Q&A: Do I owe income tax on the used books I've sold on Amazon.com?

QUESTION: I'm a part-time "hobby" seller of used books on Amazon. Do I need to pay income tax on the sales I had in 2005?

ANSWER: Yes, you are required to pay federal income tax and self-employment tax on your net income from selling used books online, whether you sold them on Amazon, eBay, Half.com, ABE, Alibris, or any other venue.

Since you don't have an employer reporting your bookselling income and withholding a portion for taxes, you must inform the IRS about it yourself. It makes no difference that you consider your bookselling a "hobby." If you're making a profit, the IRS considers it a business, and wants its cut.

I'm assuming you won't be incorporating your business, so you'll need to report your bookselling income as a "sole proprietorship" on the long tax form, IRS Form 1040, Schedule C, "Profit or Loss From Business."

You can report your self-employed income using the personal editions of TurboTax or TaxCut software. These programs can save you lots of time, since they give instructions in plain English instead of the bewildering jargon of IRS instruction manuals.

If you made a profit during 2005 from bookselling, you'll also owe some state income tax for that, so I'd also recommend you also use the state version of TurboTax or TaxCut to figure your state tax obligation.

To complete your tax return, you'll need to account for every transaction involving your book business. If you're not already doing so, keep all your receipts and records, and put your expenses into categories such as "postage," "shipping supplies," "books," and so on. This is the information that will go on your Schedule C.

Next year, don't wait this long to get your affairs in order. With self-employed income, you're supposed to estimate your tax obligation during the year, and make quarterly payments on your profits, submitted with Form 1040-ES, by April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 of the following calendar year. Since you didn't do this during 2005, you may owe a penalty for late tax payments. If you were expecting a tax refund this year, it may be smaller than you thought.

For next year, I'd recommend you have a separate checking account to track expenses and income from your bookselling. If your bank enables you to download your transactions into Quicken or another personal-finance program, you can automatically categorize expenses such as "postage," etc., in Quicken. And next year you can transfer this same data into your tax-prep software. This will greatly lessen your bookeeping chores next year, and also give you a handy tool for examining the performance of your book business.

"Small Time Operator" is a great reference book on the legal and tax implications of self employment.

Q&A: How can I sell textbooks online for the best price?

QUESTION: I'm in unfamiliar territory. I'm working for someone who has about 1,000 textbooks she purchased at workshops. The books are like new, on various topics like family, children, organization and health. We're not a large enough organization to try and sell these on Amazon or eBay. How can I find out how much the books are worth? Are there companies or bookstores that would purchase them all? It would probably be lucrative to sell them on Amazon if we had the time and resources to do all the shipping and tracking that is needed.

ANSWER: My sense is you want to get the best price for the books but don't want to commit lots of time to selling them. Let's go over your options, and the advantages and drawbacks of each:

-- Selling the books on Amazon Marketplace.

If the financial return is important, selling your books on Amazon is my first recommendation. This would produce the most cash, by far -- you would earn two to three times as much money as any other option. Of course the drawback is the time involved in shipping the books and dealing with customers, as you've mentioned.

-- Trading your books in at a local store.

The easiest option may be to trade your books in at a used bookshop for different books as store credit. Stores may give you 25 percent to 50 percent credit toward something else in the store, but usually won't pay cash for your books.

-- Donating your books to a charity or "Friends of the Library" group. If the financial return is not important, consider donating the books to a local library or charity, who may be willing to pick them up. You can get a tax deduction for donating books. Books donated in this way are often resold to the public, providing much-needed cash for libraries and charities to fund their operations.

-- Selling the whole collection on eBay.

Another option is for you to sell the whole collection as a bulk lot in the "wholesale" section of eBay. This could be a quick way for your to unload your books. You could ship the whole collection to the winning bidder via Postal Service Media Mail (book rate), which is fairly cheap. However, if you don't already have a track record as an eBay seller, you might have trouble attracting bids on the auction.

I would not recommend selling the books individually on eBay for a variety of reasons. The prices would be lower, on average, than you would get at the fixed price on Amazon, and eBay customers are notoriously high-maintenance -- meaning constant e-mails, questions, etc. In the past, eBay's Half.com subsidiary was a viable alternative to Amazon Marketplace, but isn't being actively promoted.

-- Textbooks buyback brokers.

