It’s been a year since Amazon first reported earnings in which book sales were flat, but Kindles were in such demand that stocks were empty and back-orders were stretching into the tens of thousands. Since then, we’ve seen Kindle mature into a stable platform, Sony offer a competing digital reader, the much-ballyhooed arrival of the iPad, and a slew of imitators that also provide digital book-reading capability. Sales of electronic books are accelerating, and the obvious question is, what does the future hold for online booksellers?

Pricing Pressures
I have not noticed any slack in demand yet, but I have felt the need to be more competitive in setting prices. Most of my business is done on Amazon, where the Kindle version of a book is generally priced a few dollars lower than the book version… and in some cases, lower than the used book price. So far, the adjustment needed to bring a used book below the Kindle price is minor (usually less than a dollar), but we all know how those adjustments can add up over time.

The hidden cost is that tracking Kindle prices means more work for me. We are in need of new tools to catch up – many of the inventory and price-check apps do not include Kindle price listings, but the time has come that they should.

Vulnerable Categories
Certain categories of books look to be more vulnerable to difficulty for online booksellers. Mainstream fiction, which comprises the bulk of electronic book sales, could become a used book ghost town – it’s way easier to download that summer beach book than it is to order it, wait for it to arrive, and then have it sitting around when you’re done with it.

I recently heard from a teacher friend that the textbook publishing companies are very enthusiastic about entering the e-book arena – it eliminates their publishing costs, and provides advantages to students who are tired of lugging around ten-pound books. Obviously, for those of us in the used textbook market, this is not a good thing!

What Won’t Change
I don’t think there will ever be such a thing as a ‘collectible’ e-book, at least not in the way that we know the term. So books that are valuable due to their age, scarcity, enduring popularity, because they are autographed, etc., are not going to suffer at all. They might even gain in value further, as the idea of real books becomes more quaint.

I think we’re still a couple of years away from seeing e-books have any real impact on used bookselling. For most readers, the pleasure of reading a book remains in holding it, turning the pages, and having an actual book! I don’t think the older two or three generations of Americans – still the most enthusiastic readers – will ever embrace e-books as a replacement for the real thing.

Bottom-line: In the short term, most of us online booksellers are not going to notice an impact from Kindle, iPad, and the other electronic reading devices. But these devices are not going away – over time, as the technology develops and the number of titles proliferates, their effect will be noticeable, particularly in the fiction and textbook sectors.

Adam Bertram

Interested in selling books online? Please visit my blog, which includes helpful articles, proven online bookselling techniques, and daily updates with new tips and tricks of the trade.

iPad eReader

Movie Adaptations
You’ve probably noticed that a lot of movies are based on popular novels. When these movies are released, there is always a surge of interest in the original book at the same time. Even extremely popular books, like the Twilight series, see a major bump in sales when the film adaptations hit the theaters.

Playing to this demand means buying books low when the film production is announced, and then selling high at the peak of interest in the weeks surrounding the film’s release. There’s usually several months or even a year of time between the two, so patience is a virtue.

Keeping up with upcoming releases is pretty easy. The two major entertainment trade publications are Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and a quick scan of their movie news sections will reveal announcements about upcoming productions. The Internet Movie Database also has production reports, individual movie listings with release dates, and seasonal guides.

Big Events
Popular events with worldwide appeal generate a lot of interest in the book world. A very timely example is the upcoming soccer World Cup competition. Right now, related books – particularly ones about famous soccer stars like Pele, Diego Maradona, David Beckham, and Ronaldo – are all selling much better than usual. Books about the host nation, South Africa, are also seeing a surge in interest, particularly travel guide books.

Big events often occur on a fixed schedule, with the venue announced years ahead of time, so keeping track of them is simple. These books often see a gentler rise in interest, but buying a year ahead of time and then selling six to nine months later usually produces profitable results.

Famous People
When The Audacity of Hope first came out, Barack Obama was a relatively unknown senator, and sales were modest. Over the next two years, when he went from underdog Democratic nominee to President of the United States of America, interest in the book exploded. There was a rather large window of opportunity in 2007 when used copies of the book were still cheap, but it was obvious that Mr. Obama was going to be the focus of a lot of interest in the months ahead.

Predicting the performance of these kinds of books can be more difficult, since it requires correctly predicting the upward trajectory of the author, but the reward is greater. Those autographed copies of Audacity from the first sparsely-attended book signings are being sold for thousands of dollars today!

