Profiting From Used Bookstores: An Amazon Seller’s Tutorial

Get My Next Article Via Email

Why used bookstores are secretly one of the best sources of Amazon inventory to resell. Here are the top 5 lessons I’ve learned about finding profit at bookstores.

Video: How I resold a $30 book for $150 (lessons on bookstore sourcing)

What’s the deal with sourcing at used bookstores?

I had a recent $150 sale of an early edition of the Anarchist Cookbook that inspired me to write this guide .Selling a book for $150 is cool, but it’s not eventful enough to write about on its own, but I realized I hadn’t talked enough about how to find books at used bookstores, and reselling them for big profits on Amazon

Here’s the premise of this article in a nutshell:

• Used bookstores are an under-utilized source for Amazon sellers.
• Used bookstore prices do not (always) mirror Amazon prices.
• Used bookstores offer bigger profits on a per-book basis than “normal” sources.
• At the same time, you should expect to spend a lot more per book.

If this sounds interesting, lets profile this recent sale, followed by the top five lessons and tips that will get you the most profit from bookstores.

Case Study: The book I sold on how to do really illegal things

Maybe you’ve heard of The Anarchist Cookbook. A quick Google search will tell you that it’s actually not a fringe title. In fact its sold millions of copies, presumably not to actual anarchists but to people drawn in by the shock value.

Specifically, it’s an A-to-Z guide on doing lots of illegal things, from making booby traps, to b*mb recipes, and more. Here’s a sample from the table of contents:

I was in a small used bookstore, and found this book in the “counterculture” section. It was priced at $30, and sold it within two weeks for $150.

Again, not hugely notable here, but I highlight this because brings to mind some lessons which I’ll get to in a minute.

Two reasons I spotted this book as potentially profitable

1. It was on a really weird subject.
2. It wasn’t cheap (that’s a good thing – more on that in a second).

I think most sellers would have missed this book entirely for the following reasons:

1. They wouldn’t even be sourcing in a bookstore.
2. They would never look up the value of a book without a barcode.
3. They would never pay $30 for a book.

(And those are all good things. It means more for the rest of us).

Let’s bring all these lessons home (and more) with the top five things Amazon sellers should know about sourcing from used bookstores…

Lesson #1: Bookstore prices don’t mirror Amazon prices

It’s very counterintuitive to think that a bookstore could have anything that could be resold for a profit. After all, people who run bookstores are literally experts on used books. Wouldn’t they know what the books are worth?

Couple flaws in this assumption…

One, many bookstores still don’t refer to Amazon when setting prices. They simple don’t recognize Amazon’s legitimacy as the ultimate arbiter of profit (and I respect this stance).

Two, even if they do refer to Amazon for pricing guidance, this is irrelevant to us as sellers, because prices change both significantly, and often. As I’m about to explain…

Lesson #2: Prices for low-demand books can fluctuate dramatically

This is another huge reason bookstores are so profitable: The lower the demand for a book, the less clarity there is on it’s “real” value.

Let’s take a book that is very high demand. Every time it sells, that’s a consumer casting a vote for what that book is worth. If it sells for $10, that’s someone saying “this book is worth $10.” If that book is selling every day, we have lots of data as to how much that book is worth.

Now let’s take a book that is very low demand. Maybe it’s selling twice a year. If you look at the sales history for very low-demand books like this, you’ll often see sales prices that are wildly disparate. A book like this might sell for $20, then after a sale the price jumps to $100, the after another sale it jumps to $150, then back down to $40, and so on. So we have very little data about what the book is truly “worth.”

The books that are going to be the most valuable at used bookstores are usually not the high-demand books. It’s much more common to find books at bookstores with an average rank of worse than 1 million. And bookstore owners have to make an often semi-random or arbitrary guess as to how to price that book – even if they do refer to Amazon.

Remember: Most bookstore owners aren’t referring to Keepa or getting analytical with their pricing. This is good news for Amazon sellers.

Lesson #3: Bookstore prices may reflect Amazon values from years ago

A related point to the one above, but not quite the same: Some books sit on bookstore shelves for years, and this allows even more opportunity for Amazon/retail price disparity. Prices can shift dramatically between the months or years a book was shelved, and when you encounter it.

Let’s say a book has an average rank of 1.5 million. Maybe its selling ever 10 days or so. But that means only one person in the entire country wants that book every 1- days.

If that represents demand across the entire country, wow often do you think the customers of a small bookstore in a small corner of the world are seeking out that title?

This means that books can sit on bookstore shelves for years. And if that book had an Amazon price of $30 at the time it was priced, the Amazon value could have (and probably did) shift dramatically over the years that follow.

Adding to this, another limitation of bookstores over Amazon is that pricing can’t be dynamic. They set the price once (usually in pencil on the first page) and never update that price again.

And these factors allows room for Amazon sellers to profit.

Lesson #4: You have to pay more to make more

Now that you understand why bookstores are profitable, we’re shifting to the tactical.

At bookstores, you’re going to source the opposite way you do everywhere else: You are specifically seeking out more expensive titles.

The vast majority of profit at used bookstores will come from higher-priced books. You can (and should) skip the bargain bins. That’s not where you’ll find the most profit.

Here’s the best way to explain it: There is a vastly greater likelihood of a $30 book selling for $100 on Amazon than a $10 book selling for $30 on Amazon. The value us triple either way, but its simply dramatically less likely to find these pricing disparities with cheaper titles.

Spend more to make more.

Lesson #5: Focus on the weirder niche book sections

No matter where you source books, you’re always looking for the weirder titles, which tend to be the most valuable. But this is especially true at bookstores.

At a library book sale (for example), there are specific categories I’m going to focus on first (such as Business).

These are often the exact categories I’m avoiding at used bookstores. Forget business, forget self help, forget history (or at least save these for last).

Instead, go for the most extremely weird categories you can (and hope the bookstore categorizes their stock very specifically). Think “survival skills” or “conspiracy theories.”

There least profit to be found at bookstores is in the “normal” categories, and the most profit is in the (extremely) weird ones.

Recap: Used bookstores are an overlooked source for Amazon sellers

Let’s recap the basics:

1. Bookstores don’t always refer to Amazon values when setting prices.
2. Amazon prices for books can shirt dramatically after they are priced and shelved.
3. Spend more to make more.

That’s all Amazon sellers need to know to capitalize from this awesome book source.

-Peter Valley

 

Get My Next Article Via Email

Related