Let me start by stating that eBay is a terrible place for booksellers to buy inventory (great for selling books though). BUT… if you are desperate there are potentially a few ways to get inventory on eBay.

Arbitrage – there are certain titles that regularly sell for hundreds of dollars (even $1,000′s) on eBay such as Margin of Safety by Seth  Klarman.  I have bought this title for a few hundred bucks and listed for $1050 and sold it at best offer for $900 a few times – making a decent profit after commissions.  Plus it generally sells fast.  This works if you have the cash to tie up in one book.  There are likely dozens of more books that you can arbitrage if you do your homework.

Bulk Lots – Be very careful here.  Do not buy books by the pound or anything like that.  Don’t buy boxes (or gaylords) of books that are “unsorted” any decent bookseller could fill up one of these without sorting the books.  You can find people selling their online inventory and closing up shop.  These sellers will have spreadsheets of their inventory available for you to review – if they do not then take a pass.

You can have eBay send you emails of your favorite searches – I have them send me an email every time Margin of Safety comes up for sale.

There are also certain sellers who have pristine feedback that often have large (dozens of boxes) for sale and these lots really are “unsorted” but I do not like the randomness of it.  You will have to do your homework here.

This is not going to be  a long post because eBay just does not provide great opportunities for booksellers to find inventory – though if you slog through it you may come up with some winners.

Friends of Library Sales are starting to peak now (with the exception of this weekend).  If going to book sales and elbowing people is your thing now is the time to map out your calendar – check out www.booksalefinder.com – to find your local sales. 

I don’t go to book sales much anymore but you can slowly build up your inventory by going to them.  The downside to Friend of Library sales is that they are overrun with other booksellers with their scanner many of whom work in teams.  I would often see people running into the sale and indiscriminately  scooping up armfuls of books  and putting them into bags then running to a blanket where there partner is and doing it again.  There would be no selection process – just a mad rush which would mean if you were not on of the first on line you find many books gone (and piled up on someones blanket).

I remember one sale where someone had hundreds of books piled up on a blanket after they had run like crazy through the sale – at the end of it they had hundreds of discards left laying on the grass in a pile after they had scanned them all.  Me – I would be happy to leave with 30 good books.

I hate having to get to the sales 90 minutes early to get a decent place online.  When you get in there is barely any space to move let alone put your books down.  God forbid if the place where the sale was used air conditioning too.  Also – many sales will cherry pick some titles out and put them online themselves.

This has turned into a big gripe on library sales but let me back up and restate that you can find books at them and often find some treasures at them that make it all worthwhile.  I found some rare physics texts that sold for hundreds of dollars at one sale.  These books were sitting there well after the intial mad rush but had been bypassed because they were old  (from the early sixties and pre-isbn)

Anyway – if Friend of Library sales are your thing then Good Luck and Good Hunting.

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.

Prices generally range from $9.95 a month for Scoutpal to $50 a month .  There are likely other services which are even more expensive.  There is not really a lot different between all the services – they get their pricing info from the same place – Amazon.  They all show you sales ranks and condition.  Some provide a downloadable database (which is great) of the price info so you do not need an internet connection.

My recommendation is go with Scoutpal – they have good service and the info they provide is the same as everyone elses.  Why would you pay more for something that is the same?  I was paying $30 a month for ASellerTool and they were great – early on I had a bunch of questions and they responded asap but eventually I realized I was just paying them an extra $20 a month for no reason. 

If you are new to online bookselling do not pre-pay for a whole year of a scouting service regardless of the discount.  You could end up with a service you do not want and be stuck to it.  It is not hard to switch services so shop around first but start at the lower price point and see if it fits your needs first.

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. 

 The short version of this post would be don’t make larger investments in your business until you are sure it is something you are going to commit to.

The majority of online booksellers will need to eventually get a scanner and a handheld especially if your main inventory sources are places talked about in the previous post.  There are several experienced guys at every sale I go to (always first in line) who do not use scanners and do not deal with the general stock at the sales.  They go straight to the antiquarian books and are very knowledgeable.  They work at brick and mortar stores that specialize in first editions and other niches.  Scanners are of no use to them and they always leave sales with plenty of books.  If you are going to specialize in a specific niche and really know your stuff then you can likely save the expense of a scanner (and the monthly subscription fees).

I have a Dell Axim with a scanner that I no longer use and I cancelled my subscription to my scouting service.  I no longer need them though I am still a full time online bookseller.  I just have different sources of inventory where I no longer need to go to library sales. 

I found having a scanner and scout service were invaluable for the time I used them.  They helped me make thousands of dollars by finding books I had no idea were valuable and they also saved me much money by helping me avoid books I thought were good.  If you are in the market for a PDA and a scanner shop around on eBay first before buying a package from one of the scout services – you will be able to save a bunch of money that way.  I will talk about some of the scout services in a future post.

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. 

If you do your homework you can find many sources of books that are not as widely used.  I am not going to disclose all my sources (I do that in my book which is linked over to the right under products I recommend) but here are some obvious places to find books to sell on-line:

• Library Sales – you and everyone else will be at these.  Go early, line up and run like you just been called down on the Price is Right.  You can find lots of stuff at these but to be honest I almost never go to library sales any more.  Too much hassle.
• Craigslist – put up an ad saying you buy books
• Goodwill, Salvation Army and all the thrift stores.
• Yard, Garage and Estate Sales
• Your friends, family and yourself.

None of the above are too big a secret but they can be a start for slowly growing you inventory.  The problem I have with all of them is there is too much uncertainty as to what type of books you will find.  I have stood in line for a few hours (with a hundred other people) at a library sale, paid my $10 -$15 bucks to get in only to find tons of paperbacks.  I guess using the above as my book sources is just too inefficient for me.

In future posts I will discuss some other options (some I have advertised on this site) and also talk about how to make the most of the above sources.