Alternative Books Selling Sites

Alternative Book Selling Sites to Amazon

Internet sales have become a vital source of income for many dealers of used books, even those who own bricks and mortar shops.

Types of Online Bookselling Sites

Online book selling databases include amazon,ABE and Albris. We can refer to them as the 3As.Amazon, Albris & Abe.

The 3As are simple to use although they allow little or no direct contact between customer and seller. According to sellers that tend to deal with rare, antiquated books these sites are flooded with badly described books listed by hobbyists with little knowledge, who are aided by tools that favour the lowest common denominator.

This is predominately because the 3 As are all essentially corporate in nature and show little interest in the complexities of the out-of-print book market or the relationship between booksellers and their customers.

On the whole many sellers using the 3As have little expert knowledge of book selling and use of features such as automatic ISBN matching and Image matching tend to be inappropriately applied, which for buyers it can result in making it more difficult, rather than easier, to know with certainty what you are buying.

Independent Sites

You may not be aware of it but as well as the corporate sites that we hear so much about such as the 3As, there are independent sites where you can also add your books, these include biblion and booksatpbfa.

These type of independent book selling sites can provide a marketplace where professional booksellers are able to list their books on the Internet and promote contact between buyer and seller. The best of independents sites encourage dealers to conduct business to the same standards as they would if you visited them in person, in their bookshops or at book fairs.

Many of the dealers listing on independent sites have experience in selling out-of-print books and are able to offer informed advice about the books they are selling. They will also quote you the actual shipping costs which may well be cheaper than the 3As.

Horses for Courses.

If buyers only really want to buy run of the mill paperback novel then they probably would not bother much with independent online stores who would not so likely stock them anyway.
However, if buyers are collectors or want a specific book in a specific condition, then they may prefer to try Independent online sites.

So is it worth multi listing on different sites to sell your book stock. Yon can certainly try this. You would need to look at the different sites and download their uploading system. Add your inventory and see how it goes. Remember that some sites will ask for upfront fees, some may only want certain types of books. Remember that if you sell books on one site to remove them from any other sites you use.

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Sharon@canonburypublishing.com

List of Best Selling Books

How To Find a List of Best Selling Books.

As a seller of used books, it would be fantastic if I could pick up a regular supply of popular titles as shown on Amazon’s list of best selling books. To find the top 100 best selling books you only need to look on the right hand side of amazons home page. The list is updated hourly and reflects high selling titles as sold throughout the day.

How to Build Stocks of Best Selling Books.

It is possible to buy books by the pallet from Wholesalers and direct from Publishers usually refereed to as 'remainder' sales. Personally buying low cost remainder books in bulk is extremely difficult as far as my investigations have shown.

If you want to purchase pallet loads of books via the Wholesalers, this can be fraught by 'dangers'. In most cases you will have little control over what titles you receive on the pallet.
You can have hundreds of books with one title, all with a low value on amazon. You can end up paying more for the books than you make back in profits.

This also applies to buying used books by the pallet, you can end up with hundreds of books that are unsuitable for sale on amazon. such as Readers digest condensed books and coffee table books that weight 3kg and with a value of 1p. You may well be asked to pay hundreds of pounds for 'rubbish' stock.

How Much Profit Can you Make With Best Selling Books?

The price value of new popular fiction and indeed popular non fiction books tends to drop sharply once they get onto Amazon marketplace for sale. Both new and used copies of the same title can be priced at 1p plus £2.75 postage cost on amazons marketplace. As a seller you will be competing with Amazon who also sell newly published titles, often for much less than the high street. So it will depend on how little you pay for newly published stock as to how much profit you make.

It is likely that you will be unable to ask what price you like for new titles on amazon market place. There is a lack of Pricing Autonomy due to Amazon policy of not allowing marketplace sellers to set prices at a higher rate than amazon.

You are also squeezed by amazons postal pricing policy due to amazons free postage rate for orders over £5. As a marketplace seller your buyers are charged a postal credit of £2.75 (UK) levied against each item sold, thus you will not have any leeway to make profits over and above amazon’s prices.

