Product Description

Book Description

Selling Used Books Online is a comprehensive how-to bible for America's newest and fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, the sellers on Amazon Marketplace and other online venues. Author Stephen Windwalker, a successful online seller himself who has also operated a brick-and-mortar bookshop, provides a treasure trove of up-to-date information with verve, clarity, and wit.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has reported that the number of third-party sellers on his company's website grew from over 100,000 in the fourth quarter of 2001 to over 150,000 in the first quarter of 2002, and roughly one-third of these appear to be entrepreneurial sellers who are operating full- or part-time businesses in competition with each other, with Amazon, and with very large Amazon Marketplace sellers such as Powell's, the Strand bookstore, and Alibris. For these 50,000 entrepreneurs, Selling Used Books Online will be a powerful business resource that will help them level the playing field, stay in business, and prosper.

Selling Used Books Online meets the needs of booksellers and business readers who want to stay current on market changes, best sources, insider's tips and tactics, and best practices, and is also a essential addition for public libraries, the small business and entrepreneurship market and related agency and educational markets, and publishing industry and bibliophile readers. Back matter includes several useful appendices that online booksellers will use on a daily basis: a glossary, a list of standard bookseller abbreviations, a casual bibliography of resources on bookselling and collecting, and an online bookseller's "Rolodex."

The Most Up-To-Date Book In Its Field, Covering:
· THE BOOKSELLING BUSINESS· SUPPLIERS AND SOURCES
· WHERE TO GET YOUR BOOKS
· WHAT BOOKS TO GET
· WHERE TO SELL YOUR BOOKS
· GRADING AND DESCRIBING YOUR BOOKS
· POSTING AND PRICING YOUR BOOKS
· ORGANIZING YOUR BUSINESS AND HANDLING TAX ISSUES
· FULFILLMENT AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
· EXPANSION ISSUES AND FUTURE PLANS
· HANDY REFERENCE TOOLS YOU WILL USE EVERY DAY

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #419824 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
A wealth of information about the bookselling business, including descriptions of major online bookselling resources complete with detailed fee structures. -- News Update, A Friends of Libraries U.S.A. Publication

Incredible business resource.... an experienced authority candidly describes the pitfalls and the realities of ... book dealing with no punches withheld. -- from Bob Spear, Heartland Reviews, October 2002

Thousands of book enthusiasts are selling books online. If you'd like to join their ranks, this book is a must-read. -- Rebecca Hanneman, About.com, October 2002

From the Publisher
For Online Booksellers, Authors, Independent Publishers, Public Libraries, and Software Authors: Whether your bookselling vision is brick-and-mortar, click-and-mortar, dot-com or dream-on, this is the book that will take you to the next level!

From the Author
To quote the 20th century literary critic and memoirist Anatole Broyard: "To own a bookshop is one of the persistent romances, like living off the land or sailing around the world."

The advent of online used bookselling has greatly lowered the stakes involved in failing as a used bookseller. Instead of losing anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 and having to hire a lawyer to negotiate one's way out of a multi-year lease and a mountain of publisher and distributor debt, a failed online used bookseller might lose $500 and a lot of time and effort. But it remains true that many will fail.

It doesn't have to be this way, so our mission with this book is three-fold:

First, we hope that by providing a candid look at the nitty-gritty of used bookselling, to persuade a significant number of people to do something else for which they may be better suited;

Second, we believe we can provide and organize information and suggestions that may accelerate progress on the learning curve and make the difference between success and failure for a significant number of current and future online used booksellers; and

Third, we hope to improve the overall quality and market strength of online used bookselling by helping sellers to raise the bar when it comes to customer service and fulfillment, business practices and efficiencies, diversity of offerings, and pricing strategy, so that the ensuing improvement in customer experience will ultimately mean more customers and more selling for the sellers.