Adam Bertram

Adam Bertram is an online bookseller that went from sales of a few bucks a month to a current average of $6K/month. Interested in selling books online? Please visit my blog at http://www.sellyourbooksonline.com, which includes helpful articles, proven online bookselling techniques, and daily updates with new tips and tricks of the trade.

I see two different types of business models here that directly reflect feedback.

1. Large volume sellers – High feedback numbers are generally met with less than perfect ratings mostly because of the huge quantity that these sellers go through.  These sellers are also subjected to more buyers which increases their chances of snagging those picky buyers that will give negative feedback for a dog-eared page.  At the same time, the larger the operation gets, the less they describe the book which, in turn, will also leave some buyers dissatisfied.

2. Specialized sellers – These are the small sellers that have relatively few feedback numbers but, if care is taken, have almost 100% feedback ratings.  I think this is because they take the time to accurately describe the books that they have and also have time to pay attention to details such as proper packaging.

I’m sure we have seen these two different types of sellers on Amazon so I’m asking you, as a buyer, if you pay attention to feedback ratings when choosing a book.

Book Sale

Book sales can be found all over the place being held by Friends of the Library groups, churches or various non-profit groups.  These sales are a great opportunity to acquire some great inventory but I’d like to share a few tips with you to make your buying experience the best it can be at a book sale.

1. Know what you’re looking for before you get there.

Depending on the size of the book sale, it may literally be acres big.  If you don’t know where you’re going prior then you’ll find your competition blazing past you to get to the valuable genres first.  This is especially true of online booksellers where certain genres are always more valuable than others.  Sometimes the sale will have a map laid out for you ahead of time on the sale’s website.  If not, you could call the person in charge of the sale to ask them for this type of information.

2. Update your book scouting service right before going.

For online booksellers who use book scouting services, always refresh your pricing data right before you go.  Refreshing your pricing data at the last possible moment ensures that the information you take with you is the most up to date market prices from Amazon so you’re ready to hit the ground running when you get there.  You never want to be scouting with out of date prices.

3. Bring a rolling cart.

Depending on how many books you’re looking to buy, you’ll always usually need a rolling cart of some sort.  Bags and boxes are very cumbersome and since the books at these sales are usually selling for so cheap, you might as well load up.  A rolling cart especially the ones where you can stack cartons one on top of the other are great so that you can load as many books as possible without having to go pay, take them out to your car, and come back in.

4. Stand your ground.

Depending on the atmosphere at the sale, it can sometimes get tense.  With hundreds or thousands of people at these big sales, you’ll find some people are simply rude and will try to roll over you in their quest to get those valuable books.  Take a look at one of my latest blog posts about the subject of A**holes at Friends of the Library Sales and stand your ground to not let these people shove you out of the way.

5. Be courteous.

Finally, always be courteous to other customers and especially the volunteers.  The volunteers are typically getting nothing in return to do this and should demand respect.  They are there to help people find the books they’re looking for and generally keep the peace.  The other customers also deserve a level of courteousness because it’s simply the right thing to do.  Don’t be an a**hole like some I’ve seen.  We’re all there to find some great books and there’s enough to go around.

Adam Bertram is a full time tech consultant, part time online bookseller and avid online book-selling blogger.  He has a blog at sellyourbooksonline.com that discusses all facets of the world of online book-selling and provides training material for others wanting to also start this lucrative business.

It seems that a lot more people are coming online and either selling a books here and there during their lunch hour or in the evenings.  There is also those folks that are deciding to completely replace incomes or dive head first into book selling and really try to make something out of it but at the same time, have a full time job and can’t dedicate 100% of their time to it.

Here are a few tips if you or someone else you know is struggling with balancing a full time job and a book business. The biggest problem that full time workers face is lack o time.  These tips will help you eek out every last bit of productivity from that time to allow you to grow your book business.

1. Find the most valuable part of your business and concentrate on it. Since you’re time is limited to your book business concentrate on activities that make you the most money.  For example, I consistently try to focus my time on acquiring new inventory.  I find that new, fresh inventory typically goes hand in hand with good sales months.  Time management skills are by far the most important part of balancing a full time job and a part time book business and finding the most valuable part of your business to concentrate on will be a critical skill.
2. Take advantage of lunch hours. Lunch hours are perfect for answering customer service emails, repricing, checking orders, etc.  Anything that you don’t have to physically be at home is a great opportunity to do on your lunch hour.
3. Leverage your family/spouse.  If you’re selling more than a few books a day, you are going to need some help listing, fulfilling orders and everything else that comes with running an online book selling business.  If you’re at work, try to get a spouse to help if she/he has the time or even try to recruit a family member to help you out even if you have to pay them a little bit.
4. Time yourself – This may sound a little crazy at first but trust me, it helps.  I used to fulfill orders a certain way where I would print out a pick list, pull the orders, clean and print out the labels.  I was able to time myself doing different aspects of this and eventually came to a process that shaved a half hour off my process!  This let me leave the business earlier and spend more time with my family.