One other option for selling used academic books has become popular recently -- online book resellers who offer cash for your books. A number of these companies are targeting college students who want a convenient way to dispose of their old textbooks. The students want some money for their books, but don't want the hassle of selling them. If you do a Google search on "sell my textbooks" or something similar, you'll see their advertisements on the right-hand side of Google's regular search results.

These companies ask you to type in the ISBNs of your books. If your book is on their "buy" list, they'll quote the price they're willing to pay you. If you accept the offer, they'll send you a postage-paid mailer. My hunch has always been that these book-buyback services must pay far below a book's true value, and I recently confirmed it with a little experiment.

I tested one of the most popular textbook-buying services to see exactly how much they'd pay for a list of current texts. I got quotes for five recent social-sciences college texts, and compared them to the price on Amazon Marketplace. The textbook-buyback service offered to pay $152.20 for the five books -- but the price for used copies of those books on Marketplace totalled $344.40.

So my point is, for a bit more trouble than selling your books to an online buyback service, you can sell them yourself for twice as much. I'm not arguing that these textbook resellers are doing anything unethical, they're providing a service some people want. But their advertising and profit must come from somewhere, and it's coming from their markup on your books.

Before you make a final decision, you might consider listing a few of the books on Amazon Marketplace, just to test the waters. Selling your books this way may less of a hassle than you expect. It's a pretty simple process to set up a seller account on Amazon. They'll charge you a 15 percent commission plus a 99-cent fee on each sale. If you don't have any sales, you won't pay anything. The other major online venue, eBay, has a lower commission structure, but you must pay some fees before you begin selling.

To sell a book on Amazon, you just type in the ISBN (the 10 digit number near the barcode on the back of the book) to reach the book's product page. Then look on the right for the "sell yours here" button. The process is self-evident from there. Compared to eBay, Amazon is very low maintenance. You rarely ever hear from a customer unless you forget to send the book or make a mistake filling an order.

Q&A: I'm losing money selling books on Amazon and eBay. What's the problem?

QUESTION: I've been selling used books online at eBay and Amazon Marketplace for two months. I've sold about 50 books but haven't made a profit, in fact I've lost money. Is it my inventory or something else? Should I use Scoutpal when I buy?

ANSWER: When you say you've lost money, I'm assuming that you're still trying to cover the cost of the books you bought for resale, and when you sell more books you'll be in the black.

It does take a while to get up to speed with buying and selling used books because the whole process is counter-intuitive. When you start, the books you assume will be good to have in your inventory (very popular bestsellers) generally turn out to be the losers. That's because these books are plentiful at garage sales, yard sales, etc., and they are available for pennies on Amazon through hobby sellers.

On the other hand, the books you'd think nobody in the world would want turn out to be the winners, because they're scarce -- like "How to Make a Snowshoe out of Toothpicks." (I made that title up, but you get the idea.) You'll get a knack for recognizing scarce and out-of-print books after some months.

Are you a book lover at heart? If so, you'll find this a lot easier and fun. If you're a music lover instead -- or a film buff -- maybe you'd be better off concentrating on those products. But if you truly enjoy being around books, I'm sure you'll get the hang of this.

And it may be that you need to find some better sources for your stock. For example, when I first started selling used books online, I was lucky enough to find a local charity where I could buy boxes and boxes of used college textbooks for $10 a box. Lots of those books turned out to be worthless, and I'd throw them in the dumpster or donate them to my local library. But there was alwasy one or two surprises in every box worth $25 or maybe even $75 -- and a few books more worth $8 or $10.

Looking at all those losers taught me how to judge books in a hurry. So after some years of selling used books full time, I've gotten to the point where I'm willing to pay $10, $20, and in a few cases $30 for a book, if I have a really good idea what I can sell it for. And I usually aim to triple my money in a case like that. But I recommend for people starting to limit it to $2 or $3 per book. Why? It's a great way to learn how to pick books. Handling lots of books will teach you which books tend to be profitable.

Scoutpal and the other cellphone price-lookup services are great to use -- after you've got your foundation built. First, you have to develop your own sense of books. You need your own "sixth sense" of extraordinary books, just to know when to look up the price, by typing in the ISBN through Amazon Web Services. Trial and error will teach you this, and later on you can use the gee-whiz technology to build on your success.

Q&A: Do I need to pay state sales tax on books I sell online through Amazon or eBay?

