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?