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.

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.