What’s the best way to increase profits selling used books on Amazon?

In every business today, profits are essential to staying afloat. Selling used books on Amazon is no exception. Profits are the sole motivator for continuous business and to keep the proprietor’s body and soul together. You must be wondering how you can increase profits from selling used books on Amazon.

To increase profits selling used books on Amazon can be easily achieved. Selling used books can not only let you spot opportunities for a 100% ROI (Return on Investment but even more. As spoiled as we are as used booksellers, my minimum threshold when it comes to ROI is 100%.

I have bought a book for $5.99 and sell the same book for $71.09. My total cost including prep service fee, since I am an international seller, took the cost up to $8.49. After all Amazon fees ($18.58) and the cost of the book ($8.49), I was left with $44.02 take-home profit, close to 518% ROI.

Not trying to show off but just showing how much profit you can make from a single sale.

I will provide you with some tips you can use to increase your profits by selling used books on Amazon with no risks involved. How you can get extra funds to buy more books to resell and grow your book business tremendously in less than a year.

What you need to know;

My experience cannot be the exact same experience for you. You will need to put in the work required, the same as in every other business and most importantly play smart. You should always try to minimize costs at all times.

If you can’t appreciate a cent then you are giving up a dollar, a hundred dollars or even a million dollars. This is because a cent out of a million-dollar is no more a million dollars and you no longer represent a million-dollar status.

There is always a cent that makes a dollar. Always keep that in mind.

Now, let’s look at what tips you can use to increase your profitability while selling books on Amazon.

Before we jump into the tips, you have to make sure you have a flexible strategy to follow for your book business. You need to set a strategy for growth and stick with it. You need to make sure you have fixed principles in place that are geared to your success.

Source, Scan and Buy Wisely.

In the book business, it is well known that profit is made when you buy. Some books you will buy will automatically put a smile on your face. This is when you come across a “gold baby”.

How do you stumble on “gold babies”?

“Gold babies” will not rush to you or signal you to come to grab them but you have to go out there and scan every possible book you come across. Many sellers scan a few books and give up the chase. Number one rule for sourcing, “scan everything.”

You will be amazed at what you can find. Just a single scan can reward a week’s work. I have seen a situation where a seller buys a book for $1 and sells for $400 which was a rare find. If you dig deep, you can find gold if not, you can find some silver, if not, at least you can find some water to quench your thirst.

When you scan it is very important to buy wisely. Let the market tell you what books to buy. Look at your competition and analyze possibilities for a quick sale. We cannot improve profitability in stocking books that will sell over a year period. Look for books that can sell within the space of a month and max 3 months’ time. Look for multiple sourcing outlets for buying books.

Avoid buying “Acceptable” condition books. You are trying to run a business not a cleanup campaign. Some can even arrive in the worst condition. Leave the acceptable condition books for end-users to purchase as they wouldn’t mind much since they are buying for their private use. But when it comes to business, fill your inventory with good books buyers can appreciate and feel the value.

Buy and Hold Strategy

You can set aside some portions of your income for a buy and hold strategy. As you source books to sell, you will come across some books that can make some reasonable profits at a later period. A good example can be seen in textbooks. Textbooks sell all year round but not as profitable during the textbook season.

In this case, you can buy these books really low, keep them while you wait for the textbook season and send those “gold babies” in during the textbook season. If you would wish to thank me later for this advice, create a spreadsheet and make a list of good selling textbooks, buy when the price is very low and during the textbook season input your sales and check your profits.

You can create a separate section in your home and store the books and send them into Amazon a few weeks to the peak textbook season.

For international sellers, you can simply send the books into Amazon and set a high price to avoid it selling before the desired period. Do not be worried about long-term storage fees if the profit to be made is very high. My advice is to start sourcing for text-books 3 months before the textbook season.

Closing Dollar Gaps

This is the term I use to describe the action whereby you increase your price for a book slightly up for extra profit. In some situations, you can be the lowest price of a book and the price difference with the next seller is way too huge. 

For example, let’s say you are the list priced book at $25.99 and the next listing after yours is $50.00. You are likely to make more profit if you increase your price to close the huge gap in pricing between you and the next seller. Instead of maintaining my price at $25.99, I will re-price or increase my price to maybe $45.99. An additional $20.00 of profit can be made if I make that sale. 

This can be done manually and in a way during automatic re-pricing by setting your price to be a certain amount below the next listing in line. You will always experience such gaps during textbook seasons.

Manual Pricing

Manual pricing is the way to go in other to control profitability. Using automation in pricing, you give up control of the profit you can make.

