Well, selling books on Amazon can be quite tricky but is also one of the best and trusted platforms to start selling online. Starting your own business takes a lot of time to gain the trust of the customers. But Amazon has already gained trust of millions of customers across the world. So, selling books on Amazon can be of great profit and without any money to spend in any offline stores.
In this article you will get to know about ‘How to sell books on Amazon?’ It is not necessary to spend a lot of money in this process, instead one can even start their business through selling their old books on Amazon.
Selling Books on Amazon is Beneficial
After making a library of your read books, one always feels to replace or sell some of it. So, if you have some Dan Brown collection, or Manga books, some amazing fantasy books, etc., then you can earn some quick bucks out of it through Amazon. This can be the most healthy of earning something out of your niche collection.
But before starting all these, some points like FBA, FBM, professional or individual sellers, etc are there to be kept in mind. So, there are some third-party sellers gaining profits from Amazon and among those booksellers make the most out of it. Reselling books on Amazon can be done through various categories.
FBM
Fulfillment By Merchant is the method where one chooses to pick, pack, and ship the book themselves. First they create a listing on Amazon and ship it through their own carrier service. It is preferred to use only when you are having a store to operate it from and the costs of shipping the orders are less than Amazon.
FBA
Fulfillment By Amazon is the method where Amazon handles all the picking, packing and shipping of the books with a particular sum of charges. On your behalf, Amazon takes care of the customer service. So, the money you were going to spend in pickling, packing shipping will be paid to Amazon and will be handled perfectly. If you have a lot of orders to fulfil and your total cost exceeds the FBA fees, then better go for this option as there is availability of shipping Amazon Prime customers faster.
Best-Seller- Ranking System is the method where Amazon gives a BSR ranking to a product. The lower the products BSR is, the higher are the chances of that product being sold. It’s like if a particular book makes one BSR rank, then that book can sell multiple copies in a day. On the contrary, if a book has thousands of BSR rankings then it can take weeks in even selling a single copy.
Finding the right book which will actually make a sale on Amazon is pretty easy and an important thing to do.Where one doesn’t want to waste time in listing books which do not have scope of a sale. Well here the Best Seller Ranking plays its parts clearing the clutter.
INDIVIDUAL/ PROFESSIONAL SELLER
Individual Sellers are those who sell less than 40 products per month on Amazon. Those who sell on Amazon just for the sake of passive income or as a hobby then it is recommended to those people. Professional Sellers are those who sell more than 40 products per month as they have different fees than individual sellers.
INVENTORY
Selling your own books can be one way starting on Amazon but there is another one can find an arbitrage. You can always find sites selling used books at prices lower than that of Amazon so that you can raise the price above that and gain from it. This is what online arbitrage is for, where from another site, wait for its arrival and then list it on Amazon. Another option can be of Wholesale marketing where books can be bought at quite a low price in bundles.
Tips And Tricks
- By setting the product price lowest at the listing of Amazon, one will actually make sales out of it immensely.
- As earlier discussed above, the lower the BSR higher are the chances of your book being sold. So, if the BSR is higher than two hundred thousand then the book will piled up not making any sales.
- If you find an inventory and not have enough to spend time and money on packing, shipping and all that, then FBA can be the best option. As everything will be handled by Amazon itself.
- Selling Textbooks can be quite profitable where students are mostly active during the exam times and buy books at the last minute. So, you can buy a textbook from the local market and resell it on Amazon with a little higher price from what you have bought it at.
- Buying a large bundle of books and selling it at the time of sale is also one of the great options one can opt. But a large sum of money should be invested at the initial stage. As soon as you grow from selling the dust of your house and making profits, the obvious;ly you can buy more and resell it.
Listing of the Inventory
This can be done quite easily without creating an entirely new listing page by actually going on the product page of the book you want to sell. Inventory can automatically be scanned or can be typed manually by putting the ISBN number of the book on the search panel. The book listing can be done in a total of five conditions on Amazon.
- NEW: It is obvious that the book condition should totally be new without any dents or damage. It should be unopened and wrapped with original tags if there is any.
- LIKE NEW: This states that the book is absolutely new with no original tags available. There is just a slight difference between Like and New, so it’s better to keep the book in a new listing in order to gain more profits.
- VERY GOOD: Books under this category are in a very good condition with a very small time usage. There are no pen marks or damages in the book and is perfect in every way possible.
- GOOD: In this the book may have pen marks or a slight damage and dents in it. But overall it is in a completely fine condition where mostly all readers end at this point and rarely goes to the next step.
- ACCEPTABLE: The book can be not so in a good condition, with a huge amount of dents and pages worn out at the corners. This is the least acceptable condition for book nerds as they rarely buy books that are just acceptable with evidence of its usability. Plenty of buyers avoid buying books at this condition, so caution should be taken before listing your book in order to avoid negative seller feedback.
So, it often happens that readers buy books that are in good condition but finds some ink marks in it. They tend to get quite angry and give inferior ratings. At such points it is better to refund the money in order to avoid negative feedback as a seller. After that you can change the product listing of your book from what it was before in order to avoid any further such situations.
