Truth vs lies: Here are 4 things most booksellers get wrong about reselling textbooks on Amazon.
Lies Amazon sellers tell themselves about selling textbooks
Here they are: The Top 4 Myths About Reselling Textbooks on Amazon:
Reselling Textbooks Myth #1: Older editions of textbooks don’t sell on Amazon.
This sentiment isn’t objectively wrong (every textbook is different). But asking “Do older editions of textbooks still sell?” is asking the wrong question.
Demand for a textbook on Amazon does not directly correlate with edition. Or to put it a better way: you can determine little about a book’s demand by knowing how many newer editions there are.
The number of new editions of the textbook is simply the wrong data point.
There is only one thing that matters when assessing a book’s demand: It’s Amazon sales rank. Or more accurately, it’s sales rank history. Nothing else matters.If you have the latest edition of a textbook and it’s Amazon sales rank history (as revealed via Keepa or elsewhere) is showing it sells one copy every three months, then it sells one copy every three months. It’s edition is irrelevant.
The sales rank history does not lie.
And if you have the 10 year old 7th edition of a textbook, and the 13th edition was just released, yet Keepa is showing the 7th edition sells on Amazon every three days; that’s all you have to know. It sells every three days.
We cannot possibly know all the trends, economics, and odd forces that contribute to a book’s demand. Maybe Amazon’s algorithm is favoring an older edition in its search results. Maybe Oprah was carrying a copy of Macroeconomics, 2nd Edition (2001) when she was spotted at LAX this week. The fact is, we don’t know anything.
Our assumptions (or more accurately – our superstitions) are irrelevant. All that matters is the data.
Shut off your brain and defer entirely to the data.
Reselling Textbooks Myth #2: Amazon textbook buyers care about condition.
Students care a little about condition, but not that much. Students care a lot less about textbook condition than consumers of other books.
Why?
They’re using the textbook for a few months and never looking at it again. The textbook is an afterthought.
If you’re only shipping in textbooks to Amazon that are Very Good condition or better, or avoiding Acceptable condition, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. It doesn’t matter that much.
Reselling Textbooks Myth #3: Textbooks with cheaper editions of offers elsewhere won’t sell.
As this belief goes, if a textbook on Amazon has a cheaper Kindle edition, cheaper previous edition, cheaper rental option, or cheaper eBay offer: it won’t sell.
So wrong.
This deserves its own post: “this” being people’s habit of using unimportant, extraneous data to make Amazon pricing decisions.
Think of each of these as separate book-buying markets: Kindle, rentals, hard-copy buyers, and eBay buyers. These groups are not without overlap, but there’s not as much overlap as you’d think.
If a textbook buyer is shopping for a Kindle version, you’re shopping for the Kindle version. Price your textbooks on Amazon as though your customers were only looking at that column on that page – ignore rentals, Kindle, older editions, and even the New tab (or Used, as the case may be).
When anyone reselling textbooks gets caught up in these micro-comparisons, it will only cost you profits, and serves to drive prices down for everyone.
Reselling Textbooks Myth #4: Textbooks only sell during August and January.
Aka “textbooks only sell during textbook season.”
This is the big myth. The Great Lie.
Fact is, the sales gap between January/August and the rest of the year has narrowed in the last decade. And I suspect the primary culprit is the rise of higher education courses taken online.
From looking back at my stats over past years, the highs of January/August aren’t quite as high as they used to be. And the lows of the rest of the year aren’t lows at all.The fact is, textbooks sell year round.
Don’t take my word for it. If you don’t believe it, try this:
- Pick any textbook published in the last 5-ish years (to increase the odds the books is still relevant – not because older textbooks don’t sell).
- Put the ISBN into Keepa.
- Click the Amazon Sales Rank tab.
- Zoom out to view stats for 1 year.
Every time you see the line in that graph jump up, that usually means an Amazon sale.
Are you seeing sales taking place that aren’t in January and August? For nearly every book, the answer should be: Yes, lots.
One slightly less inaccurate textbook selling belief
“Textbooks only sell steadily during August and January. “
Again, the above Amazon sales rank history exercise should show that this too is incorrect.
All that happens during textbook season is that Amazon sales go up. This is not to be confused with the absence of sales at other times.
If you’re only sourcing, shipping in, or thinking about textbooks twice a year; you’re forfeiting a ton in profits.
