I have found a new site in prelaunch to promote. Sqip is a social networking and entertainment portal that promises to be potentially very lucrative to those joining it at the Associate level. I will be watching this one closely in coming days and will update this as things evolve. Click the banner if you want to see more at the Sqipcom site.

Okay… so the rest of the books are here and Cozy Quilted Christmas is now listed at lowest price 24.77. This leaves three other books to list. I am fighting some cold disappointment on one of these. When I checked the prices on the Giftboxes books, it looked like they would sell for $10 each. Now when I have the actual ISBN numbers to look up, I find out that this ISBN number is restricted only to “approved” sellers. Now what the heck does this mean? I am not allowed to list this set of books?

Well, I can always “list” them on USFreeAds or eBay. If I want to sell them, no one can stop me!

Two of my books, a knitting book(low price $19.75) and a quilting book (low price $15.54) I want to look at before I list; so will put them up later.

I’m traveling to North Carolina Thursday for a week and will have to put my books sales “on vacation” till I get back. I would take it all with me as it’s still small enough, but just don’t want to think about it while I am away.

1.	NICKY EPSTEIN’S SIGNATURE SCARVES
2.	GIFT BOX STUDIO LIFE AND GIFT BOX STUDIO LOLLI – 2-VOLUME SET
3.	ROLLING ALONG: EASY QUILTS FROM 2 1/2 STRIPS
4.	A COZY QUILTED CHRISTMAS

On the catalog, it says I should have been able to order an additional book for 50% off, but I don’t see this same offer when ordering online. My choices for books were based on competition on Amazon, Amazon.com Sales Rank, and sales price for used books. Hopefully, when these come, I will list them and quickly recoup the money spent, plus some profit. Gift box studio might have been a mistake as it’s two items to be sold separately on Amazon for $10 each. The craft club sold them as one item for $1. Amazon sales rank is very high for that item. Will have to see how it works out.

There was another book I wanted to get: “Knit Tricks”; so I took advantage of their sale:

This book sells on Amazon for low price of $14.94 with a sales rank of 37,408 (which is relatively low). I want the patterns in the book and then will list it for sale as used.

I think this purchase satisfies my membership requirement; so will not worry further about more purchases, but will look for bargains along the way.

The Craft Club disappointed me by not having two high value Martha Stewart books in stock.  Those had very good sales rank and would have fetched a nice profit on resale.  Maybe someone else is running this same money making plan and I needed to take action sooner, rather than leave this catalog collecting dust in my junk pile for months.

Here’s a new angle I found. There’s been an invite sitting in my junk pile to “come back” to Crafter’s Guild. That’s a book club for interesting craft books on things like knitting, sewing, crochet, scrapbooking, jewelry making, backyard projects, stained glass… the list goes on forever it seems.

Okay, they want me to buy 4 books for $1+shipping; then one book at club retail plus shipping (BUT, I can get the one at retail for 50% off if I order it with the $1 books!). Shipping is expensive from these clubs.

I took their little catalog and went searching on Amazon to see what the used prices are for their titles and how much competition there is. Doing this study has also helped me see what craft keywords might be hotter than others. Quilting looks pretty good right now.

For example, in their catalog there’s “201 Crochet motifs, blocks, projects and ideas”. I can get it for $1 plus shipping and on Amazon there are only 11 books selling used for lowest price $20.41. Another “A Cozy Quilted Christmas” is selling on Amazon in hardcover with 6 for $24.77 and paperback with 7 for $27.06.

I think that these prices will cover the shipping and handling fees; so I’m going to take this deal and I’ll let you know how it works out.

A lesson I’ve learned is that I can’t look at a book and know if it’s valuable for resale yet; without looking it up on Amazon. Invariably the ones I thought would be valuable were the ones with 59 selling for $1.51

I need to watch what I list now closely.  Net profit on the transaction for the book I sold last night was only $.24 and that means I took a loss on that book.  It cost me $1 from the Library sale cart.  I can’t pay $1 and list for $1.99 without having a losing transaction.  This tells me I must list my $1 books for $4.99 or more.  It limits further my selections for stocking my Amazon store.

Those people selling penny books on Amazon are looking more and more nuts to me.  What are they doing?

I only listed 5 books during that time.  Just didn’t get out to the library.  The two wholesale lots I ordered through eBay were disappointing.  Most of the books were too old to be in much demand as text books for teachers today.  I wasn’t able to check the ISBN numbers of these books before buying and it was a mistake.

Today I stopped by another library and picked through the books for sale.  I only found two to sell and one of those I have to read before I can sell it

Every time I list more books to sell, I get more sold!  Hope it happens again.

Some of these eBay purchased books are from the 50’s and 70’s. I’m now interested in finding out how to tell better if they are public domain property; so I can copy them and put them into Kindle format to sell that way. That will be job over the weekend.

I’ve begun getting some of the items from Ernest’s estate ready for sale. Here’s a page I made to sell his used CPAP machine. The page will stay until it’s sold. If anyone needs one of those the price is right.

Today I invested in more stock for my Amazon store. I won for a penny plus shipping a wholesale lot of 22 teacher’s books on eBay. I didn’t have the ISBN’s to look up for these, but did look up the titles on Amazon and several of them look like they can sell for a profit. I’ll let you know how this works out.

Temptation is there to buy more wholesale lots for pennies + shipping. As long as the shipping is realistic, and the books will sell on Amazon, this can work. My better sense tells me to hold back for now though. let’s see how this works first.

It’s a good thing I didn’t just go buy everything today that I thought was valuable. Instead I made a list of about 40 book titles and ISBN numbers and brought that home to see what might be profitable. Out of the 40 titles I picked, only 3 are worth going back for! This is not easy work. Those 3 will be purchased for $1.50 and sell for a few dollars profit each. One of them is selling used for over $40, but whether or not it will sell for me depends on demand: how many people are looking for a book on String Art? I will go back and get that book and find out how long it takes to find one.

On a happy note, I have another book sold… that makes 6 items sold so far. It’s cooking along enough to make me want to list more.

I used the computer at the library to check which books might be profit makers. It can be a bit tricky as when I entered the ISBN, sometimes I didn’t see any used books listed at all. I was falsely led to think one of the books would sell with no used book competition and later when I got home found it would not sell for over fifty cents.

The library was selling hardbacks for $1.00, paperbacks 3/$1.00 and children’s soft cover for ten cents. I wasted $1.00 on one book that will not bring me profit. I can’t sell books over a certain weight for a under a dollar and make a profit; so this one will have to be donated to charity or sold at a garage sale.

Complication: My Uncle has died and now I have to leave town for some days. Amazon lets me put my book listings on “vacation” but it takes 36 hours to be effective. My business is small now… I’ll just put all the books I have listed in a cardboard box to take along and check my emails while away. It’s easy to quickly pack up a book and run to the PO with it anywhere… but if/when I have a thousand books listed, this will be impossible and could result in lost sales. This won’t be a business that runs on autopilot while I travel around the world!

Leave a Reply