In this Video:
- The benefits of buying books cheap.
- Selling books between $8-12 on FBA.
- Where to find these books.
- Finding the occasional $50+ book.
- What's the total profit after all fees?
Note: All books were scanned first before putting them in the bag. Books were listed in bulk with ScanLister.
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Hi Nathan, Thanks so much for the info in this video. I had big questions about pricing, sales rank, and how long it takes for things to sell. You answered all that in this video. I would suggest it for anyone starting out FBA.
Have a great day,
Lou
Thanks Nathan! I’m really kicking myself because my life has been a bit hectic lately and I just missed our local library sale! 🙁 I’m really having fun finding books at the local thrift shops, though, and have found some good ones that have brought $45 – $70. One thing you touched on that I have to remind myself of is that I can price them higher if I’m the only FBA seller, which has been the case several times and that I just have to be patient and wait for them to sell. I know a few of my higher priced books could have gone for more, but I saw the dollar signs and just wanted the quick return. I’m going to try being patient and see if I can get more for the next good ones! Thanks again for all your information on selling books. They’re my passion and I love flipping them on Amazon.
Hi Karleen,
Thanks for you post and I’m glad books are working for you! Yes, it can be difficult to wait for those books to sell. Many times I will lose patience as well and price mine a bit lower to make the fast sale.
Hi Nathan. Great tips! I was at a thrift shop the other day and they were having bag sales for books – but, honestly, I wasn’t sure what to buy so I passed. So, my question is – how do we know what to buy without making it a huge thing? I don’t have a scanner or anything but would love to just load up bags of books and search results when I get home. What do you think?
Thanks!
Hi Louise,
I know your question was to Nathan, but I just thought I’d put in my 2 cents worth until he can answer you. You can get the free Amazon Price Check app if you have a smart phone. That’s all I use at the moment. It will at least give you an idea of whether the book is listed for a decent price or not. I don’t even look at fiction books. The books I find that are worth something tend to be books that would cause me to say ” who would read a book about that?” It’s those legal books, text books, medical books, weird niche books, old car repair books – those are the ones I’m finding have some value. Not all in those niches are valuable, but you learn to find the good ones after awhile. If you’re not risking much money, and you can’t get the price check app, my 2 cents worth would be to go ahead and purchase a couple bags of books, take them home and look them up. If nothing else, it will help you start to figure out which books have some value and which don’t. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me jumping in here, and I hope Nathan will add/subtract from this to give you more input!
Thanks for the great info. Very helpful.
Please send mt the update on the sales of your 4 books in the video. I appreciate your videos and would like to see more of them??
Thanks,
Larry
Hi Larry, you can sign up for the update link that’s in the video.
Hi Nathan, thanks for the tips. I would like to ask does the book sales works for international seller?
Thanks for the informative video! Yes, I would like an update on what the rare books in the video sold for and how long they took to sell. The fees for FBA seem prohibitive for low priced items, would it not be better to sell MF and ship in Priority Mail padded envelopes?
Not really. I lot of times, I’m selling a book on FBA for $10 where the low MF price is 50 cents. So, in that case it’s more profitable to sell on FBA.
Great post Nathan.
I love the $3 bag sales, particularly if they are a bit out of the way. I was the only scanner at one recently and came away with 9 bags of above average (>$10 FBA) quality books. I would have paid $20 a bag no problem, but $3 was just fine with me. Plus it was an outdoor sale, which was quite pleasant compared to many sales.
Yes, bag sales are the closest thing that I know to free money:)
I have been using the free Amazon app to scan books and have had problems. Often I will scan a book and see that the low price will be decent, $10 or more, with very few sellers. Then when I goto list the book, I find it selling for a penny and have a couple dozen sellers at that price! I have also tried Profit Bandit and another app that I do not recall with similar results. What am I doing wrong? I have purchased quite a few books based on scan results and lost money when they prove to be unreliable.
The Amazon app is usually pretty accurate…just very slow. The other paid apps have to go my Amazon API rules which only show the lowest 20 offers. Here’s a video that I did on how to see all the FBA offers with FBAScan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uODIKTaWY
Hi Nathan. I was wondering if your stats were powerful enough to do explore long term residual sales from an inventory of a certain size and age. In the way you track 2 year data of sales from a single book sale, can you for example track two year data from, say, all the books you sent to Fba within a four month period that ended one year ago? As in something like, “of the so and so number of books scouted between July and October 2013 that I had still had in my inventory as of January 2014, here are how the sales went monthly for the next two years”.
Basically I am wondering about the value of long term residual sales from a large pile of books, that is thousands of books rather than hundreds, while excluding the hot-selling ones that would be gone within the first 3 months, and while not adding new books.
I didn’t scout for about four months during and after summer break, and while my sales declined precipitously I was curious about the few sales that were still trickling in after at least three months of no scouting, and whether investing in such a residual stockpile was worthwhile, or whether some stockpile size could be reached at which residual sales are still enough to generate a few hundred bucks a month for up to 1 year later. Is your data capable of examining this? If not, what are your thoughts on the concept? Thanks.
Hello Nathan
I have a question regarding pricing. As you scan and you see the low FBA of $100.00 or No FBA sellers and a low price of $50.00, how do you know that these books will actually sell at the price you choose. Couldn’t the $100.00 or $50.00 price be way off and how would you know.
Thanks
Al
I’ve followed you for several years now (love Scanlister, as I’ve already told you before). I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for being so thorough in your presentation of material. You always seem to present what is needed to make your point clear; the pictures really bring to life your points. This makes it so much easier for people to grasp what you are saying. I’ve narrowed the people I follow down to just 3 or 4 (yourself included) and eliminated most of the big-name Gurus. They have some great material but at this stage of my selling, I’m seeking fine-tuning of things I already know. This is what you offer. Again, thanks
The ScanLister program rocks. I was able to scan 25 books in 3 minutes, including accounting for the condition of the book where some of them don’t even have barcodes but instead have isbn numbers, which are registered in Amazon. With the click of a button, I was able to bulk upload the listing to Amazon. It also gives you the option of entering the isbn number if you have to, but most of the time it isn’t necessary. I use a scanner built on my Android called Kinoni Bar Code Scanner and it work like a champ. Although you can enter the barcode manually, why do it when you have this tool, a barcode scanner which I paid $7 ($5.99 for the Apple iOS version). Just my two cents.