QUESTION: I know users of eBay and PayPal can collect sales tax on their online sales. Is this necessary? It seems very few sellers do. And there doesn't appear to be a way to collect sales tax when I sell on Amazon Marketplace.

ANSWER: If you live in a state where sales tax is charged on retail purchases, you are responsible for paying sales tax to your state's tax department for your online sales. However, you pay sales tax only on transactions with buyers in the state where you reside -- you don't pay tax for books shipped outside your state.

To pay the tax, you’ll need to open an account with your state's Tax Department. As part of this process, you'll receive a "resale license." In some states this is called a "resale number" or "sales tax certificate." So this will add to your bookeeping chores, but there are benefits. For example, in obtaining a resale license, your state is recognizing you as a legitimate business, and you will *not* have to pay state sales tax on the books and other supplies you purchase to run your bookselling business.

Also, a resale license will enable you to more easily open accounts with used and new book wholesalers -- if should you ever decide to expand your business and go that route. Nowadays, most wholesalers require you to provide proof of a resale license before you can open an account with them, whether you are purchasing wholesale books, CDs, DVDs, or any other type of merchandise for resale.

Also, most used bookshops will give you a 10 percent or 20 percent "dealers discount" when you buy books there -- if you show your resale certificate.

Again, you don’t collect state sales tax on books you ship to people with addresses outside your state. This is because Internet sales (as well as fax, telephone, and mail-order sales) aren't subject to sales tax unless you have a physical presence in that other state -- meaning an office or warehouse.

In some states, shipping and handling fees are not subject to sales tax, but in some they are -— you will need to investigate the issue for your home state.

Some state governments have been trying to start a new system to collect sales tax on all online sales. Under this scenario, known as the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP), you would have to pay sales tax on books you shipped to customers outside your state. But it will be years before anything like this is enacted, since it's being fought vigorously be the mail order industry.

More information on the SSTP is available here. eBay maintains a Web page on SSTP, and maintains a mailing list where you can receive updates on the program by signing up here.

Q&A: How should I price my used books on Amazon Marketplace?

QUESTION: I purchased your book "The Home-Based Bookstore" and believe it's a good guide for Internet bookselling, but I am puzzled about one thing: I find that our Amazon listing prices must be at the bottom end of the price scale, or they don't sell. Yet your book implies a different pricing strategy.

We upload to Amazon via HomeBase and also sell on ABE, Alibris, and Biblio. Can you clarify a decent pricing strategy for Amazon that will get us to the $10 to $15 price range you mention in the book?

ANSWER: You are right, selling commonly available used books promptly on Amazon Marketplace does depend on being "visible" in the listings. So that usually means having a price low enough to be one of the three lowest-priced listings displayed when the buyer clicks on "new and used."

For scarcer books, I recommend pricing in the higher range of available listings on Amazon Marketplace. I'm referring to uncommon books that you know (from researching comparable listings on AddAll.com, for example) are worth over $40. In that case, I recommend waiting out the lower-priced competition on Marketplace. Customers who are shopping in this upper price range pay lots more attention to the information in the listing, such as book condition, shipping options, and of course the seller's feedback and apparent care in writing the description. So in that case you're competing more on service and reputation than just price. Lowball sellers on Amazon are not particularly successful with higher-priced books.

Unforunately, for more common books which make up the vast majority of your unit sales, you are forced to be more competitive on price simply because the buyers are more uninformed and careless. While buyers of the high-end books seem to scroll through every listing and put some thought into their choice, buyers of the low-end books seem to make a snap decision -- they don't consider much of anything except price. I'm continually mystified by these buyers who will buy from a dealer with horrible feedback just because the book is priced a penny less! After all, why would you spend your hard-earned money with a seller who has only 80 percent positive feedback? Common sense tells you it's a gamble, and there's a 20 percent chance you'll be unhappy with the transaction.

One thing I have noticed that has improved things within the past six to eight months on Amazon Marketplace is that the listing displays have become more detailed, and they now indicate the percentage of positive feedback ratings the seller has received in the past 12 months. (Previously there was only a series of colored stars, which looked practically the same no matter what the seller's feedback.) After Amazon added this new detail to the display, I noticed that a lot more of these casual low-end buyers were making their buying decision based on seller feedback. I could see the effect immediately, because I started selling lots more common books where my listing was five or six places from the lowest price. Certainly, this has been a change for the better for buyers and sellers alike.

