Limiting beliefs And Myths About Selling Books On Amazon

Selling books on Amazon can always be a great business but many limiting believes create a barrier to entry for many interested people. These myths about selling books on Amazon turn to discourage individuals from investing in the book business. You may have come across many people either from the internet, friends, and or family who are currently into the book business on Amazon, some may be doing great but might not be the case for others.

Looking at the “coin” from one side without a critical eye, you either create your own limiting beliefs or follow the advice from others to conclude selling books is a wrong idea.

The question I always asked my self is why will one person succeed and another fail? Take some time to reflect on this question. Provide some answers and you might find a solution to your question.

Does it mean the people who turn to succeed are exempted from failing? Do they have four hands and probably five brains? Or maybe they are from another planet?

The fear of failing will always make us create a story that will keep you from taking action. These limiting believes will turn to make you feel comfortable with the decisions you take.

In this post, I will be sharing some limiting beliefs and myths that rob many people of the benefits of taking action in selling books on Amazon. Will start with some general limiting believes about selling books on Amazon.

Amazon Is Taking All The Profits For Nothing.

If this is your concern then you are missing the whole point. Amazon is rather doing you a favor rather than taking your profits. Many still haven’t realized how difficult it is to get an online presence these days not to talk about the ready market Amazon has already build for you to just jump in start making money.

If you think it is easy, find out how much it costs to grow an e-commerce store and how long it will take you if you decide to go by free traffic. How long will it take to build the kind of trust Amazon has groomed for its ready customers?

It will normally take between 6 months to 1 year with heavy content marketing before you can start experiencing a decent amount of traffic to your store. If you are willing to pay for traffic, that’s thousands of dollars to be paid for traffic without a 100% guarantee of a sale.

But Amazon is a trusted platform and a place where people only come to make a purchase.  Referring your products to their clients is a very huge favor, a huge market ready-made for you. Amazon further takes care of your customer service, issues like returns, delivery at already contracted discount rates with trusted delivery companies like FedEx and UPS.

Amazon is already taking all the work you needed to do to make a sale by referring you to its existing customer so you need to pay them for that privilege.

If you price accurately you will never have to worry about Amazon fees. You can always use the Amazon fee calculator to get the exact amount Amazon will be collecting as fees after you make a sale.

You can only sell when you have the buy box

The buy box is an opportunity for Amazon to place your listing on the top page of a particular search. The “buy Box” is normally the only “add to cart” button on the first page of a particular search. Buyers can only see the rest of the competition if only the click on the links provided to see “more buying choices” or “see all buying options”.

Yes, this is a big opportunity and a gateway for sales but you can still make sales even without the buy box. I know sellers who are making a killing in sales and those sales are not “buy box” originated. 

Reason why? The buy box prices are the majority of the time, higher than the other competition. Buyers will always look for an alternative cheaper price rather than buying at a very higher price.

I will advise you not to focus your mind on winning the “buy box” because if you focus your mind on the things you have no control over you are likely to lose focus on the things that matter. People who focus their attention on things with limited control are likely to be frustrated 95% of the time.

Only Amazon decides who wins the buy box. The majority of the time it is owned by Amazon and free for other sellers only when Amazon goes out of stock. Besides, you must meet certain criteria like having positive customer feedback, the price, inventory, customer service and many other things we still don’t have a clue about since the “buy box” algorithm is still not made public.

It is also important to know amazon’s algorithm will always change and they will not ring you up on the phone or knock on your door to let you know the next moves to win the “buy box”. And when you don’t get the buy box anymore you freak out and think the World is coming to an end. If everything is done right and with continuous re-pricing, the “buy box” will come to you without you spending your time chasing the “buy box”.

Your Total Sales Revenue Is Never What You Get.

I once saw on Facebook someone posted his total sales revenue for the month and another individual went on to comment about it by saying “with all that sales, majority of the sales revenue goes back to Amazon” but never asked how much you invested for such a sales revenue.

If you do everything correctly after all fees Amazon is likely to get 33% of the total sales.  The balance of 67% left is for you to share between your profits and your investments. This will all depend on how much you invested and how much return on investment (ROI) you are willing to get from a sale.

If you are looking at a 100% ROI then you will be cashing out 33% profits from your total sales. And there are sellers in the book space who are able to get 300% ROI and even more. If selling books on Amazon wasn’t a profitable business I am sure these sellers didn’t get the memo.