How You Can Compete with the 'big boys'!

In my experience it is very difficult to pick up pallet loads of mixed books at a reasonable price in order to compete with the 'big boys. Even if it were possible to get hold of books that would likely be on amazons list of best selling books, in all probabilities the outlay costs would be sky high. Great if you shift them quickly whilst prices are relatively high to make you a profit, but disastrous if not. Imagine stocking hundreds of titles that cost more than you would ever receive selling for low value on Amazon!

As a used book seller I am quite happy to buy books in bulk from charity shops and car boots for pennies. I do not really want to compete with dealers who sell new books. You cannot go too wrong buying books cheaply from car boots and charity shops if you aim for niche titles and out of print uncommon titles. These are the type of books that can command very high prices on amazons marketplace and can bring in fantastic profits.

I often buy books for less that 50p and sell for over £20. Granted few books I buy will be on amazons list of best selling books. However, my average cost for for books is 25p whilst most new wholesale book will cost £1 each or more. I most often cover the cost of 100 books just by selling 1 book from the batch, all the rest representing pure profit. This certainly will be extremely unlikely if you purchase a pallet of remainder books from a publisher or wholesaler.

If you would like to copy me and start your very own unique online book store click here.

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Selling Used Books-How it all Began!

Happy Anniversary!

This week I received an email form EBay congratulating me on my Fourth year since registering on their site. It’s so hard to believe it's four years that I first dabbled with selling books online. For me it was quite a scary venture, not being very confident using the computer and being a complete technophobe to boot.

I had little knowledge of selling on Amazon or eBay, yes I had purchased a few items from both sites, but it had not occurred to me to actually sell my own stuff on them.. I had little idea where to start or what to sell even if it had crossed my mind.

How to Earn Extra Income?

I was keen to earn myself a little extra income, like most families money was tight ,I wanted to ensure we had a holiday, so. I made myself a goal to earn a modest £50 per week. Not a great deal I know, but I worked out this amount would make a difference to my disposable income.

At the same time, however, I was not to too keen on trying to learn new concepts that would confuse and challenge me too much. Most computer jargon was (and still is).like trying to learn a foreign language. So I needed something simple and something I could get into that would fit into my regime.

Working full time and having a family, spare time was an issue, so to earn extra income I decided that I would make a commitment to dedicate a couple of hours every evening to my new venture..I would do this by cutting down on watching trashy television programmes.

How It Began!

I was keen to find a home business opportunity so I had subscribed to a newsletter called 'What Really Makes Money'. This publication is dedicated to alerting you to the scams in home opportunities and promote good ideas in the home biz opp market. In one issue there was a very small paragraph on how you could make money selling used books on Amazon.co.uk. I was quite impressed and immediately went to my bookcase and found a dozen or so books that had no further use to me.

They were mostly study books that I had used a few years earlier for my degree course ( I graduated at 40) I felt others doing a similar course would want them. I also had a few diet books and self help books so I sat down straight away.and followed the instructions from What Really Makes Money and within a few minutes I had registered as a seller on Amazon.

How I Got It Going!

I listed my pile of books and imagine my delight when I sold my first book a day or so later. Over seven days I sold one book per day. I did not have any new packing materials and used recycled mail light bags I happened to have. I had no idea how to produce a packing slip and just printed off the email that Amazon sent me and put it in with the order. Once I had used up my own stock of unwanted books, it did not take me long to discover places to buy books from locally where I could buy books for pennies and sell for pounds on amazon and ebay to grateful customers all over the world!

From Hobby £50 pw to Part Time Business £300 pw.

I had no way of knowing how my life would change just by selling used books. To think that such a simple to run hobby would develop so quickly. Not only did I achieve my goal of earning an extra income of £50 per week, I did get my holiday, a week in Brittany in a villa with private heated pool.. But more than this my income selling books soon grew from £50 per week to an amazing £300 per week working part time from home.

If you would like to copy me and start your very own unique online book store click here.

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