Recap
- Myth #1: Older editions of textbooks don’t sell on Amazon.
- Myth #2: Amazon textbook buyers care about condition.
- Myth #3: Textbooks with cheaper editions of offers elsewhere won’t sell.
- Myth #4: Textbooks only sell during August and January.
-Peter Valley
PS: Everyone wants to know what day in January textbook sales on Amazon peak. I did a quick glance at last year and for me it was the 10th. That would translate to the first Friday after school is back in session. If that holds, you’ll see Amazon sales peak this year on January 8th.
Great article, not to be off topic but which scanfob do you use again Peter? Is it the 2002? Im wanting to buy one but am having a hard time finding one. Thanks
Yes, I use the 2002 I bought years ago and it still works great.
I’ve been using the Socket 8Ci since I started, which you can find on Amazon for about $200 as of this writing. Pricey, but can’t say enough good things about it. Very compact (have it attached to my phone case with Velcro), scans quickly and awesome battery life.
Stephen, I just bought a 2002…used from Amazon, for just over $100 (I think the total was like, $109.) So try Amazon and also eBay. Both sites offer good deals on used ones.
Great article! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Anytime.
Living across from a university one of your ninja text book sourcing tactics? Lol!
Great article Peter. And the blog looks sweet!
Awesome!
Have you done a previous post on how to read Camel Camel? I’m not sure I’m correctly interpreting what I’m seeing when I go there. Any info would be helpful. Thanks!
I haven’t, but this might be worth a future post of its own.
Ditto. Appreciate your help!
Nice article Peter, I still have yet to see the data that textbooks sales for FBA offers are year round demand, even though I am sure that MF offers are regularly in demand if the CCC or Keepa charts data shows it. The problem is, these charts can’t show FBA data, they are selling used book data that is for MF books and FBA books, and from the price line of the graph, (the black line on Keepa) most of those books seem to sell in the range of MF prices. I think we all agree the available data is somewhat nebulous for FBA sales, although the demand may be clearly consistent for sales of the book overall with MF and FBA.
The issue with online courses is that the syllabuses can be available way before the course starts, sometimes even at the time of applying for a course, which can be a month or more ahead. This leaves plenty of time for most students to purchase MF books and receive them on time.
My experience so far has been with only about 600 textbooks so far, I’m sure not any where near your volume, but I have not seen more than a trickle of FBA textbook sales between the Fall and Winter textbook spikes. This limits my cashflow for new purchases during that stretch from spring through summer, although I am planning to be aggressive with using my profits from this season to re-invest. I’m always interested in more info to improve this…Thanks for the webinar last night, it was great.
It’s true that CCC doesn’t show FBA prices, however I don’t see any recent why FBA sales wouldn’t keep the same pace as MF year round. I agree you will see a season sales difference with textbooks, however in my experiences textbooks sell at the same pace as “regular” books year round, instead of being in a slump as many believe. Does that make sense?
The new site format looks good.
I purchased 3 FBM texts from the list Peter sent out as examples of on-line arbitrage, as an experiment. All three sold within a few of weeks (the last one yesterday), for a total profit of about $90. This is something I am going to pursue more, thanks.
The only issues I’ve run into on textbook sales is making sure that any discs, pass codes, etc. are intact, and that other resellers are very aware of their value so there is a lot of competition for them. A lot of courses have assigned reading books that are not large-format textbooks, and that are often passed over or missed by other sourcers who are focusing on “Big Book” textbooks. These texts are often for more niche, specialized classes, especially in the soft sciences. Those yellow “USED” stickers on the spine of such smaller trade paperbacks (as seen in Peter’s photo above) are a good tip-off that they were previously sold by a college textbook store and are often profitable.
I bought a huge lot of veterinary textbooks in great condition from a student who dropped out of vet school through Craisglist, and almost all sold with really good markups outside the August & January months, so I’d agree that texts are not as seasonal as people think. I generally set such texts at a higher markup, as Peter has suggested in other columns, rather than increasing the price before semesters begin. I usually get that higher price throughout the year, if not, I’m content to wait.
Awesome insights. Being “content to wait” is where the money is.
Love the clean site look Peter. This article was timely for me. I’m just sending some new FBA shipments in, based on your tips and tricks. Mike’s story was interesting as well.