Another way I've been able to raise my average sale price over time is concentrating more on acquiring unique, specialized books. For me, this means esoteric nonfiction, for sellers with more expertise in fiction collectibles, it could mean first editions of great literature. Over the years I've gotten a lot better at finding great books and having the confidence to pay for them. When I started out I wouldn't spend more than $2 on any book.

Q&A: How do I know whether a book is a "first edition" or not?

QUESTION: I'm totally new at selling used books online, and am curious about identifying first editions. What does the row of numbers inside the cover mean? If the page doesn't say, "First Edition," does that mean it isn't a first? And where can I learn about the various "parts" of books that booksellers refer to?

ANSWER: You'd think there would be a foolproof way of identifying first editions, but it's pretty complicated since so many publisher have their own way of doing it.

Collectors who are looking for a "first edition" are actually looking for a "first printing." These are the books that roll off the presses at the time of the book's release. These books are collectible because they're scarcer and considered closest to the author's original intent. Some collectors use the term "first impression," which is synonymous with "first printing."

Sometimes, the publisher will make changes to the book's text to fix typographical errors and other mistakes during a print run. The result is different "states" of the printing. Usually collectors are interested only in the first states of first printings.

To identify the printing, first look on the copyright page for a "statement of edition" or a number line. Sometimes the page states simply, "FIRST EDITION." Keep in mind, though, publishers sometimes don't delete the words "FIRST EDITION" after the book is in subsequent printings.

Next, look for the number line, a sequence of digits usually running from one to 10 for a first edition. It may be in the usual sequence from left to right, or it may have the one on the left, the two on the right, and the ten in the center. In any case, look for the one, which every book publisher uses to identify first editions -- except Random House, that is, which designates firsts with a 2 on the number line, followed by the words "FIRST EDITION."

If you don't see a statement of edition or a statement of printing, look for something like this: "First published in 1965." That's a good sign, since a publisher who indicates when the book was first published will indicate subsequent printings also. With older books, one way of determining edition is by comparing the copyright page date with the title page date.

And beware of book club printings. Sometimes the copyright page of a book club edition can read "FIRST EDITION." But of course it is not.

As far as identifying the "parts" of a book, this link provides a good rundown on all the book collector's jargon.

Q&A: How long should you wait before lowering prices on your used books at Amazon, Half.com, eBay, ABE.com, or Alibris?

QUESTION: How many months do you let books sit on the shelves before you begin to lower the prices?

ANSWER: I used to have very limited storage space, especially when I started selling books, back when I lived in a small apartment and had to rent storage lockers to hold my books. So after my first 18 months of selling used books I had about 10,000 unique books and was paying more than $1,000 a month in storage fees. I was making plenty of cash to cover the rental fees, but didn't want to commit to more storage bills. So somewhere around that time I decided to delete all my listings for books where the price on Amazon Marketplace was under $4. Getting rid of those books was a pretty big hassle so I've been more careful in selecting low-priced books since then.

But to get back to your question, deciding when to cut the price to remain competitive depends totally on the book, and how high the average price is online. For low-priced books that I want to sell as quickly as possible, I'll cut the price every week or so, just to try to get rid of the book before the price falls too far. But for higher-priced books -- say over $40 -- I am much more reluctant to cut the price. Maybe I'll cut it a penny or two if it will make the listing more visible. But if I think the other prices are abnormally low, I'll let the book sit there for six months or a year without even considering lowering the price.

I base this on two observations:

-- Buyers of low-priced books don't consider feedback much in their buying decision. So even though you might strive to have high feedback to be competitive against other sellers, buyers of low-priced books either aren't informed enough to consider a seller's feedback or just don't want to take the time to consider any factors other than price. So to sell a low-priced book you have to compete on price, just because most of the buyers for these items aren't going to scroll through to compare listings for feedback, condition, etc.

-- Over the long term, prices of low-priced books tend to fall, and those of high-priced books hold steady or go up. That's because low-priced books tend to become more available over time (more used copies appear for sale online and price-cutting ensues), but higher-priced books tend to be more scarce and as used copies are purchased, price tends to go up as they become more scarce. This is why out-of-print books are such a hugely profitable area for used booksellers. Also, the buyers of these books usually pay a lot more attention to the book description and seller feedback, so you don't have to compete just on price.