Selling On Amazon Is Time Consuming and I Don’t Have The Luxury (Time).

Many people claim time is very important but spend more than half of their time on earth busy building other people’s dreams. They keep themselves busy in that bubble until they can’t even make time to build their own dreams and to get the freedom they are working for in the first place.

They dramatically become blind when opportunities land before them. This is not only with selling books on Amazon but in any other field of business. The main reason here is the fear to fail and nothing to do with time. And people who respond to opportunities this way still haven’t found their “success consciousness”.

I spend a maximum of 2-3 hours on my book business every day. I know successful booksellers on Amazon with a Job, a wife, and a family. Fear and ego will always stand between you and your success but it will all depend on your level of faith.

The market is getting saturated

Selling used books on Amazon is a huge industry today compared to many years ago but what you need to know is, it is never too late. With the right mindset and strategy, you will always succeed. The same way you think there are people coming in to sell used books on Amazon, it is the same way many others are dropping out as they lack the qualities you already have which is building your mindset.

To be successful “80% is your mindset and 20% is mechanics”. And success is doing what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Opportunities for selling books come up every day, books are being published every day and there are hundreds of millions of books to be sold. All you need to do is build your mindset, write down your goals and design a flexible strategy to follow and stick with.

Books Sell Only During Textbook Seasons

If you think books sell only during textbook seasons then you are making a very big mistake. Books sell all year round and not only during textbook seasons. Textbook seasons are from January to mid-February and August until September.

During these periods, you will experience some high volumes of sales as students return to school.  Students, as predictable as they can be, always wait for the last minute to buy their textbooks. But this doesn’t mean books are only sold just from January to February and August to September.

If you think this way, then pick a textbook of your choice and check the sales history for a complete year using keepa or camelcamelcamel.com. You will realize even after the peak periods of textbook sales, the sales rank drops but does not indicate a complete fall in sales. Sales are witnessed all through the year.

It should be understood sales history is a high determining factor in the book business. Booksellers will only sell books with an appealing all year round sales record. Looking to sell only during peak periods is a huge mistake and a loss of potential profit.

Besides textbooks, there is a huge market for fiction books and other educational books that are being sold all year round on Amazon. A good example can be Cookbooks, self-development books. There are many books today which are now motion pictures, which in return have increase sales dramatically.

The Availability of Rental Services and E-books

Selling used books on Amazon is a whole different market from rentals and e-books. Rentals in a way can affect sales of books but it is very insignificant. My sales have only been increasing even during the peak periods with the highest rental offers.

Rentals or e-books are a whole different market from the used book market. I largely ignore rental listings or e-books as they have their own customers the same as for used books. The availability of rentals and e-books doesn’t mean the used book market is out of the game.

As long as new books are being printed every day, used books will always have a place in the bookselling business.

“Acceptable” Condition Books Do Not Sell

Being the last grade or condition doesn’t mean “acceptable” condition books don’t sell. The same as people are willing to pay higher for a “very good” condition book is exactly the same as some buyers are willing to pay less for “acceptable” condition books.

As a beginner in the book business, it is advisable to avoid “acceptable” condition books but it doesn’t mean they don’t sell. They can be slow to move if you do not know the strategy for selling “acceptable” conditions. You must be an experienced seller to play around with “acceptable” condition books.

The key to selling “acceptable” condition books is the price difference you are willing to give up between the acceptable price and the “good” condition price or the next best condition offer. The minimum price difference I can give up is $15 from the next best condition offer.  $15 price difference can change the mind of a buyer instantly.

A buyer can be ready to accept the shortcomings of an “acceptable” condition book if he can pay a lesser amount considering the content is still the same.

It is very important to remember your competition for acceptable condition offers are other acceptable condition offers. Never stock above 10% of your inventory with acceptable condition books.

EndNote

Now take a look at all the limiting believes I have listed above and those that you know of, including those I have failed to mention in this post and ask yourself with all these “beliefs” why are they booksellers in the first place?

Let say maybe they don’t know about these limiting believes and they are just selling books blindly then let’s ask this other question, why do people still succeed if selling books come with all these limiting beliefs? Well, now we know if people can still succeed then why not you?

So if you have created some beliefs that were stopping you from taking action while others are making history then you will have to reconsider joining the trend in any way you can.