Master guide to reselling books during the Holidays

A step-by-step guide to what sells on Amazon during the holidays, and repricing for maximizing profits during the Amazon sales explosion.

Settle in: Here’s the top 4 things I’m going to cover on how Amazon sellers (that’s you) should prepare for the holidays (that’s now).

1. What sells on Amazon during the holidays? (non-obvious list here)
2. My Amazon holidays pricing (and repricing) formula
3. Why FBA sellers rule the holidays
4. The Golden Rule of repricing for the holidays (not boring)
5. A trick to liquidate unsold inventory after Christmas

Video: Prepping For The Holidays – A Guide For FBA Sellers

I put together a video version of this article (but the article is more in-depth). Here it is:

What books sell most on Amazon during the holidays?

If your answer is “everything,” that’s not quite accurate.

While it’s true that everything sees a surge in Amazon sales, one category explodes far and above the rest: New condition books. 

People during the Holidays want the new stuff. That’s pretty much it. Amazon buyers give new items as gifts, not old textbooks.

Ask yourself if you’ve ever ever purchased a used item on Amazon as a gift? Giving someone a used item is kind of a faux pas, and not considered “normal.”

If you’re primarily an Amazon bookseller, your biggest spikes in sales are going to be seen in:

1. New condition books
2. “Giftable” used books (collectibles, box sets, etc)

An exception to “new books” are collectible items that are our of print and have no “new” option. It’s true that sales of everything go up during the holidays, but inventory outside this list will not be a significant driver of Amazon sales. It’s much higher-impact to focus on this list: Specifically, new condition books, collectible books, and “gift”-type books (box sets, etc).

At the time this post is going live, it’s a little too late to adjust your Amazon sourcing for the holidays, and this is the time to focus on the only thing you can control that directly translates to maximum profits on Amazon: Your pricing (and repricing).

My Amazon holidays pricing (and repricing) formula

Here’s what I suggest you do just before Thanksgiving (when sales explode):

Tear through your Amazon inventory and reprice everything “unreasonably high.”

Remember the logic here: Amazon sales are going to explode starting the day after Thanksgiving, and all pricing rules are going out the window. Amazon buyers are going to be running wild through Amazon, buying up (almost) everything, which makes it pricing-suicide to not adjust your prices accordingly.

Amazon turns into a stampede riot of biblical proportions. That means your normal prices just before Thanksgiving are probably too low.

Don’t be the Amazon seller getting November 20th prices for their Amazon inventory on November 30th.

Repricing Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) offers for the holidays is a little different than the rest of the year. In this article, I’m going to explain how, what FBA sellers should be doing, and what you should not be doing.

Why I change my pricing for the holidays (not my sourcing)

There are a ton of articles and videos that come up just before the holidays, telling you to double down on your sourcing and “stock up for Q4.” I’m not going to do that with this article.

I’m really not a fan of this. For those practicing the “single sourcing” model (assessing items & purchasing them individually, vs. wholesale sourcing), I can’t see the sense in launching a tornado-style Amazon sourcing operation to prepare for Christmas.

If there is inventory to be had, you should be out there getting your hands on it always – no matter the season. It’s no different than saying: “It’s November, so run outside and pick up bags of money in the street at twice the normal rate”. You can spend money all year round, so you should be out there getting getting it all year round.

Naturally, if you’re selling new inventory on Amazon that you purchase wholesale, are doing retail or online arbitrage, or any model that involves selling multiple quantities of the same SKU, then by all means double down on your inventory purchases before Christmas.

Most of my sourcing is done with a different approach. As such, I do very little myself to prepare my Amazon inventory for Christmas. In fact, I change just one thing: My pricing.

My Holiday Amazon repricing formula

You guessed it.

The day before Thanksgiving, when sales are really start to surge, I go through my entire FBA inventory and reprice the new condition items.

I only reprice the new condition items. I ignore the rest.

If you have a ton of new inventory that hasn’t moved for you up to this point, there’s a good chance it’s going to sell on Amazon between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And you have to optimize your FBA pricing to ensure two things:

1. The item sells.
2. You get the most money you can for it.

Why FBA sellers cash-in during the holidays

Remember a major reason your Fulfillment by Amazon offers can command a much higher price than non-FBA offers: The free second-day shipping. And never is this more of a selling point than during the holidays.

There is a frantic, unreasonable demand for Amazon Prime offers during December.

There’s two factors at work here:

The first is that people need the guarantee an item will arrive when it’s supposed to, even if they order on Amazon well in advance of Christmas. Ordering from Amazon’s “Merchant Fulfilled” sellers is a wildcard. There are no promises they will ship on time, and media mail (if they’re ordering a media item) is brutally slow and unpredictable.