Thanks Man
Tony
You may be right that most students don’t care about condition, but some do. Just like you segregated kindle, new and used into separate categories for pricing purposes, books in very good condition with unmarked pages, from reputable sellers, can be segrated into their own category for pricing purposes. That presumes that the seller inspects books carefully enough to say with certainty that the pages are unmarked. Just flipping through the pages isn’t good enough. I inspect textbooks page by page, and I find markings in a lot of textbooks that I initially thought were clean based on a flip through the pages. Sellers who don’t inspect books carefully enough get some negative feedback as a result of their carelessness. So textbooks in very good condition, with unmarked pages, from sellers whose feedback indicates that they do careful inspection, is a category by itself for pricing purposes.
Sellers who don’t do careful inspection, and whose feedback reflects that, can never become aware of this category because it is unavailable and invisible to them. Sure sellers can list in VG and like new, but if students who care about condition don’t trust a seller based on their feedback, it doesn’t matter what condition such a seller says their books are in. Such a seller may think that condition doesn’t matter for pricing purposes. Meanwhile, there are students who ignore multiple FBA copies listed in VG and like new condition from disreputable sellers priced in the $20-30 range, and buy my VG copy for $50.
True that I don’t do much volume because careful inspection takes a lot of time. From a purely monetary perspective, it makes more sense to list fast and do higher volume, and take a feedback hit for it. However, when you do that, you will remain unaware of the small subset of students who do care about condition, and who look carefully at both condition notes and seller feedback.
– Vincent
I like the new site design!
Peter,
Good stuff. I have only been into hardcore textbook flipping a year so I dont have the amount of data you do but the main thing that has surprised me is that august and january are not quite as robust as I thought and the rest of the year is better. So, in my limited experience I would agree with you on that point.
I had not thought of the online courses aspect. I am not sure why I didnt think of that. I can tell you that my theological textbooks especially sell well year round. There are a lot of online students in Bible colleges. I always wondered why my theological textbooks sold so well year round. Mystery solved. Thanks.
Another factor could be that not all schools are on the two semester pattern. I googled and found a web site that lists all the schools on the tri-semester system and the quarters system. The tri-semester schools are mostly niche schools like mortuary, chiropractor, etc. There are quite a few schools that are on quarters system. Seems to be very prevalent in California.
Thanks for your research.
Niche schools are a big driver of sales. Great point.
Scary thought (forgive me if someone mentioned this here already):
What if the sales you are seeing recently in-between the two “seasons” are from arbitrage? Any of these sales should not only be discounted, but are actually the worst kind, because they are guaranteed to be competition (they will be listed for resale for sure). So they are giving a false sense of the true demand.
I have to keep this in mind when I do book arbitrage on books with marginal ranks. All the sales I see in October are likely from my own buying.
Good point, though it’s hard to see people buying books to resell as putting a dent in the overall demand when you consider the ratio of booksellers sourcing online to students.
I only have pre-paid internet connection on a tablet. How does Scanfob work? Does it download a data file, or does it do a live session?
I want start selling books soon. Please be kind in your answers, I live in “poordom”, and I’m trying to get out. Thank you.
The Scanfob is just the scanner that lets you scan a barcode. There are two scanning aps that let you download data, and more that give real-time results.
Dear Peter, Thank you. I appreciate you and all the terrific info you have shared with us.
I have a Fire Phone and a KDC200 and stuck on how to get these to work together. No Google Play on the phone even though I’m told it’s an android, but even if it is, don’t know if that matters or not. Anyway, I would really like to start scanning efficiently since I work a full time job and can basically only scan on my lunch hour at nearby thrift stores. Any advice?
I’m not familiar with those devices but maybe someone here knows?
Hi,
Did they do away with showing the sales rank of books? Every book I look up shows a
Features & details & Product Information page, WITHOUT sales rank.
Ex: if I look up an Emeril Lagasse’s book, I get…
About this item
Product Information
PublisherOxmoor HousePublication
dateOctober 6, 2015
languageEnglish
Product Dimensions9.2 x 1 x 10.2 inches
Shipping Weight2.9 pounds
Book length304ISBN-100848744780
ISBN-13978-0848744786
Still showing sales rank for me.
I goofed. I poked around their website, and found out that I was looking at their mobile website. Once I changed the view to full site, it showed the sales rank. Thank you.
can only be done if you’re book list has been given to you. a0Compare prices and coendisr renting your textbooks to save you money. Getting your textbooks early will give you an opportunity to do some extra