If you sell books online then you know that back to school season is a great time for us.  Students are always looking for a bargain.  I have hundreds of academic books and a decent amount of current textbooks so I sell my fair share this time of year.  Now that we are at mid-September the textbook season is winding down and textbook return season is starting up.  This is the time of year when I have the most returns. 

 Students drop classes or buy the wrong edition or no longer want their books for any number of reasons.  So this time of year is is important for us to cintinue to implement excellent customer service when handling returns.  If somebody buys a book and there is something “wrong” with it and they want to return it I accept it and provide a full refund (including shipping).  If a person decides they no longer need the book I accept a return and refund the purchase price but not the shipping.  This is my simple policy and I have never had an issue with a buyer. 

There is almost never a case when I do not accept returns – most markets require you to accept them (see Amazon’s A-Z policy).  I keep my return policy simple.  The only time I have not accepted a return is when a significant amount of time has passed between the purchase date and the return date or if the books condition is materially different from when I sold it (such as full of highlighting).  Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the customer experience when I run a business from home and do not interact with the customers.

The question isn’t if you should collect sales tax because that is impossible to do on most sites except eBay.  Trying to collect sales taxes would kill sales if you are the only one doing it.  Now – I am not a lawyer or accountant so I will simply tell you what I do – which is to pay my states sales taxes.

Some states do not require you to pay sales taxes on online business but I know where I live requires it.  So I pay the few hundred dollars a year.  I hate doing it (though my wife handles figuring out what I owe which is the most frustrating part).  I don’t do it to be moral or anything but I do it because I am running a business and do not want to jeopardize my bookselling business by cutting corners.  I don’t do mental gymnastics over this decision – I just keep it simple and cut the check to the state and I have no worries.  I did my research about whether I need to pay and that was that.

If you sell books online check with your accountant ( if oyou have one) or go to your states website and start doing your research – or just ignore it and hope you have no reason to be concerned

We are less then a month away from one of the busiest times fo the year fro online booksellers.  All the college kids are going back to school soon and looking to save money on books (for more beer maybe).  If you have not alreay – now is the time to stock up on shipping supplies.

If you sell remainders (there are some that specialize in universtity presses) the text book season is when they move – so you could find some titles to buy in preparation for the school year.  Try Great Jones for academic books – the margins on these are not great but if you can find a good title to buy in bulk in might be worth it.

Also – be prepared for lots of questions if your listings are not complete.  Make sure you properly list what edition text book you are selling and if it has highlighting, underlining or margin notes – I make it the first thing in the item description.  Do not sell international editions (or if you do be prepared to be banned by eBay and Amazon as it is against their terms).

More on textbook season soon

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.

I received an email today from A1Books asking me to list my books on their site.  I never really considered listing my books on A1 before as I viewed them as a competitor.  A1 has thousands of books for sales on Amazon and they are priced low (and their seller rating is lousy).  Something about listing my books on their site just bugged me plus I did not like their fee structure.

A few years have passed since I last even thought of them as a marketplace which show a lack of diligence on my part.  I should always be looking for new venues. I need to start looking around to see if the fee structures and traffic have improved at other marketplaces – I am annoyed with myself for not looking. I generally focus on growing my inventory.

I am not sure if A1Books gets much traffic but given that they are not charging a monthly fee to list (like the crappy Abe Books) then I figure A1Books is worth a shot.  I will let you know if I get any sales.

I will also give some feedback on other marketplaces and take a look at their fee structures in some future posts.

If you are interested in selling on A1Books you can click here to go to A1Books.