the student union. College students are great people to buy books off of – they are usually trying to get whatever they can for their books and may have recent textbooks which can be valuable. If you sell on FBA or sell paperbacks, they will have recent books since they usually don’t haul old books from their homes to their dorms.
Third step – get on Craigslist. If you don’t currently have an ad running on “books” or “items wanted”, post one now! You will get tons of response and may be able to buy loads of books of off people cheap!
Fourth step – hit the streets. Stop into storage unit facilities, auction companies, and any other business that deals with used goods. Introduce yourself and hand them a card, you never know where that could lead.
The purpose of this article and this blog in general is to inspire others to not only sell books online, but also to look at creative ways to do so. Please leave a comment if you have any other creative methods of acquiring inventory for your used book selling business!
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