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How to Sell Books on Amazon in 2023

Posted on August 7th, 2019 

How are people selling books on Amazon?

"How can I sell books on Amazon?" is a common question I get after people find out I have sold $3,000,000+ worth of used books, CDs, and DVDs.

1. Know how to determine if a book is profitable.

2. Know how to get your book available for sale. 

3. Know where to find the most profitable used books in your city.

We will breaking down all of these in detail below.

What type of seller should you be? Professional or individual?

If you plan on taking this business seriously, you should immediately sign up for a professional Amazon account. An Amazon professional account is currently $39.99 There are four main reasons for this:

1. If you have a professional account, Amazon does not charge you $1 fee per book you sell. If you sell more than 40 books per month on an individual account, you'd be paying Amazon more money than if you had the pro plan.

2. A professional account allows you to use third party softwares. If you plan on using software like ScoutIQ or Go2lister, which will save you a ton of time and make you more money as a bookseller, you need a professional plan. 

3. Your products will sell faster with a professional account because you will be buy-box eligible. When Amazon gives you the buy box, you get more sales. Without a professional plan, you are less likely to get the buy box. 

FBM vs. FBA

FBM stands for fulfillment by merchant. This just means you will ship the product from your house or warehouse directly to the customer. 

FBA stands for fulfillment by Amazon. This means you will ship all the books to Amazon, they will store them until the book sells, and then they will prep, pack, and ship the book to the customer for you. They charge a fee for this obviously, but you can often charge the customer a higher price for books you sell FBA because they know they'll get the book in 1-2 days versus 4-11 days from FBM sellers. 

I recommend FBA for beginners because you get faster sales and you don't have to fulfill the orders yourself. 

How do you find books to sell on Amazon?

There are so many creative ways to find books to sell on Amazon. Your goal is to find the place with the highest percentage of profitable books.

Your closet

Seriously, after you finish reading this article, go scan some books in your closet. I guarantee you that you have a least a couple profitable books in your house right now. 

Thriftstores

Many thriftstores have profitable books. I have had success at the following:

Goodwill
Savers
Salvation Army
Any small mom and pop

Used Bookstores

Used bookstores are great for finding books .Usually, the prices at used bookstores aren't a flat $1-5. The books can be priced $50+, but don't be afraid to spend money to make money! A big mistake booksellers make is not spending $50 on a book that will make them $100 but instead spending $50 on ten $5 books that will make them the same amount. Profit is profit.

Craigslist

Good ole craigslist! This method is simple. Go to craigslist.com and search for books. The best deals are people who are moving and just want to get rid of their books .You can often pick these books up for free. Avoid listings that seem to be "overselling" the books. These are likely ex Amazon seller's trying to take advantage of beginners. trust me, I know from experience. 

Facebook Marketplace

This method is great for finding high dollar textbooks. Go on Facebook Marketplace and search books or textbooks and browse through all the pictures for books that look like they may have value. Pro tip: If you find a student selling a $100 used textbook, offer them $25 (I usually offer 25%) and pay for the book to be shipped to you. 

Buy books in bulk (by the Gaylord)

If you call all the thrift stores, libraries, and recyclers in your area, you can purchase books in bulk. The terminology for a large carboard box of books is Gaylord. This method can be extremely profitable if you have the space and don't overpay for labor or transportation of books. More on this here. 

Library Sales

Go to booksalefinder.com for a list of library sales in your area. Alternatively, call all your local libraries and ask when their next big sale is. Put all of these dates on your calendar and show up early to these sales. You can easily clear $1000 profit if you are one of the first people to show up to a big library sale. 

Garage sales and estate sales

Use an app like Yard Sale Treasure Map or go to estatesales.net for a list of all garage sales in your area. Or drive to the wealthiest side of town early on a Saturday morning looking for estate sales. Always ask the owners if they have more books hidden somewhere. 

Dozens of other methods

If you want access to more of my strategies for finding used books to sell for a profit on Amazon, go to starthumble.com and go through my $1000 profit 7 day challenge. 

How do you know which books sell on Amazon?

There are two things you care about as an Amazon bookseller before purchasing a book. Does the book sell and does it sell for a profit after buy costs and all Amazon fees. First, let's discuss sales velocity.
Method #1 for determining sales velocity 

Sales Rank 

You can tell how often a book sells by looking at the sales rank. The lower the sales ranks usually means the book will sell faster. 

The sales rank of an item changes depending on how many times it sells. If it sells often, it will be ranked closer to 1. It it sells seldom, however, it will rank as high into the millions. 

Not to get to complicated, but sales rank is simply a "screenshot in time". It's always changing.

To illustrate, let's say the author John Grisham dies. His most popular book would probably surge to the #1 spot on Amazon. The sales rank of his book would be 1. A few months after his death, it would return to where it was before in the thousands. 

Alternatively, if a book only sells 10 times a year, it's sales rank would hang out around 1,000,000 give or take. 

Take a books sales rank with a grain of salt as it is always changing.  I stole the below image from my friend Chris Grants website cleartheshelf.com. Feel free to visit his website anytime you want an updated sales rank graph. 

Method #2 for determining sales velocity

eScore

Alternatively, you can look at the eScore of the book. The eScore tells you how many days the book had at least 1 day with sale over the last 6 months.

So, if a book has an eScore of 70 it had at least one day with a sale over the last 180 days. If a book has an eScore of 151+ that means it has sold more than 151 times over the last 6 months.

Amazon does not show you a books eScore, but ScoutIQ, my preferred scanning app does.

How to determine the profit of a book

To determine your profit on Amazon, you must consider the following variables.

1. Buy cost 

This is how much you paid for the books (eg. $1.79 after tax from Goodwill)

2. Amazon referral fee

Amazon always takes a 15% cut off the sales price just for being Amazon. This happens whether you sell the book FBA or MF.

3. Amazon FBA fees

When you pay FBA fees, you are paying for the book to be put in a box and shipped to the customer. This usually comes out anywhere from $5-8 per book depending on the size.

The mobile app ScoutIQ automatically considers all three of these costs and tells you your projected profit. Then, if the book is profitable the screen turns green and if not red. The app also has audio cues that make a cashier noise when the book is profitable so you can scan faster with headphones. 
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