The second force at work is that people order presents on Amazon last-minute. The second-day shipping isn’t just urgently needed for people ordering on the 22nd. A lot of presents are exchanged early, everywhere from Christmas parties to outside-the-family gatherings. And a lot of people have presents shipped to them, then re-ship them to the giftee. So people need their order, fast.

Don’t feel bad about capitalizing on people’s desperation. Just price accordingly and reap the rewards.

All of this means you can command – and receive – exorbitant prices for your FBA offers right now. Far and above that of other sellers. And far and above what you can receive the rest of the year.

But you can’t receive prices on Amazon that you don’t ask for. That’s why you have to reprice. Like, right now.

The intuitive formula for pricing “slightly unreasonably high”

“Slightly unreasonably high” is a price point arrived at intuitively. It’s not a hard formula. I define it as above what you’d price your FBA offer at the rest of the year, as you attempt to hit the highest point someone might pay when they really need the benefits of FBA. Such as when there’s a Christmas present riding on it. Sales Rank is the largest factor in knowing how much higher to price. Like I said, this is not a science. I just know the price when I see it after years of trial-and-error.

(Of course, you will never want to go over Amazon’s price. Amazon’s price is always the ceiling.)

One way you learn this type of pricing – and all pricing – is observation and experimentation. Specifically, you want to set your FBA prices when you ship inventory in to Amazon, then watch and see what sells, and how much higher it is than the lowest merchant fulfilled price. Then increasing your FBA pricing until you find you’re sitting on items for six months or more. Then decreasing slightly. You’ll learn this balance over time.

Now, you don’t have time to experiment in the four weeks before Christmas. But it is my belief that any missed sales from pricing too high are more than offset by the increased revenue from your highly-priced offers that do sell.

If you’re not a believer in this pricing formula

…then I have two things to tell you.

First is: Try it.

The second is: You can always lower a price later. But you can’t go back and retrieve lost revenue from a customer later when you realize I’m right.

The important points, revisited

1. Identify all new FBA items in your inventory.
2. Reprice them “slightly unreasonably high.”

Why Your Amazon Repricer May Not Save You For The Holidays

Your automated Amazon repricer (or at least the repricing rules you have set) are (probably) going to be more of a liability than an asset during the holidays.

To modify a statement from above: Don’t be the Amazon seller applying November 20th pricing formulas on November 30th.

What do I do? I reprice my medium-to-high-demand inventory with the expectation it’s all going to sell out fast when Thanksgiving hits. I don’t want to be the Amazon seller with a $20 book with a Best Seller Rank of 30,000 while thousands of Amazon customers would gladly pay me $35 for it.

Like the saying goes: “If it sells too fast, you priced it too low.”

So, just before Thanksgiving (like, the day before), I’m going through all my inventory and repricing every item, one at a time, to a price that is appropriate in an environment that resembles feeding time at a starving piranha tank.

Since your repricer almost definitely can’t pull off the gymnastics required for this (e.g. “price me 10 cents below the 5th lowest FBA offer, if its more than 15% above the lowest four”), you’re going to want to reprice each item in your Amazon inventory manually.

It’s not fun. It’s not fair. But it is mandatory for maximum profits on Amazon during the holidays.

Using Amazon Sales Rank (“BSR”) To Inform Your Holiday Repricing

As always, Amazon Sales Rank (“BSR”) is the largest factor in knowing how much to price. Nothing groundbreaking here.

Expect that something “giftable” (as described above) that has an average Amazon Sales Rank of 100,000 during the rest of the year, is going to have vastly higher demand during the holidays.

Notice I didn’t say that 100,000 ranked book on Amazon is going to have a Sales Rank of 15,000 during the holidays. The Amazon Sales Rank for your inventory won’t increase to scale with the increase demand. Why? Because if sales for everyone on Amazon are going up (or almost everything), then sales rank during the holidays means something completely different.

As a hypothetical to illustrate, if sales for every item on Amazon exactly tripled (exactly), then sales rank would be unchanged. The reason? Amazon Sales Rank is a relative calculation.

Why FBA Sellers Absolutely Own Amazon For The Holidays

There’s a lot of “hype” around Fulfillment By Amazon generally, but I don’t think the role of FBA during the holidays gets enough hype.

