Barnes & Noble Arbitrage, Amazon Book Sourcing At Barnes & Noble, Pt II

In the last Barnes & Noble arbitrage post, I told the story of buying a $900 book for $30. My latest B&N hustle is even more interesting.

I purchased the second edition of a rather technical book at B&N recently for $50. For whatever reason, I searched the title on Amazon later that night and the first result was not the second edition of that book at all. It was the first edition. Apparently, Amazon‘s search algorithim had a little glitch, and didn’t give the latest edition as the first search result. The interesting thing was, the first edition of the book was out of print, going for $200, and was ranked better than 500,000.

Now, this is yet another case of me doing something that’s a little against Amazon‘s policies, but totally victimless. A few stuffy blowhards are going to groan here, but I immediately listed my second edition as the first edition, and sent the book I had just paid $50 into Amazon priced at $200.

And it sold.

So I did it again. And then again. Right now, I’m on copy number four of this title, making over $100 each time. Why is the first edition still selling so well, and for so much? I can only imagine it’s because its the first search result when people look for it on Amazon, and its out of print. That’s a good recipe for value.

Barnes & Noble only had one copy, so I’ve bought the last 3 directly from Amazon. Then I’ve turned around and shipped the book right back to them.

Is there an ethical dilemma here? I don’t think so. Customers are in fact getting a newer, updated edition of the book they ordered. It is highly unlikely they are seeking anything in the first edition that is not in the second edition (I checked to make sure the publisher hadn’t announced any removal of content, and in any case, if there was an issue with this I would have heard about it by now). In all likelihood, they purchased the first thing that showed up in the search results merely because it was the first thing. That’s it.

These kind of opportunities are everywhere, if you look for them.