What to know about “Amazon Warehouse Deals” – often the biggest competitor for Amazon textbook sellers
Amazon Warehouse Deals: An Amazon seller’s biggest competitor?
As I write this, Amazon sellers are in the middle of “textbook season.”
This is my second year in a row making more in the two weeks after Christmas, than the two weeks before. How is this possible?
There is big money selling textbooks on Amazon. And when you’re listing textbooks to sell on Amazon, you’ll often notice your biggest competitor is something called “Amazon Warehouse Deals.”
If you’re an Amazon bookseller, you’ll notice they dump a TON of textbooks on the market each year. Especially during textbook season.
Amazon can make it very difficult to compete on some titles. Often they will have a dozen or more of the same title, meaning that unless the book has a very strong Amazon Sales Rank (“BSR”), you either need to match their price or “hold out until they sell out.”
What is “Amazon Warehouse Deals”?
AWD is Amazon’s used, damaged, and returned product liquidation arm. If something gets dinged at an FBA warehouse, or a customer returns it, or its a stranded item that an FBA seller abandons, etc – it ends up listed for sale by Amazon Warehouse Deals.
And as I said, they sell a tons of textbooks.
The prevailing theory is that AWD titles are the castaways for Amazon’s textbook rental program, which is handled by an outside company called Noram International. Whatever excess falls into Amazon’s possession is liquidated through Amazon Warehouse Deals.
How to compete with with AWD
Like I said, they dump a ton of textbooks on the market each year.
In my opinion, they price their books far lower than is necessary, to the dismay of Amazon booksellers. One would think that with all the sales data and algorithims at their disposal, they would price optimally for the FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) environment, and always price at the highest amount the market can bear. Generally, they price way below that.
As with any Amazon competitor, it never pays to play the lowball seller’s game.
Hold out until they sell out, and the next sale is yours.
-Peter Valley
Peter,
Please explain why “always price only $3.99 higher” is short sighted? Are you saying that one should aim much higher?
That’s essentially my point. When books are well ranked, FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) sellers can command much higher prices and don’t need to chase the top spot.