Customer Reviews

shatters bookseller illusions
You got it all figured out - you'll ditch the day job and you'll sell your old Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy books on Amazon. You get up (after a little sleep-in) and after your second cup of Irish Breakfast tea, check your listings to see ten items have sold - a slow day! Your little darlings will be playing quietly, your cats will be snoozing on the sofa and the bunny will be making "binkies" around your work area. Life is good. And sales will pick up after 10:30am, they always do. You'll quickly pack your books, effortlessly mail them at the post office and search your favorite used book store before eating some lunch. Not too bad a haul today - a signed first edition by Hemingway, that rare, out of print William Fonner's groundbreaking child rearing book, "My House, My Rules", a signed and illustrated first edition by Hirshfield - all in like new condition - and a cookbook going for $60. Not too shabby a day.

Before you tell your boss to go do something physically impossible, read this book. It will save you from many "newbie" mistakes and you will see online bookselling for what it really is - _possibly_ a money maker but a job that you have to want to do and do well to profit. You'll understand your day could be more similiar to this: you check your listings, no new sales. You wait in line at the post office behind the person that is packing their mail at the counter and paying with a beginner's old of state check. And your trip to the thrift shop yields 10 books, all of them selling for a penny.

Mr Windwalker covers a lot of basics in this book - some say the book is too basic but I don't think so. You have to know the nitty-gritty of what you're getting into before you decide to take a huge plunge. He doesn't recommend specific books, but recommends books that have worked for him. He recommends possible book buying sites. Some of the stuff seems common sense, but I never thought of things quite that way.

So if you are planning to become an ongoing online bookseller - meaning you will probably be selling more books than your own weeding out from your personal library - I recommend this book highly. It's an inexpensive business course that can save you from making some big mistakes - so give it a try!
Good luck!

An excellent resource!
"Wow! I sold a few of my used books on Amazon and made a nice little chunk of change! I think I'll find some more to list, and become a bookseller!"

Whoa, hoss. Yes, this is exactly how many people start selling used books online. But before you grab those Grisham and Clancy paperbacks at your neighbor's yard sale, do yourself and the marketplace a huge favor: Read this book.

Whether you've been selling used books for years or just barely getting started, there's much to be found between the covers of "Selling Used Books Online". It's a well-organized, thoughtfully presented and thoroughly readable business resource. The selection and pricing strategies alone, if conscientiously applied, will likely return your investment in this book many times over. But this should also go hand-in-hand with appropriate book grading and description, as well as good customer service; these, too, are covered quite well and amount to best-practice models which would significantly improve the buying and selling experiences alike if widely adopted.

The only book of its kind (at this writing) with relevant and up-to-date information specific to selling at Amazon, "Selling Used Books Online" is far more than a narrow formula for success in that venue alone. A cover-to-cover read will leave you more knowledgable about the used book marketplace in general, help you to avoid common mistakes, and give you the tools you need to achieve your goals. From a part-time "kitchen table" enterprise for extra spending money to a full-time career, there aren't many who wouldn't benefit from the advice of an articulate mentor with a great sense of humor who really knows his business. If you buy only one book on the subject, you can't go wrong with this one. You'll refer to it time and time again.

Useful for basics, but becoming dated
I first read this book two years ago, soon after it came out, when I was first starting my online book selling business. The book is useful in laying out the basics of the business model and the nuts and bolts of Amazon.com Marketplace selling. It goes through where to find books, how to list them for sale, how to fulfill orders, and how to manage your inventory. This is the best and most specific book available on these topics. It also goes into some basics regarding accounting and future business growth issues, but these topics are treated much more cursorily. The biggest weakness of the book, however, is that the information is becoming dated.

A number of third party services have become available since 2002 that help sellers in book scouting, inventory management, and order fulfillment (e.g., Scoutpal, Sellerengine, Aman, Mail Extractor, etc.). These have altered the way most successful sellers run their businesses. Most high volume sellers don't edit individual listings when re-pricing but instead use one of these new tools to batch edit large portions of their inventory. Most successful sellers don't guess when buying books at sales but use Scoutpal to check the price before buying. In all likelihood future innovations like these ones will continue to alter the landscape of Amazon.com Marketplace selling and online book selling generally.

So, this is indeed the best basic primer for the nuts and bolts for selling books on Amazon, but let's hope that the author considers issuing a revised edition sometime soon that takes into account new seller tools and changing practices. He would also undercut the used market for his book...