I found 10 books you can buy cheap on Amazon and resell FBA. Take them.
Update: I’m no longer driectly involved in the day-to-day operations of Zen Arbitrage, the book arbitrage tool mentioned in this article.
Couple things in this post:
- ISBNs for the 10 books. (PS: Check out the tool I found these with here.)
- How I found them.
Today’s post was supposed to be big. Really big.
The plan was to stage a grand unveiling of what I consider the biggest advancement in book sourcing since the scanning app.
Instead of a thunderous announcement, I’m relegating it to barely a whisper at the bottom of today’s (and yesterday’s) post. I’ll explain why everything changed on Monday’s webinar at the end of this post.
10 examples of profitable books doing online book arbitrage
I know you came for the books.
Good news: Below are 10 books you can buy cheap right now, and flip via FBA for at least a 300% return.
Bad news: There are thousands of you reading this. So these are going to go fast.
Just wanted to give you a taste of online book arbitrage, and the scope of the potential that’s out there.
What are these books?
Here was my criteria:
As of 2:45AM on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, the following applied to each of these textbooks:
- Ranked 750,000 or better.
- With a sales rank history of not being ranked worse than 1.2 million at any point in the last year (not a bad history for a textbook in the off-season).
- Total cost of $10 or less.
- The lowest FBA price will bring at least 3x the price of the book.
Pretty conservative criteria. If any of these stats change by morning, don’t be mad at me.
Each of these are books I would have bought to flip on Amazon, but instead I’m giving them to you. Not exactly because I’m a nice person. More because I’ve spent way too much money on books to flip this week. So here you go.
Unfortunately, by the time the majority of you read this, the cheaper copies will have been bought up, and the prices will have risen. That’s just the nature of a stunt like this.
How did I find these books?
I found these 10 in 24 minutes (I really did time it) using Zen Arbitrage.
As I write this, it’s way too late at night for me to do the exact math on what the net profit will be from these purchases, but if they all sold at the current FBA price, the net profit should be somewhere in range of $150.
Maybe more, maybe less. Either way, it’s pretty awesome for 24 minutes work.
The 10 profitable books
0324159927
0136058965
0538477202
0132159864
0073375926
0132555492
1416049894
0127544038
0781795435
1111341567
Announcement: We’ve opened enrollment into Zen Arbitrage
If you liked what we’ve talked about this past week, or just like the thought of sourcing books in your pajamas, here are the steps:
- Click on the banner below.
- Scroll down and watch the 4 minute video.
- If you like what you see, click the button to start your free trial.
- Buy as many books as you want at no charge, cancel within three days and you won’t be charged.
Here’s the link to the video + more.
Thanks for this Peter and thanks for that wicked cool webinar! You really dropped some gems in there. Even without access to the Zen, I still found 8 resellable books on my own that same night!
Then my mission is accomplished.
Link not working
Tested it on several computers, but if anyone else is having this problem please let me know.
Just to be clear, if I was one of the first 100 that applied, will I be guaranteed a spot, or will I have to rush to get a spot tomorrow morning? And it is 6am Pacific you are talking about, correct?
I’m not the final person handling that part, but 99% sure that’s how it works.
Thanks to my ISP provider, I’ve been without Internet for 2 days. Just got it back about an hour ago.
Now, I’m unable to open the link to watch the video. Is this program officially closed?
Thanks!
Link should be fixed now. Try again.
Hey Peter — thanks so much for all the helpful info! Quick question — say you find a textbook that’s cheap, fabulous rank (~20K), but there are already many FBA offers….the lowest of which is $15. Do you grab it, and assume that during the textbook rush you can get quite a bit more for it? I understand your pricing strategy when there are NO FBA sellers, but wasn’t sure about a case like this. THANKS!!
I just use my instinct. A great rank like that, I would confidently position myself in 3rd place.
Great, thanks Peter!
Hi, I watched your 1st webinar. I want to sign up. Where’s the link to sign up in the AM? I want to be ready so I can get in. I didn’t receive a follow up email. Thanks!
If you’re part of the first batch of people approved, you’ll get an email at 6am Pacific.
I know this may be off-topic but are there any issues when selling “School Stamped” textbooks? You know the ones that have the “Property of..” or “This book belongs to…” stamps on them? I picked up a couple of these from local library sales and now I’m wondering if I should even bother taking a chance with them.
I don’t consider this to be a serious threat, but I do have a “Discard” stamp I use for this purpose.
That’s a great idea! I need to get one of those.
I am very disappointed that Zen Arbitrage is not available in Canada. Or elsewhere in the world for that matter. We all have need for this tool.
I’m sure you’ll make it available at some point – or at least I sure hope you will! The sooner the better!! 🙂
If we get enough requests from Canada, absolutely.
Does Zen now work on Amazon.ca?
Yes, we have many international users with Zen Arbitrage. They source books on Amazon, have them shipped to the US prep service, who then ships them into Amazon US warehouses.
We help you get set up with all of that.
You can try Zen Arbitrage out for 5 days totally free, and its $79 a month after that (basically selling only a dozen average books doubles your money).
And the prep service is a flat 89 cents per item. Very simple.
If you want to try out ZA for free, you can do that at:
http://www.zenarbitrage.com
Feel free to send any more questions my way as well.
-Peter
Peter, What about supplementary materials such as CDs and access codes? Do you flip books without these items? What is Amazon’s policy? Do you list them as “Acceptable” if they are missing supplementary material? Thanks in advance and thanks for all your great posts!
I pay attention and mention anything I notice missing.
On the books you look to buy, do you also look at how many FBA offers there are at that time?
Not the number, just the lowest price.
My Internet was down for your webinar. I noticed you mentioned watching the video in the link above. Is/was that by chance a replay of the webinar that I missed?
Love your site. Great info.
Sorry, no replays. That goes for all webinars in the future as well.
I have sourced the “old” way and already sold some nice books for $65 each! Now if someone would drop zen i would be golden! It takes a long time searching for books the other way.
Alex
Hello Peter,
Does your pricing strategy change outside of textbook season?
Also do you ever reprice those textbooks that don’t sell when the textbook season ends?
Oliver
It doesn’t change and I hold my ground unless a book is clearly off the sales rank cliff and no longer in steady demand.
Hi Peter,
Thank you for all the great information you’ve shared on this blog an in your books. Question about your online arbitrage criteria: Are these (rank of less than 750K, no more than 1.2M over the past year, cost of less than $10, and lowest FBA price that’s at least 3 times cost) what you use when you do online arbitrage for books? Or was it just for this particular search? I’m wondering how you arrived at those numbers? Why 1.2M rank over the past year, for example? And does your $10 cost include shipping?
Do you have other measures you look at when deciding on whether to make the purchase?
Thanks again for your guidance. You’re awesome!
Good questions. Most of those criteria are subjective but work for me. 1.2 million insures there is a steady demand year round. The $10 cap is especially subjective. There’s no reason not to spend $30 and up for a book if you’re getting $100 back.
And that’s exactly what I did. Bought a book for $33, flipped it for $96! After amazon fees that’s about $43 profit from one book. This stuff works if you apply it.
Well, as of today, I just bought 4 off your list to flip. Probably could have done a few more, but I’m just starting so my threshold is a little lower. Great article! Thanks!
Wow, good to know this list is still relevant. It’s at least 6 months old at this point. Good lesson there.