Utilizing these tips along with a lot of hard work, dedication and a passion to keep on driving sales will help you excel in selling more books while still maintaining your full time job.  If you handle everything right, you never know, one day you might just be able to quit that full time job and pursue the book business full time!

As always, you can visit my blog at sellyourbooksonline.com for more information regarding selling used books online where I discuss topics such as this along with anything else that helps the online booksellers excel in their business.

If you’re a new online bookseller or have been selling books on the Internet for any amount of time, you may have heard of a book scouting service.  The purpose of a book scouting service is to let the bookseller look up prices on the fly from Amazon by looking up the ISBN number of the book while you’re either out in the field at a book sale, thrift store, yard sale for example or if you simply need a streamlined webpage to look up some book prices. With this pricing information, the online bookseller can make more educated decisions on purchasing inventory or simply to use as a research tool for future purchases.  It’s a very useful service but it can have a significant expense.  I’m going to try to answer the question of if it’s worth it or not.

To start off, I need to explain the different types of book scouting services; offline and online.  The offline book scouting service is a service that will work when you have no Internet connection whereas the online service will ONLY work when there is an Internet connection of some type available.  Each type of service has it’s advantages and disadvantages and will be most appropriate in different scenarios.  Also, each service can require different types of hardware to work and thus has different kinds of expenses that go along with each.  I’m going to explain what you will need if you decide to use a service such as this and offer some advice so you can answer the question of if the expense and trouble is actually worth it.

Offline book scouting – I call this type of book scouting service offline because while you have to have an Internet connection initially to get it setup, you don’t need one when you’re actually looking up prices.  This type of service allows you to download a copy of most or all of Amazon’s pricing information for their millions of books onto a device such as a cell phone or PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).  This can be done via a memory card that is inserted into the computer, the pricing information downloaded to it and then inserted into the PDA or cell phone or, in some cases, downloaded directly to the cell phone or PDA.  The whole premise is to get a copy of Amazon’s usual pricing information onto a device that you can take with you in the field to go scouting for books.

• Hardware required - The upfront cost to offline book scouting can be very pricey.  At a minimum, you will need a device to download the pricing information to.  This is typically a PDA running the Windows Mobile operating system.  Brands such as Dell Axims, Palm Treos or HP iPAQs are popular choices.  Once you have the handheld device you then have to purchase the storage card to insert into the device to get the pricing data onto it.  This is the very minimum but some booksellers choose to purchase a barcode scanner to complement this.  A scanner gives you the ability to scan the barcode on the newer books without have to manually input the ISBN number.  There are a number of different barcode scanners such as ones that are inserted into the device itself or wireless scanners that utilize a technology called Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to the device.  A minimum expense you’d expect to pay for the device itself is $200 and if you decide to get a top of the line device plus a nice Bluetooth scanner, you can pay upwards of $1000.
• Advantages – The biggest advantage to using the offline method is being able to look up a book’s going price from anywhere.  There is no dependency on the Internet.  This allows the bookseller to go anywhere and either manual input ISBNs or scan barcodes on the book.  It’s also a lot quicker to look up the price because the information is stored on the device itself instead of having to go out to the Internet to find the price.
• Disadvantages – The only big disadvantage to using this is price descrepency between what your device tells you and what’s actually on Amazon’s site at the time.  Since you download a copy of Amazon’s pricing information, it is not the true, real-time information directly from Amazon.  Prices on books change every second on Amazon and anything more than a few seconds old could be considered out of date.  You also depend on the book scouting service that you connect to also for up to date pricing information.  You may download the information right before you go to a book sale but if the service doesn’t only gets the information from Amazon once a week, the information may be a week old.  However, even if the service can continually keep the information up to date (I’m not familiar with any service that can do this now) it would still be a little outdated when you go the sale.

Online book scouting – I call this type of book scouting service online because you ALWAYS have to have an Internet connection every time you use it.  An Internet connection is required any time you want to use it and it will not work at all if you want to use it.  This service is best used at your home or as a backup to the offline method if you’re at a book sale.  An online service gives you a streamlined web page to go to that is dedicated to displaying just the pricing information you’re looking for.  It is designed to be very minimal for the quikest load times but is always slower than the offline method.

