It’s already been one year since my first Book Sale Experiment. In June of 2013, I started documenting the month to month results of a local book sale that I attended. For this particular sale, my overall strategy was to scoop up all books with lower Amazon value and set a minimum FBA price of around $7.95.
My personal definition of a “low-priced” book is one that has a merchant fulfilled value of 2 cents or more. I did not include penny books because I have found that once a book drops to one penny in value, it usually has a high number of FBA competition as well.
The exact procedure was to buy any book at the sale with a merchant fulfilled price of 2 cents or more. Then set a minimum price of $7.95 on FBA. My prediction was that I would sell enough books at the $7.95 minimum to make a decent profit.
If you missed that blog post, you can view the original experiment here.
Here are the final numbers after one year:
Total Books Purchased: 272
Total Books Sold: 190
Percentage of Books Sold: 70%
Total Investment: $211.86
Total Amazon Sales (after fees): $979.57
Total Storage Fees: $17.55
Total Profit: $750.16
Average Buy Price: $.78
Average Sale Price: $9.49
Average Amazon Fees: $4.29
Average Profit: $4.42
Average ROI: 567%
Conclusion
I would say this experiment was very successful since over 70% of the books sold with an average price of $9.49. After the storage fees, the total profit came to $750.16. I averaged about 6 hours at the sale plus another 3 hours preparing the books for FBA. That's an hourly rate of $83.
One thing I should mention: I did change the minimum price to $9.95 about 3 months into the experiment. So, it hard to gauge whether the $9.95 cap or $7.95 works better. If I were to do the experiment again, I would keep the same minimum price consistent.
I think this experiment is important because it shows the value of FBA. An Amazon Prime buyer would much rather pay $9.95 for item and get free shipping for the exact same book that sells for 34 cents plus $3.99 shipping via Merchant Fulfilled. It also shows that seemingly worthless books can be sold at a nice profit if you're willing to sell in volume.
Thank you for sharing the results of your experiment. I learned a lot from it. Keep up the good work and continued success.
Great! I’m glad you enjoyed the post.
Do you set a max sales rank with your buying decisions on these low return books? I get the FBA power to set the price, but how do you determine what would sell when scanning? Do you purchase all +.02 seller listed, in VG condition? Thanks
Hi Donnie,
For this particular book sale, I tried to stay under 2 million for the sales rank. However, recently I have changed that, I now include books up to 5 million or so.
Nathan,
Did you factor in costs of monthly programs like inventorylab and neatoscan or how do you keep track of that with your purchases vs profits?
Hi Jon,
I did not factor in InventoryLab and Neatoscan in this particular example because this was just a one day event. For my regular month to month bookkeeping for my Amazon business, I include all the monthly subscriptions.
Great experiment, Nathan!
Can you tell me what the typical condition of these books were?
Thanks,
George
Hi George,
They were all used books. I would say 75% in “very good” condition, and 25% in “good” condition.
Is there a limit on how old the books can be? I don’t mean “collectiables” just run of the mill books. Also how old text books and/or tech books.? By this I mean the last
published date.
There is no limit on how old the books can be. However, I have found that older books generally don’t sell.
Nathan – thanks for sharing.
a couple of things jump out at me.
A greater than $4 net seems to be consistent across your experiments. I get about the same, but frankly i have a huge range were most of my books make a buck or two and then one out of a dozen makes me a profit of $10-$100. I can’t complain; just noting that i have huge variance that averages out to about your result.
Second, I have been watching your experiment posts and I notice that about two thirds of your books sell in the first 6 months. If that is correct, it looks liike not many books at all sell after 6 months – 70% minus 67% equals only three percent.
third, i’m surprised to see you buying books with a 5 million sales rank. I do think there is a lot of value in books with a greater than 1 million rank. However, I occassionally have access to free books, but I balk at paying 30-50 cents a book to ship these free books to amazon when their rank exceeds 3 million. My guess is that above 3 million its about a 50/50 proposition whether the book will ever sell in a reasonable period – like say the next 3 years. That a wild guess – would be interested in your perspective and whether you have any stats to show the percentage of books with a rank over 3 milllion that sell in a given time period.
Very interesting observations, David. Thanks for sharing.
Hi David,
I kept my FBA price at a minimum of $7.95. That way I’m locked in for at least a $3 profit – provided the book cost around 50 cents to buy. Most of my books will sell at only a $3-5 profit. However, when I’m doing this, I will inevitably stumble across a $20, $40 even a $100 book. So that makes the process much more fun and profitable.
Yes, not many books sell after the first 6 months. I’m tweaking my repricer right now so I might set a minimum price of $9.95 for the first 6 months, $7.95 for month 6-12, and $5.95 for 1 year and over.
For the sales rank, I found that a surprising number of books sell with a rank above 1 million. I did a sales rank experiment on this blog post:
https://booktothefuture.com/amazon-sales-rank-experiment/
Thanks, Nathan.
I generally use a $5.99 min FBA price, so I may be averaging a bit less but I have sold a few books or sets of books for over a hundred so i am averaging about the same as you.
I have sold a decent number of books between 1 and 3 million rank but a small number over 3 million. Not much data to go on though – just a personal feel.
I think if I get some books over 2.5 million but under 5 million, i’ll send them in if I think they’ll bring a high enough price for the risk of nothing.
