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Selling Books on Amazon

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

It’s been a month since my last update here.  In that time I’ve only sold 2 books.

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.

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Progress Report

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

The books I ordered on eBay arrived today. The order is 3 books short; so I’m hoping there’s another parcel tomorrow’s post. It took 12 days for media mail. Of the 19 books, I listed 5 on Amazon. The rest will go to charity. Hopefully I’ll recoup the shipping cost and make a little profit. Amazon also just sent me email notice of a transfer of $62.37 payment to my checking account. That will put me well into profit from selling used books. I’m liking this a lot!

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.

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Progress selling used books

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

Within hours of listing my Rotary books on Amazon, I sold one for $8.50. The profit from just that one book will easily cover the cost of the 3 books I bought at the warehouse.

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.

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Hot hot hot! Books

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Today I stopped by the Rotary Club book sale warehouse. It was my first serious book shopping trip since I started selling used books on Amazon. Wow! It’s powerful to walk into that hot warehouse and see all those books….like where do you begin? I can see that it can help to find a niche or two and learn what sells. I concentrated on Women’s health, cooking books and crafts.

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.

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Lessons learned about selling used books

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

I’ve sold three out of 9 books now for a profit; so I went to the library yesterday to see if they were selling some good ones. I found several excellent quality used books…one is an older first edition. Listed 6 more books on Amazon now. Trying to keep a good thing going.

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!

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