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.

Selling Books on Ebay is a little different than selling books on Amazon.  One of the great things about selling books on Ebay is the flexibility you have over promoting your listings.  I have an Ebay Seller Store (not a ProStore) and here are some of the tools I use to maximize it:

• Flexible Shipping Costs – for my expensive books I provide Free Shipping.  This might catch a buyers eye and help with the seller scores Ebay has plus it does not really eat into profits.
• Sales Tool – I use the markdown manager to offer discounts on certain books (up to 250 at one time).  Again the listing reflects that the book is “on sale” and might help get the potential buyer to actually buy.
• International Shipping – is much easier on Ebay then the other marketplaces since you can charge the actual shipping cost and not just a flat fee like Amazon.  I allow for international shipping for most of my books on Ebay.
• Photos – Many of my older books do not have stock photos.  I can’t say a photograph them all and upload them to my listings but I do provide photos on request.  You can also state in your listing that you will provide them
• Best Offer – This feature is the best.  Everyone loves getting a great deal and Best Offer allows them to.  Best Offer helps sell some of my more expensive inventory or some of my more esoteric academic/religious texts.  I find students always use Best Offer.  This provides me flexibility to either wait for the full asking price or if I want to sell for the lower offer if I want the cash flow.  There is no cost to offering Best Offer.

The only major concern I have with Ebay is the monthly costs which can add up with the per book fee.  I do not list my full inventory on Ebay because of this and I still find how they charge sellers to be difficult to follow. 

Also – the inability to leave neutral or negative feeback to a buyer makes no sense.  I have never left either for a buyer but it was nice to know I could if a buyer was being completely unreasonable.