Being an FBA seller is essentially mandatory during the holidays for three reasons:

1. Items must arrive by Christmas: Imagine ordering a book on Amazon and getting the “estimated delivery date” they give to Merchant Fulfilled orders, where the arrival date is like 3 weeks out. Then imagine what its like to not have a gift for someone on Christmas. That makes Merchant Fulfilled simply not an option for all but the biggest risk-taking Amazon buyers.

2. Many gifts are given before Christmas: When you factor in friends, coworkers, etc – maybe most gifts are given before Christmas. That increases the urgency for Amazon buyers even more, where is “two to three weeks” delivery estimate isn’t just out of the question, it’s super duper extra out of the question.

3. Customers need trust – and the stake are high: It’s not just delivery time that matters. Amazon buyers need to know they are going to get the exact item they ordered, in the exact condition they ordered it. The trust required is something Amazon buyers only have for Amazon (and by extension: FBA sellers).

These three things conspire to create a nuclear-level explosion for Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) sellers.

Post-Christmas tricks to liquidate unsold Amazon

Once Christmas passes, I have a tactic for Amazon book and media sellers that let you turn inventory that didn’t see sales during Christmas, into cash.

This will work for you when these conditions apply:

1. You sell books
2. You’re an FBA seller
3. You have New condition books in your inventory (or may in the future)
4. You are consistent about repricing your inventory

If you check all four of those boxes, read on….

Understanding why this unsold Amazon inventory trick works

Before I get into this liquidation trick, we have to accept four facts:

1. Sales go crazy during the holidays.
2. Most of what sells are items in New condition.
3. Amazon is the biggest store in the world, and having an item for sale on Amazon is like having shelf space in the world’s biggest shopping destination. I.e. there’s no excuse for it not selling if it has a decent Amazon sales rank.
4. Used condition books sell more than New condition books (I cover this extensively here)

Spoiler: This trick involves taking New condition books and relisting as Used. So this next section is important to understand…

Used condition books sell more than New condition books (seriously)

The #4 item above needs to be highlighted, because its key to understanding why this works. If this is a new concept to you, here’s the outline:

People buy more used condition books from third party sellers than new condition books.

They key detail is “from third party sellers.” New books sell more overall, but only factoring sales direct from Amazon. Third party sellers will always find that used books sell more than books in New condition.

Several factors create this phenomenon, such as:

1. Amazon owning the New condition Buy Box
2. Used books are usually cheaper (which means buyers often don’t even look at New condition books to compare)
3. Used books are functionally the same as Used (unlike other Amazon categories, which carry greater buying risk)

If you have two copies of the same book listed on Amazon, the used book will sell faster most of the time.

That’s the basic premise of the trick that follows….

The trick to liquidate unsold Amazon inventory after Christmas

If you have any books in New condition, that also have reasonably strong demand, and they did not sell over Christmas… that’s a bad sign.

If anyone wants your book, assuming you’re the lowest priced copy, your New items should fly out the door during the holidays.

If you have a New book that does not sell during Christmas, what conclusions can we draw?

Basically, it means hundreds (or thousands) of Amazon customers looked at a product you had for sale, and didn’t buy yours. And assuming your offer was competitively priced, this almost definitely means that they didn’t buy because your book was in New condition.

Which means that not a lot of people even looked at your offer. They just bought Amazon’s.

My post-Christmas unsold Amazon inventory liquidation formula

I take the last few days of every year to do some purging.

I go through and look at any unsold Amazon inventory for which the following apply:

• In New condition.
• Been in my FBA inventory longer than six months.
• Didn’t sell during Christmas.
• That will get me at least a $5 Amazon payout (this part is subjective – pick your minimum payout and factor in removal fees).
• The price difference from New to Used isn’t more than 70%.

Then I create a removal order in Amazon Seller Central, and have these books returned to me.

Then I relist them as Used, and ship them back in to Amazon.

The logic behind this inventory liquidation trick

If you have a New item that didn’t sell over the holidays, that’s a sign you need to step up and bring it back to life.

Basically, this inventory needs the Buy Box.

The Buy Box isn’t everything. But if you have any unsold Amazon inventory with reasonable demand that is 1. Older than 6 months, and 2. Didn’t sell over Christmas,, and 3. In New condition – that’s inventory that needs a push.

And relisting as Used is often the push that brings old FBA inventory back to life.

Guess what I’m doing tonight? Creating fulfillment orders. Lots of them.

Amazon Seller Holiday To-Do List

1. Just before Thanksgiving (and every day after), identify all “giftable” items in your inventory.
2. Reprice them “unreasonably high.”
3. After Christmas, relist your New condition books as Used.

Remember: Egg nog tastes better when your Amazon deposits are so big it feels illegal.

-Peter Valley

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