• Hardware required – There is a very minimal upfront cost to this service.  It requires no PDAs, no cell phones or anything to use it.  All this requires is an Internet connection.  If you have a computer, you can simply use your computer’s Internet connection to use this service.  You can still use this service on the go on a cell phone, for example or a PDA with a WiFi connection and available WiFi, but this service does not require any of that.  I use an online book scouting service strictly at home to price large lots of books that I purchase or as an impromptu method in the field if I don’t have my offline software or scanner with me.
• Advantages – The sole advantage to using this method is up to the date pricing information.  The information is never outdated because you are getting it directly from Amazon at all times.
• Disadvantages – As I alluded to previously, you have to have an Internet connection at all times.  If you’re out in an area with no cell phone reception or with no WiFi connectivity to the Internet it will not work at all.

Now that you have a good understanding of what makes up a book scouting service, what do you think?  Is it worth it?  Obviously, this service will help someone that goes through a ton of different books or goes to many different book sales.  An online bookseller would have to decide how often they are planning on going out scouting vs. bringing back loads of books and then looking them up there.  I hope that you have enjoyed this brief description of book scouting services and that you have a more thorough understanding of if they are worth it or not.

If you need any help choosing what book scouting service to go with or what kind of hardware to buy feel free to send me an email at adam@sellyourbooksonline or come visit me at sellyourbooksonline.com where I discuss book scouting as well as many other topics related to online book selling.

To your success,

Adam

My name is Adam Bertram and I live in the great state of Indiana in the city of Evansville.  You’d never think that I would become a bookseller or also write for a blog that teaches how to sell books online, but I do.  It’s crazy how you end up in life.  The reason I say that you wouldn’t think that I’d ever become a bookseller is because I grew up a technology geek.  As soon as I was 6 years old (29 now) I was on a computer.  If any of you is familiar with computers of long gone, I started using DOS 2.11 before Windows even existed.  I’ve been employed in one facet of technology or another now for about 12 years and really thought that it was where I wanted to go.  However, like many of you, book selling hooked me and later teaching others how to do the same.


A little over a year ago I was perusing the business and technology books on my shelf and thought to myself that I really don’t read these anymore.  I really should try to get some money out of these.  I toiled around with Amazon’s seller account and finally got an account setup and my first few books on Amazon.  I was putting them all up regardless of price and just hoping to sell one; just one.  Little did I know, they were selling almost as fast as I could list them!  In hindsight, this was probably due to the fact that I was selling huge books for a penny and not really thinking about that little thing we like to call postage cost, but hindsight is 20/20 right?  If I would have actually put them at a price I could have made some money, I doubt I would be where I am today because I would have simply gotten discouraged and quit.  That’s one of my big tips to newcomers, start off with some encouragement!

After I sold about 10 in a day or so, I was automatically hooked.  Shortly after, I attended a local Friends of the Library sale and simply asked what they do with all of their leftover books.  To my surprise, they didn’t have any plans for them!  Without consulting my wife one bit, I agreed to take them all after the sale was done and I believe the shock of my wife’s life came when I said that I was buying 8,000 books for $200.  She said, “Uh, what are we going to do with all of those?”  My reply, “I dunno, we’ll find somewhere.”

Since that first big batch of books which has easily generated me over $10,000, I’ve sold thousands more books on other places besides Amazon such as eBay (which I’m proudly a new power seller now), Abebooks, Alibris, Half, etc.  Using my technology background, I have been able to easily learn the ropes of these online marketplaces and get my books listed with no problems at all.

I now have a small warehouse that I have my inventory in and am looking to generate about $40,000 this year from selling books online.  It’s been so much fun and has sparked so many other interests of mine such as entrepreneurship.  I believe having the responsibility of owning your own business goes a long way and I am loving every bit of it.

Selling books online has allowed my wife of 3 years to stay at home with our 7 month old daughter and for that, I am deeply thankful of books.  She would have never realized that it would be my crazy idea of selling books on the Internet that would allow her just 6 months later to stay at home and be a full time mommy.

I have now recently started a new venture of teaching newcomers to be just as successful as I have selling books online.  I’ve always liked teaching others and since I’d been through all of the hard times trying to find inventory, making contacts, trying to decide what price to sell books at, etc I thought it would be a great chance for me to start a blog and talk about everything I had learned those first few months of really trying to make the business something.

If you’d like to take a look, I write on the blog sellyourbooksonline.com.  I’m so excited about it because it’s so much different actually teaching others how to sell books online than actually selling books online, it keeps things interesting.