If you are just starting out in the online book selling business and are wondering where to start looking for inventory – library book sales are the answer. With spring approaching there are going to be thousands of them all over the country and there will probably be some close to your home. When you are at your local library ask them if they have a book sale and when it is – most major libraries have at least 2 a year. You can also check the site BookSaleFinder.com to search for sales in your area or to find big sales that you would like to travel to.
Many booksellers believe that the key to finding great inventory is to attend the “preview” sale – usually the night before the public sale begins. To attend the preview sale you need to be a FOL (Friend of the Library). You can usually become a member at the door for a nominal fee of $10-$30 a year. You will more than cover the cost of the fee with the books you find at this preview sale. If you are new to book selling the preview sale might be a little overwhelming as you will be competing with other booksellers and there will be thousands of books to choose from.
I always attend the preview sales at library sales but this year I am trying a new strategy since I am listing most of my books with Amazon Fulfillment now. With Amazon Fulfillment, I am more concerned with the speed a book is going to sell over the amount of money the book will sell for. The beauty of this is that you can actually make money selling every day run-of-the-mill paperbacks. With this in mind, I am starting to put more emphasis on attending the final day of the library sale when the books are at their cheapest… many times they are a dollar a bag. You can still find fast selling books of low value on the last day that your competing book sellers don’t care about.
If you want to look into the Amazon FBA program more – check out the ebook Book to the Future. This ebook is short and simple and shows you how to make money right away with FBA!
If you sell books online you know that you need a lot of inventory and you need it CHEAP. My main source of inventory is thrift shops where books are typically 50 cents for paperbacks and $1 for hardbacks. Even these prices can seem high if your low on cash or if you need to acquire a large amount of books fast. This week I stumbled upon a great hidden source of books – storage units.
I saw an ad on my local Craigslist that a storage unit company had cleaned out their old unpaid units are were selling off several items including books. I went to check it out the next morning and was kind of disappointed. They wanted $1 a book and most of it was just junk. I bought maybe $10 worth of books but left my # with them and told them if they find more books and just want to get rid of them to give me a call. They called me a few days later and said to come by and pick up all of their books and just pay what I felt was appropriate. I went there and filled up my SUV with books for about $40. I just started going through them but have already covered my $40 just with the first few boxes I went through.
If your needing some inventory you may just want to walk into the local storage unit facilities and introduce yourself. Best of all, with all of the worthless books you get you can donate them to the library for a tax write off!
If you are a newbie to book selling – it can be confusing to know where to price your books on Amazon. If there are a lot of copies should you price low to sell fast or hold out for maximum profit? Your main consideration should be sales ranking. Here is a link to an article that I wrote awhile back that has received a lot of positive feedback:
How to price your books to sell on Amazon
Let me know what you think!
Yes! But it takes some creativity. Simply listing your books on Amazon or eBay is a painfully slow way to make a large income. Through this blog I will be sharing some strategies I use to acquire, price, and sell books for the maximum and quickest profit. Please comment on my posts or ask questions and I will do my best to answer them!
