How to Start Your Own Online Book Business: Chapter Two

Okay, here it is. I published Chapter One of How to Start Your Own Online Book Business last week, and promised future installments for those interested. I recounted how I fell into the online used book business. So I guess the next, and most important, thing to cover is: where to get your inventory.

Well, the used book business is not like the new book business. You don't order inventory from a publisher. (Although those who run a new online book business do.) Part of the reason there's money to be made in this business is the ratio of low cost of goods to high sale price.

A book you pay a quarter for today can be sold for $10, $20, $30 tomorrow. It happens. That doesn't mean that every book will sell for those kinds of prices. Some will go for much less ( a few dollars), some for a lot more (a hundred dollars). I paid $1 for a book once, then turned around and sold it for $110. But that's the exception.

My inventory came from yard sales, library sales, Goodwill, The Salvation Army Thrift Store, and other places where used books are sold. Sometimes I'd buy a box of paperbacks for $5 at a yard sale, then turn around that afternoon and sell them individually, making $100 in the process.

But there is a learning curve. In the beginning, you'll buy a book, and it will sit on the shelf collecting dust for a year. It's only as you sell over a period of time that you learn what sells and what doesn't. You learn from your mistakes.

And for that reason, it's best to do as I did, and start small. Start with an inventory of 10 to 20 books, list them, see which ones sell, and then go out and buy more of the titles that did sell, and more of the genre that sold well. Chapter Three coming soon...

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