The worst part is if you set your price automation wrongly. It can be disastrous and you can make the wrong sales due to faulty automation pricing. You will get up one day and your Amazon store looking like a charity or give away library.

Many believe this is too much work, but if you are looking to increase your profits, it is worth it. By the way, if you organize your inventory and set your preferences correctly, you can manually re-price thousands of books within an hour.

Books you should use automatic re-pricing are books that are slow-moving. You can take a decision, books above 1.5 million sales rank will be automatically re-priced (just for an example). Remember to set your maximum and minimum price. Once sold, you can use the funds to re-invest in better deals.

Build A List And Follow The Gold

Once you make a sale, take some time to analyze when was the book bought, for how much and the price it sold for. You will need to build a list of profitable books that can sell within a month or at least 2 months and with high profits. These are books that you will want to make sure at least 60% of them are always available in your inventory.

How to make sure you can always have these “Gold Babies”

Go to keepa and set a tracking once they meet your criteria for the best price you can get them. Check your keepa account for notifications 3 – 4 times a day. Your girlfriend might get jealous when you keep checking out keepa that much but don’t worry she will understand when the profits are piling up.

The reason you need to check 3-4 times a day is not actually to get your girlfriend jealous but because there can be other booksellers chasing that same books. I might be one of them so you really need to be on your toes.

Use Amazon Trade-in

It was quite strange when I found out the majority of booksellers are still not taking advantage of Amazon trade-ins. Amazon trade-in is a program offered by Amazon whereby you can trade-in books or other items to Amazon for an instant gift card balance. I call it “free money.”

You can then use this gift card balance to buy profitable books from Amazon to re-sell.

There are other platforms offering “buybacks” for cash if you can take advantage of this opportunity and raise investment capital for your book business

Keep your feedback score appealing.

You might be thinking how do feedback and profitability relate? Well, believe me even if you can’t see a direct relationship between feedback and profitability, it is very important for sales and sales equals profits.

From my experience, buyers today are willing to pay more to a reputable seller than a lower price for a poor feedback seller. When it comes to re-pricing, I will always price above a seller with a feedback score lower than mine because I know I am going to make a sale first.

Buyers want to buy from sellers who know what they are doing. And are seriously willing to pay higher to save their time and receiving better quality service.

Do something that will make your buyers talk about you.

You can think of a few things you can do that will keep your buyers talk about you or even give you a 5-star feedback rating. They can even come back to your store when they are looking for books they need. It is not easy to retain a customer in the Amazon book business but your brand starts to grow that way.

And before you know it, you are that mega-seller everyone is talking about.  You can send gifts to your buyers create an outstanding customer experience. Be Unique in your own way.

Re-invest at least 40% – 60 % of the profits in better deals.

Always remember to re-invest your profits if you want to grow more profits. I am not saying you shouldn’t reward yourself but at least 40% needs to go back for even better deals. Remember as every day goes by with you in the business you learn and improve your ability to create better deals for more profits. Re-investing can only be a better option.

As a beginner, I was re-investing 100% to grow my business. But if you need some cash you can go as low as 40%. For every successful businessman to grow, you must follow the 40,40,20 rule whereby you re-invest 40% and save 40% and your salary 20%. Never disrupt your savings and re-investment capital if you want to succeed in any business you do.

Your savings can always be subdivided to meet your needs. If you need to take a vacation, you can set aside 10% of your savings until you meet up the total amount for your trip.

Talk to other booksellers and even people not in the book business

It is important to talk to other booksellers and believe me you will always learn from their book experience. You will be able to get tips that will increase your profits. Also, talk to people, at work, when you go to your kids PTA meetings. You will understand why people cross paths. I believe sometimes it is for a reason. Don’t be shy to tell them what you do and you can be overwhelmed they tell you something like this,

“Oh, I have tons of books in my house and I don’t know what to do with them. Can you come get them? Maybe you can sell them or do what you like with them because as for me they are of no use”

Don’t be surprised to find “gold babies” lying in there and you are already up in profits.

EndNote

If you can follow these guidelines, you will always make an increased profit and grow your book business very fast. What is of prime importance is to buy the right books. Profits are made when you take your time to buy the right books. Scan the whole lots of books and try to visit multiple sourcing outlets.

Talk to people where ever you find yourself. Consider your bookselling as a business and not just a side hustle or something to get you going. This will always limit you as you try to grow your business. Tell me about your experiences with increasing profits with your book business as I am open to learning.