The next book sale adventure led me to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. On Tuesday, July 9th I looked at the membership site, BookSalesFound.com, to see if there was any sales nearby. I found an exclusive sale that was not advertised on BookSaleFinder.com which is always a good sign. Pawley's Island is three hours away, so it was going to take some planning and a commitment. But since the sale was right off the coast with beaches nearby, I figured worst case scenario I would just spend the day at the beach if it was a dud.
On the way down and up, I listened to podcasts the entire time. Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn and Entrepreneur on Fire by John Dumas are my current favorites. I love listening to entrepreneurial podcasts because they get in me in right mindset. And I truly believe that having the right mindset is 60% of success.
At 6 pm when the sale started, I did not see one single person there with a scanner. Very good sign! The books, however, were pricey at $1.50 for soft covers and $2.50 for hard covers. I ended up buying around 100 books during the 2-hour preview sale. Here are some notables:
When the sale was over, I didn’t feel like driving home, so I stayed the night in Myrtle Beach, SC and had dinner at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Restaurant. I went back on Saturday and bought approximately 130 more books at $5 a bag. Then headed to the beach.
Here are all the books before they were listed on FBA.
Here are the books packed up into boxes. (Some of those boxes are from another FBA shipment).
Here are the current numbers from the sale:
Time Invested:
- Hours at Sale: 4
- Hours spent listing, packing, and preparing for FBA: 2.8
- Total hours worked: 6.8
Purchase Numbers:
- Books Purchased: 218
- Cost of Books: $199.50
- UPS Inbound Shipping: $76.55
- FBA Label Service: $45.60
- Total Expenses: $321.65
Sales Results (Updated in August 2014)
- Books Sold: 204
- Percentage of Books Sold: 94%
- Revenue (after all Amazon Fees): $1557.25
- Profit: $1235.60
Click on the image below to view the individual transactions. They are from the payments section of my Amazon Seller Central account
So, how DO you find an UNadvertised book sales? Via Google Alerts? Did you contact each library in SC like you did in Chicago? Please share!
Thanks,
Mark
As explained in his post, Nathan used BookSalesFound to find unadvertised book sales: http://www.booksalesfound.com/?id=homquist/.
Did you ask the folks running the sale if it was okay to use a scanner?
Hi Kaye,
I did not ask to use the scanner. One lady asked me about it, and I was completely honest. I told her that I sold the books on Amazon. She happened to be in charge of the book sale, and she asked me if I wanted to comeback a few months later and make an offer for their books. So, it definitely pays off to be honest.
Nathan, do you bring your own boxes when you go to these book sales? And which size and where do you get your boxes from? Been following your blog for over a year! Love it.
Hi Bob,
I do not bring boxes to the book sales. Usually they supply enough boxes for everybody. I buy my boxes at Walmart or I buy them in bulk at Uline.com. 18 X 12 X 12 is a very good size to ship books.
Thanks, I’ll stock up on that size. One more question: do you bring a dolly or a cart with you because it looks like you have a ton of boxes? I have never been to a book sale before and I feel a little nervous.
Most of the book sales have a dolly or a cart that you can use. I normally just take several trips to the car because I like the extra exercise. Though, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring your own.
Nathan,
Sorry to say but your travel time and gas costs weren’t used in the calculation.
3 HOUR DRIVE? At least $60 bucks in gas round trip. And 6 hours of your time tacked on? I’d say you worked for nearly nothing.
Kevin,
Thanks for your comment. I did not include the gas because I’m trying to view objective results of the book sales in general. Also, only 35% of the books have sold so far. I’m predicting that the profit will get close to $1000 when/if the rest of the books sell.
I’ve been following your site for a few months, but I finally took the plunge and went to 2 books sales this past weekend. The clear records you’ve provided from your own book sale experiments gave me the courage to try this for myself. I sent in my first shipment today. Heres hoping it turns out well.
Hi Andrea,
Thanks you for your comment. I hope your first shipment goes well:)
-Nathan
Nathan,
I’m new to this and a bit confused u said that its best to find book sales that are not listed on the membership site, but then you said that you did find the sale that you went to listed on the membership site. So does the mbetship site also list book sales that are not yet advertised with them yet? I would appriciate if you could explain this to me. Thanks
Sorry for the confusion. I prefer to go to sales that are not advertised on BookSaleFinder.com. The only way to find those sales is by using the membership site BookSalesFound.com.
Nathan,
Do you do anything special to the books prior to shipping them to Amazon if you choose to use their labeling service? If a person doesn’t use the labeling service, do you need to do something beyond placing new labels on the books such as sealing them in poly bags?
Hi Bruce,
You do not need to do anything special with the books. I just pack them tightly into a box. No poly bag needed.