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.

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.

Book sale season is upon us! This is a great time of year to build up your book inventory as big library sales are going on all over the place. An easy way to find one in your area is to check booksalefinder.com.

If you are new to book sales, it is a good idea to go into one with a strategy. Book sales are usually very crowed and crawling with other book sellers.   Without a plan, the sales can be overwhelming and even intimidating.

To develop a plan, here are a couple of things to consider:

• Your budget
• The lowest pricing point of books you want to sell (not as easy as it sounds)
• What genres of books you want to sell

It is easy to go over budget at a book sale – especially if they take credit/debit cards. I used to go in with $100 cash in my pocket and easy spend two or three times that once I found out that they took debit cards.  Now I try to pick a high budget for the entire sale, this way if I spend more than I plan the first night it is ok as the prices usually go down each day of the sale.

My current plan has been to sell books for at least $6.99 with FBA. This way I am clearing around $4 minimum per lightweight book (I look for a higher value for hardback/heavy books). This doesn’t take into account the price I paid for the book however.  If a paperback book is $2 at the book sale, then I am looking for books that will sell for at least $8.99.  This isn’t the whole story however; I also have to consider:

• The sales ranking – if the ranking is below 50K then I can go a little below my $8.99 minimum and usually be alright as the book will sell fast.  If the ranking is above 200k then I usually look for a little higher starting price
• When scanning a book, I can’t always go by the lowest price.  Why? I rarely ever sell my books for the lowest price.  A lowest price book could be $2.50, but I could price my book at $10. If the lowest price book isn’t on FBA, then the $2.50 automatically becomes $6.49 ($2.50+$3.99 shipping).  If the ranking is high then I will price my book a few dollars above this, so the $6.49 becomes $8.49-$8.99, right in my price range.
• Sales rank is a huge factor for me – I try not to bother with books over 500K unless the value is high ($20+?). Of course if I stumble upon a book that is worth $50 or more, I will usually buy it regardless of sales ranking.
• There are other factors to consider as well such as the condition of my book and my competitors’ book, the reputation of the seller (I have a great reputation/feedback on Amazon), and whether my competitor bothers to even describe the condition of their book.  With FBA, I get the eyes of “Prime” customers, something my competitor is probably not going to get.

Another good piece of strategy is to decide beforehand what genres of books that you want to sell most, or at least some sort of order of what kind of books you are looking for.  If you have a unique niche of books to look through you may be able to avoid being trampled by all of the novice book sellers racing to textbooks.  Some sellers do well with CDs/DVDs/Vinyl at book sales.  These tables are usually a lot less crowded than the book tables.

I hope this helps you with some ideas on how to handle library book sales. Please let me know if any of these tips help you or if you have any of your own to add!

As I am preparing for Hurricane Irene at my home in coastal NC, I have discovered another benefit to using Amazon FBA.   I have a few hundred books & other items I am covering in plastic and trying to protect in case of flooding.  I am thankful that I do not have the over 2000 books I have in storage with FBA at my home!  I can’t imagine how long this would take me to prepare for and how much money I could potentially lose if they were damaged.  I better go finish preparing my home for the incoming storm – I will post again soon & thanks for reading my blog!

I get questions all the time from beginning book sellers asking me about specific products, programs, and automation tools for their online bookselling businesses.  A lot of these beginners have not even sold a SINGLE book online yet, but they are already purchasing expensive products for book selling!

My advice for everyone, especially beginners is SLOW down.  Start selling a few books, build some cash flow, get some experience, and then decide if you need some products to help build your business.  The beauty of selling books online to me is that you can start with virtually no investment.  Selling books isn’t going to be fun and you are not going to stick with it long term if you are not making money quickly.

Here are some low-cost products I do recommend if you are starting out:

USB Scanner – Search on eBay for “USB Scanner”.  You should be able to find a decent one for around $30.  This is simply a scanner that you plug into the usb port on your computer and you are able to scan barcodes into Amazon rather than typing the 10 or 13 digit isbn numbers.  This can really save you a lot of time if you are listing several books at a time.  For most scanners, no special software is required.

Thermal/Laser Printer – If you are going to sell on Amazon FBA, this is one expense you may want to incur.  A thermal printer is nice if you want an exclusive printer just for FBA, you can print clear labels in a roll format.  Search Amazon for “thermal printer”, you should be able to find a decent new one for around $80.  If you don’t want to invest in an exclusive printer for FBA, a laser printer will work.  When I first started using FBA, I used an inkjet printer to print my labels but received several nasty emails from Amazon because many times the barcode was not clear enough for their scanners.

Android and Iphone apps – If you do not want to invest in an expensive laser scanner when starting out, there are various free and low-cost apps for Android/Iphone that use your phone’s camera to scan barcodes.  One is the “Amazon” app.  Another one that I use frequently is “Pic2Shop”.  Both of these apps are free and work surprisingly well (please check out my blog post/video for Pic2Shop HERE).

Repriceit.com – Once you get to the point of having several hundred or thousands of books in your inventory, a repricing program is a big time-saver.  I use Repriceit.com; it is fairly inexpensive ($10-$75/mo depending on the size of your inventory).  You can set up templates for your inventory based on the time you have had them listed and other factors and have your books repriced automatically.

PDA laser scanner – If you are serious about selling books you will probably find that you need a scanner of some sort.   There are many kinds, but to keep costs down I use a basic PDA laser scanner and a subscription to Scoutpal for $10/mo.  If you are interested in a low-cost pda scanner, I usually sell them for about $300.  Just send me an email or post a comment here if you are interested in buying one.

There are many great programs and systems you can invest in to help your book selling business including FBA Power, FBA Scout, Proven Amazon Course, etc.  I prefer to keep my costs low and only invest in products I find that I need when I need them.  Hope this helps you get started!