Hi Nathan, Thank you for all you do! I see you mention how you reprice here and I also read the article you did with Cynthia Stine recently. I use Reprice it as well and I can’t figure out how you set the minimum prices in the 6 month, 6-12 month increments. I’ve gone into the setting several times and all I’ve been able to do is set my minimum price as a blanket for all inventory. I do know how to exclude items. Any suggestions? I hope to hear from you. Take care, Janna V.
Hi Janna,
On your Repriceit dashboard go to “create new template”. From there, go to “template criteria” and then “listing date range”. Now you can create an additional pricing strategy based on how long your items have been listed on Amazon.
Regards,
Nathan
Hi Nathan
Did you mention if you base your purchase off of how many fba sellers there already are for a particular book?
For this sale, I did not look at the number of FBA competition. I just looked at the lowest merchant fulfilled price.
I have been doing FBA for a couple of months now and your info definitely will help me take the plunge into books. Thanks!
Nathan,
Did you price all the books at $7.95 even if there were other sellers offering the same books at $4,$5,etc?
For this book sale, I didn’t even look at the number of FBA competition when I was buying or listing the books. My theory is that books with a merchant fulfilled price of 2 cents or more will generally have little to no FBA sellers. I’m sure there were many books that had FBA sellers price below $7.95. I’m willing to wait them out for the sale, or I can just drop my minimum price after 6 months or so.
Thanks for the info. I see so many sellers pricing at $4 fba which makes me feel like if I price at $7.95 or whatever,it wont sell. So you pretty much just stick to your price for awhile then lower if you have to?
Yes, that’s correct. However, I do my best to get books that DON’T have FBA sellers selling a $4 or less. That’s why I use the merchant fulfilled 2 cent rule. If a book has a merchant fulfilled price of 2 cents or more, usually there are no FBA sellers selling at $4 or less.
Nathan, I am still trying to get the logic behind the 2 cent rule. 2 cents is just one penny away from a penny book. I find many many books with MF and FBA sellers lingering just above the 2 cent/3.99 price… like 4.15 or 4.23 or more. On such a listing there may be 3-5 FBA sellers under the 7.95/9.95 minimum. Combine this with a relatively high sales rank and the book could take a really long time to sell… not to mention that in those months new inventory is being added by sellers all the time and increasing that number of FBA competition or at least keeping it level.
Second, all the books that haven’t sold – do you find they haven’t sold yet more because of a) the sales rank is very high, or b) because there are several other FBA sellers selling below your floor price.
You’re right. There’s no guarantee the 2 cent rule will work for every book. I really only recommend trying this at library bag sales where the books are only 20 cents each or so. That way you don’t much to lose. A safer approach might be to raise the minimum to 50 cents.
With that being said, the 2 cent rule worked for this book sale pretty well. As long as 60% or 70% sell, then there’s is profit to be made. Here’s an excel spreadsheet of the individual sales from that experiment.
That’s a good question about the books that haven’t sold. I haven’t really looked at those that closely. I would say about half because of the sales rank and half because of FBA competition.
Fascinating method. I’ve been selling books for quite a while now via merchant-fulfilled, but I haven’t made the jump to FBA. Mostly, I’m scared off by the $40 monthly fee for being a professional seller. Did you account for that here?
When you pay $40 for the professional seller, you get a 99 cent fee waived for every item that you sell. So, if you sell more than 40 items a month, you would actually be saving money.
What is your minimum net payout target per book?
I try to aim for a $4 to $5 profit for every book.
Thank you for doing this experiment, Nathan, and for updating us periodically with the results. I learned a lot from all this, as I’m sure you did too. It makes me look at book selling in a different light.
Hey Nathan, per book cost @ 78cts ; would you happen to know where to get books this cheap online? Thanks!
I really don’t know of a way to buy cheap books online. The shipping costs usually don’t make it worthwhile.
A couple of questions:
1.) When you’re setting the minimum of 2 cents, do you factor in “New” prices as well? Or do you only look at the “used” prices to compete against?
2.) What’s the difference between penny books and 2 cents? Isn’t that still considered a penny book?
3.) How aggressive are you in re-pricing? Or do you just leave it at $7.95 / $9.95 and wait it out?
I’m 99% retail arbitrage but am considering adding books to my arsenal. Reading your blog helped spur that decision. Thanks for all that you share!
Hi Bob,
1) I only look at the used prices.
2) I have found that once a book reaches a saturation point of 1 penny there is usually a very high number of sellers (and thus FBA sellers). Anything above one penny usually means less sellers and thus less FBA competition.
3) Yes, I pretty much wait it out at the minimum price of $7.95/$9.95. With storage fees at only 2 cents a month, I can afford to wait a year or two.
I can’t imagine spending only 3 hours readying the books for fba. I know I’m slower than most but only 3 hours!!?? No photos needed? Labels? Shipments to be sorted?
No photos, labels or shipment sorting needed:) Books are pretty easy.
No labels? Every product, including books, needs a label with a bar code, right? Also, how much did you pay for inbound shipping? Thanks.
I used the FBA labeling service for this shipment. You can view the more detailed expenses in the original blog post here.
Hi Nathan,
I have learned a ton from your article and blog, thank you! I live in a large metropolitan area where people sell their books in bulk- $100 for a 1000 books , $40 for 400. Do you tend to find these buys risky, as you’re not sure how much is actually profitable and how much is penny books? Are they worth the risk?
I don’t buy books in bulk, so I can’t really comment. I know a lot people do based on the bookselling FB that I belong to. So, I know it’s possible.