A review of
Used Books: Big Business
Reviewed by GoGoKitty’s Steve Smith, former Amazon.com bookseller
For three or four years I sold used books online and made a good side income. Then I gave it up.
Back then I scoured yard sales and thrift stores for used books that I could get for 50 cents or a quarter, sometimes for as little as a dime apiece. Then I resold those books through Amazon.com for $5, $10 or — occasionally — as much as $50 each.
Now and then I was even able to get more than a hundred dollars for a book I’d picked up for practically nothing! (I wrote about this and other book-selling adventures here. )
It was fun while it lasted, and the money was pretty easy. The biggest hassle was packing the books and shipping them, which included daily runs to the post office.
Amazon made everything else ridiculously easy. Besides listing my books for sale, they took care of processing my buyers’ payments, something I had no desire to deal with personally.
Like clockwork, Amazon would send me money for the books I’d sold, less a small fee to Amazon for acting as go-between. Easy. And profitable.
They say all good things must come to an end. It certainly did for me and for my business selling books through Amazon. One day I just hung it up. Here’s why:
Because the business was so easy, thousands of others started doing it too. This drove down prices drastically.
When you have hundreds of people selling used copies of the same book, you can’t make money on it. Some of my competing Amazon sellers were even offering books for a penny each, losing money after their packaging and shipping costs. I never did figure that one out!
Anyway, when I discovered I could no longer charge more than 25 or 50 cents for most books, I got out. I suspect that many other sellers eventually quit, too.
Long story short: I decided that selling books used books through Amazon (or eBay, etc.) would be forevermore a losing proposition.
I think I’m about to change my mind, though!
The other day I stumbled across this book by Adam Bertram. It turns out that Adam is making good money today selling used books on Amazon.
His “trick” (which isn’t really a trick at all) is that he only buys books he knows ahead of time he can sell on Amazon for a good price. So when he goes to a thrift store or browses at a yard sale, he doesn’t just grab all the books he can get his hands on. He looks until he spots the one or two books that he knows he can get between $4 and $100 for.
Sounds neat, I thought. But how in the world would you be able to know ahead of time which books those are? It’s not possible for any human being to memorize the current demand and fetching price for every book ever published!
Ah … here’s how he does it. Folks, I slapped my head when I read this. So obvious!
As Adam reveals in his book, the the secret to making used-book selling a profitable business again is to carry a personal digital assistant (PDA) with you when you go on your book-scouting forays, a PDA loaded with a barcode reader that tells you instantly what any book is currently selling for.
Adam tells you how to get a PSA with barcode reader inexpensively, and how to download the entire Amazon database onto it. He also lays out everything else you need to know to make a good side income or even a full-time living:
- Getting the right equipment to make bookselling easy and fun – and profitable
- Avoiding wasting time and money buying junk books for resale
- His top sources for obtaining books, CDs and DVDs extremely cheaply
- Making sure the books you buy will sell quickly and for a large profit
- How to list the books you offer for sale, in less than 15 seconds each
- How to pack your orders for less than 25 cents each, in minimum time
- How and when to quickly reprice your books to keep them moving off your shelves
- And a lot more!
Adam Bertram has put together a complete, step-by-step system that even a complete newbie can use to start a money-making used book business. He’s packaged his system as an ebook that you can instantly download from the Internet here:
Now to be honest, if you’ve ever sold books online before – especially if you’ve been a seller on Amazon, as I was – there’s a lot here you will already know. But there’s also a lot I’ll bet you never knew. The whole PDA and barcode thing and how to use them for maximum effectiveness and at cheapest cost is worth the low price of his ebook all by itself.
Like I said, I had completely given up on used book selling and Amazon as a way to make decent money. But now Adam Bertram has turned my thinking around 180 degrees.
I’m giving Used Books: Big Business a 5-Star rating.
You can learn more – and download the book – here.
