Over two years ago, I hired a book-sourcer to buy books for my Amazon business. He basically goes to thrift stores and library sales and buys books on my behalf. The books are purchased based on the buy/reject triggers that are set on the scouting software he uses.
Over the past two years, he has purchased a total of over 30,000 profitable books!
In this video, I talk about:
- Some valuable books that I received from a recent haul
- How to pay my book-sourcer
- The kind of scanner/phone/software combination the book-sourcer uses.
- Hiding prices on the scanner (to prevent hiring competition)
At the end of the video, I offer a free guide (updated for 2018) that goes into more detail about:
- How to pay your book sourcer
- What triggers to set on your scanner
- Some questions to ask during the interview
- How to hide prices on the scanner
- The exact ad that I use to hire book-sourcers
- How to lend out your scanner with little risk
- How to hire motivated workers
You can view the free guide here.
Thanks so much for this video!!
One questions
Do you use a repricer, if so, which one do you use.
I used to use Sellery,Seller Engine+, due to recent health issues over the last year I was unable to devote
a lot of time to this business. I now am able to get “back at it”.
Note: Sold – 16K in 2016, and 20K in 2017, basically part time, 10 hrs wk.
Now looking to scale up.
Thanks for any suggestions or input
Gary
I use Sellery now.
How much better is it than RepriceIt?
I’ve been using RepriceIt for a few years. I have developed a pretty complex system, but am growing very disappointed in it – the company does not seem to be developing it at all anymore so the “Intelligent Repricing” doesn’t seem to hold up, they don’t take to feature requests, it’s kind of a clunky system in many ways. I’m thinking about making the big switch.
Sellery is quite a bit better, but also more expensive. It’s very dynamic and it pretty much allows to make any pricing rule you want.
Hi Nathan,
Did you survive the new LTSF?
I am probably going to pull out of FBA. There doesn’t seem to be any value to it anymore – just not worth it considering all the high fees.
Hi Gary,
Was that 16K as in number of books or $16K. What was your average profit per book?
Thank you,
Tom
Not sure where the number 16K came from. Average profit per book sold is around $2.10.
Hi Nathan,
Thank you for the quick response. The 16K came from Gary’s comment:
“Note: Sold – 16K in 2016, and 20K in 2017, basically part time, 10 hrs wk. Now looking to scale up.”
Thanks again for the video and guide. Excellent information.
Tom
Thank you!
As a Newbie, I really appreciate your information!
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed the content.
How do you convince your sourcer to go out using their own money to purchase books before they get paid?
In the beginning, he would bring in small amounts of books (50), and I would pay him right away. I also gave him a deposit of $50 on the first day. After two years of doing this together, there’s enough trust built where he knows he’s going to get paid.
It is my understanding that FBA fee’s just increased again last week. Do the settings that you show in your E-book in the FPA app take that into account?
Thank you!
The triggers are broad enough that it will cover the fee increase.
Im have been trying to use your simple method with triggers with the FBAScan. How different are your triggers from the ones you give to your source employee? Also, I read your post from fbamastery & having a hard time translating that to the fbascan triggers. Thanks so much for your help in advance.
I rarely source myself, but when I do, I don’t use triggers. I just read the info on the screen and make a buying decision from there. I only use the triggers for my book-sourcer.
Nathan,
What about the new LTSFs? I’m looking at Amazon’s new fee chart, and it looks like books or any items in FBA for over a year will be charged a new 50 cent fee EVERY MONTH… That pretty much kills long tail and medium tail. I would think that for most books, you would have to pay 15 cents to destroy them after a year in FBA in order to avoid a nosedive in profits. This is really concerning me. I’m thinking about getting out of FBA altogether.
Been a while, Nathan. Wondering if you have any thoughts on this in the meantime – those new fees are looking scary!
I haven’t changed my triggers based on the new storage fees. They are pretty broad and simplified so they can easily allow for the fee changes.
Also Caleb Roth did an excellent analysis of the new LTSF fees on his blog post here.
http://thebookflipper.com/2018/03/02/a-closer-look-at-amazons-new-fba-storage-fees-march-2018/
In addition to my question in getting the sourcer to pre-pay out of his own pocket, I ask this question because the average book sold in thrift stores are $2-2.50 per book in my neck of the woods, and on average $1-2.00 at library sales.. Most of the thrift stores ie. Savors,Goodwill, Deseret Ind.,Salvation Army charge up to $5-6.00 for books with ratings under 300,000 average. This would force one to have to offer a sourcer $3-4.00 per book to make $1.50 if the sourcer could pay the average book cost out of pocket which could be as much as $75-100 for 50 books a week.?
Depending on where you live, you will have to tweak your payment method. What works for my area may not work in another area.
Thanks for posting the video and for making your eBook available. I’m at the point where I want to hire a few scouters and this information is extremely valuable. Mahalo! -Rich M
Awesome! I’m glad you enjoyed the info:)
Hello Nathan:
Thank you for your video. I’ve been selling books about equally Merchant and FBA for a couple years on Amazon. Your video is very informative and I’m going to try it soon.
a. Are you sending your books to a third party listing service? Or do you list and send to Amazon in house?
2. Do you send Merchant fulfilled for long-tail from your own warehouse or are you strictly an FBA Seller? If yes to MF, which model is more profitable?
3. Do you sell on E-bay or other websites?
4 Are you steictly selling books or do you sell other media, toys, games, softtware?
5. Are you sticking with books or do you source or buy wholesale other kinds of merchandise for arbtrage on FBA.
Thanks for considering my questions and thank you for sharing your experience and expertise.\
Best to you,
Ed Carl
Hello Ed,
1. I hired a book-lister to list my books and send to FBA
2. All FBA
3. Just Amazon
4. Just Books
5. I do not buy wholesale or other kinds of merchandise
I would probably do some of the things you mentioned, however, my time is limited with other thinngs this blog and ScanLister.
Does the the person drop the books off at your house at the end of the day? You pick them up? How would you work this from out of state, if you wanted to hire in multiple areas? Thanks.
He drops them office at my office at the end of the day. Not sure how it would would out of state. You would probably need a to hire a book-lister in the same area as well.
Are you still using the same triggers now? Have you made any changes?
I miss this blog.
FBA is not the same as it was 5 years ago.
I know people always complain about online internet selling fees, but the FBA fees are at a point where I can’t make it work. The monthly storage fees are higher than having your own warehouse, so FBA no longer offers benefits to me as a person who sells 1-off books. If I sold single objects, thousands of copies of the same SKU, it might be handy. But where every book is its own SKU, I am having to mail each one to FBA as it is so am not getting enough value from it.
This was my favorite FBA blog. It was fun back in the day to grow my business along with this blog, and see how you were doing things. I noticed all the other FBA book blogs have stopped too. This means its probably time to move on. Hope you are doing well, Nathan.
Hi John,
I’m using the Profit Triggers now on FBAScan (now called Scoutly) which is more advanced. I’m still experimenting with it, so I’m not confident enough to post them online yet.
I’ve tried Scoutly’s Profit Triggers about a hundred different ways, and to me there are a ton of blind spots no matter how you set them up. The main problem is, of course, that of the scanner’s not being able to “see” all the Prime offers. Therefore, a huge percentage of the time it gives its Buy/Reject results based on low-priced Merchant offers, even when choosing the “last visible offer.”