I have been selling used books on Amazon for 6 years, and supporting myself full-time by selling used books for over 2 years. Ask away!
Wow.
Okay. Do you buy the books specifically for the purpose of selling them? Where do you get them from?
Yes. I source books from the same sources other booksellers use - thrift stores, library sales, estate sales, continuing library sales, auctions, yard/garage sales, private sellers who want to dispose of their libraries and collections. Other sellers will buy books in bulk (by the “gaylord”, those big octagonal boxes) and sort through to find the ones that are profitable to sell.
What do you do with the ones that don’t sell?
What’s the average sell price for a book?
What’s the most you ever got for one?
Do you donate your unsold books after awhile or do you recycle them?
Do you keep your unsold books on hand or are they warehoused by Amazon?
I was watching someone similar to you at the local Goodwill, scanning the books UPC’s to determine what’s worth reselling. What apps do you use? Is it widely available?
I talked with him briefly, and held up a copy of the Koran, written in German. He scanned it, said it was interesting, but wouldn’t sell for much. (I didn’t buy it either.)
I do my best to make sure all sell.
Amazon charges a Long Term Storage Fee (LTSF) twice a year for books that have been in their warehouses over 6 months (1 fee for 6 months old, a larger fee over 1 year), so there is encouragement not to hold onto books too long. (I send all my books in to Amazon, which handles all shipping and storage for me. Other sellers keep all their books in their home, making it look like that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and handle the shipping an packaging themselves. Others do a mix of both).
If a book hasn’t sold after 6 months, I look at if the price has begun a death-spiral down to the <$8 range. I will either pay a fee of 55¢ to have it returned to me, or 15¢ to have it “destroyed” by Amazon. They don’t actually destroy it, they sell it in bulk lots to other resellers or sell it themselves as a “Warehouse Deal”. I will then claim a tax deduction for destroyed inventory,
I don’t ever like to admit defeat in selling a book, so if it’s returned, I may try selling it on eBay, or sell it in one of the antique mall booths where I sell books, or do a huge yard sale with thousands of other books which I bought as part of big lots but which weren’t profitable to send in to Amazon. But they will often sell at $1. I make a couple thousand off those book/yard sales.
I will often sometimes donate them to charity thrift stores and take a tax deduction.
The average sale price will go up or down depending on what time frame I pull up. I tend to sell higher priced books. My average sales price for December was $48.22.
The most I have ever sold a book for was $1,025 for a true first edition of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.
That’s not cheap for a used book! Do you know just off the top of your head which books will command $48-ish?
Answered above. Some book sellers who deal in large volume have a big problem figuring out to so with all the books that aren’t worth sending in. Some sell them to recyclers, but that varies from area to area. Some places you can find a recycler who will pay something like 1¢ a pound and pick them up, other recyclers will pay but tell you to take them to them, others will charge YOU to take them.
I send all mine in. I initially kept them at home and send them in, but my wife got tired of all the boxes which made our house look like a Bangkok black-marketeers warehouse. Plus, it’s always stress-inducing when you get an order and can’t find the book, and you have to shut your operation down when you travel. By using Amazon’s warehouse system, the engines of bookselling continue to grind silently away throughout the night and whenever I am traveling.
Textbooks, for one. I sell a lot of those for over $100. This is a big selling season for those with the new semester beginning.
Others are just “long-tail” books that are scholarly, small press, and other our-of-print books. I sell some modern first editions but probably 90% of what I sell is non-fiction.
There are a bunch of apps on the market, some better than others. The good ones usually require a paid monthly subscription. I use one called FBAScan but there are other good ones, like ScoutIQ. You can get started for free with the free Amazon seller’s app.
There are sellers who just scan every book in a row (“Scanner Monkeys”) in the hopes of finding something good. They will spend most of the day in one thrift store. Others will have enough experience and knowledge of books to pull out maybe 2 or 3 books out of each row to check, cover one thrift, then move on to the next.
If I had to pick just one skill that will let a solo operator (as opposed to a large operation) thrive, I would say an in-depth knowledge of books. I grew up hanging around libraries and used book stores.
Sorry, you were asking if I knew what books will sell for a high amount off the top of my head? Yes, often I will, and will just use the app to confirm my educated guess. After selling thousands and thousands of books, i have a good knowledge of categories and specific books that will sell for a lot. But I am always still being surprised, which make the business fun.
This is interesting stuff. I’ve often wondered if I could find a niche in the marketplace like this.
It used to be a lot easier than it is now, and a lot of former booksellers have left the marketplace.
It used to be that sellers of books and other media items (CDs, DVDs, video games) did not have to pay storage fees for the first copy of any 1 item. That ended about 1 and half years ago, and media sellers had to pay the same storage fees as anyone else. Before that, you could send in any book you thought might sell sometime in the next 5 years, and only pay a small monthly fee. People abused the system, the warehouses overflowed with books that weren’t selling, and Amazon initiated the LTSF system. Now you can pay a hefty cost for holding onto books that don’t move.
Amazon has also “gated” more items and you have to get permission to sell them, which often isn’t granted. So many sellers can no longer sell CDs, DVDs, some specific textbooks, etc.
Plus the sales commissions you pay Amazon keep rising.
So, it can be done, but it’s harder than it used to be. I like doing it, though.
For the very expensive books, what happens if the buyer is unhappy with their purchase or it is damaged in shipment? Are you covered by Amazon?
There was an interesting Planet Money podcast on online sales of textbooks (buy them at the end of school, sell them at the beginning of school).
It made me wonder if the market would start to flatten out, though. Have you noticed that textbook prices have been more stable in the past few years?
Interesting!
I presume that’s what “fulfilled by Amazon” means? I’ve always wondered about that.
They can return it and Amazon reimburses them. If it is not actually damaged, it goes back into my inventory for resale.