Setting up your website and getting your inventory on it is not that diffucult. Amazon, eBay and Chrislands all offer to set up site for you. I think eBay's Prostores are the best. The hard part is making sure the buyer has a good experience and that you are building your brand as a quality bookseller. This takes content. Don't just list your books - tell your story, tell about the books, the authors, talk about different genres - anything that will get people coming back to your site. All of this is time consuming and hard work but neccesary. Throwing your inventory up on your own website will be a waste of time and money if you do not do it right which may mean spending even more money to hire third parties to help. Continue reading

Book scouting with a PDA and a Scanner have become the norm for most booksellers. This means that anyone with a scanner is subscribing to some service which provides them with the data on the book prices. All of these services are subscription based and charge a monthly fee. There are many companies offering the scouting service so which one to get? I have used a few of them and generally lean towards the least expensive service that seems to not have too many people complaining about their service. Continue reading

Yes (and no). If you are just starting out in selling books online hold off in buying some expensive package of a PDA with a scanner and a monthly subscription to a service like Scoutpal. You may get all gung-ho about your new venture of selling books and go out and spend hundreds of dollars on an PDA set-up. Slow down.... you will eventually want to get a scanner but before doing so make sure you have some of the basics of online bookselling down first. Get a feel for the process of listing books you already have and dealing with the shipping side of the business before you invest larger sums into your business. Continue reading

Where on-line booksellers get their inventory is on of their most closely guarded secrets. If someone discloses where they get their books on a forum they are flamed by all the other booksellers - the comments with all their vitriol are hilarious. The funny thing is all these booksellers get their books from the same places for the most part- such as library sales Continue reading

Abebooks - I don't get them and now they do not get me as I have closed my seller account with them. Their fees and commissions are nuts for the average seller of books. Maybe they think they are Amazon or eBay and can get away with the higher fees. After the monthly fees and the per sale commission coupled with low volume they were getting closed to 50% on every book sold. Continue reading