One more interesting observation I've seen in the past year: Last summer I moved to a house where I could store all my books in the basement instead of paying for off-site storage. I had to hire movers, everything got disorganized, and most of my books I had to delete until I could locate them again and organize them on shelves in my basement. I'm still re-listing them, and I've been surprised to find that many of my relatively low-priced books -- say those that were going for $5 or $10 on Marketplace last summer -- have doubled in value during those six months. Some of them, may a quarter of them, had become essentially worthless, worth less than a dollar or two, and I've been getting rid of them. But in most cases, whereas six months ago I'd have been beating my brains out to sell them at the lowest possible price -- now I'm selling them faster at double the price.

So it's interesting how things go in cycles as books become more available (and price goes down) and then more scarce (and price goes up). I don't know of any way to predict which ones get more scarce over time -- except it's probably safe to say that mega-bestseller fiction books probably never go back up in price.

Q&A: Crazy lowball sellers on Amazon, eBay and Half.com

QUESTION: I have been selling books on Amazon for a few years. How do you deal with my "favorite" situation: I have a rare book, CD etc. It's out of print and there's only one used copy on offer. It is listed for $5. Aaaah!

Do you put your book in for the $99 it's worth and outwait the crazy amateur? What usually happens though, is that the next person comes along, only looks at the lowest price, and lists his for $4.95, or worse $2.95. Before you know it, there's another penny book!

Don't people understand you can make real money selling rare books? Unfortunately, rare books take time to sell, so there's always plenty of time for another copy to surface at a ridiculous price before mine sells.

In your book, you recommended that if you see a book that is worth $100 dollars online and is available for $60, you should buy it. I can only advise against that. Before you know it, somebody else will have found a copy and -- you know the rest.

ANSWER: Inexperienced sellers just wanting to make a "fast buck" (or in some cases just clueless) can ruin things for lots of other people by underpricing. The only hope is that there's enough demand to eventually clear out the low-priced books.

Lots of people say the knowledgeable sellers should snap up the stuff that's listed on Amazon or eBay/Half.com at too-low prices, then relist it at a higher price. I have never been willing to take that chance myself, however. How do you know the item is described properly? And what if the inexperienced seller discovers after receiving my order that he's underpriced his book? He'll either ship it to me, and be mad at me, or won't ship it, and then I'd be mad.

Since a lot of my scarce books are academic books, I can count on two times of the year (August and January) to clear out a lot of the lower-priced listings. When semesters start, the students snap up all the low-priced books and then the higher-priced ones start to sell. So sometimes I'll let a book sit for six months until a new school semester starts when I can sell it at my price.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I got a copy of a marketing management book, like new, and published only a couple of years ago. The book retails for about $120 and I got it for $15. There were three used copies listed on Amazon from about $40 to $60, so I priced mine at $89. Since it's January I knew it would sell pretty quickly since students are back at school. Sure enough it sold at my price within about five days.

When I said in the book that you can buy a book for $60 and resell it for $100, I should have emphasized that you should be operating on past experience (by previous sales you've made), not just hope. For example, there are four or five scarce nonfiction books that I come across several times a year, and it just sticks in my mind what they're worth because I've sold them several times before. In these cases, I know the demand is always there for them, and the price will hold steady. On the other hand, I would not recommend that someone pay $60 for a book just because there's a copy listed on Amazon for $100. That copy might have been listed on Amazon for five years without selling, and your copy might sit there forever.

Recently there was a great series of letters to the editor on Amazon penny books printed in the Wall Street Journal.

Q&A: Which part of the week is best for listing used books for sale online?

QUESTION: I'm a former used bookshop operator and now I sell books online from a warehouse. We upload our book listings using HomeBase. We sell sell on ABE.com, Alibris, and Biblio, as well as Amazon Marketplace.

When is the best time to list and reprice stock? Do you find that if you wait to upload your books on Friday, for example, that you have a better sell-through over the weekend than if you upload books on a daily basis?

ANSWER: I do see better results when I've listed fresh books or repriced on a Friday night or Saturday morning. Overall, sales volume is a bit lower over the weekend because people are out doing other things -- most people are away from their computer. But sell-through does seem to be much better for new listings and with prices have been adjusted on Friday.

Why? My guess it's because lots of booksellers also are away from their computers on the weekend. So they don't have a chance to undercut your price, and your listings aren't buried by lowball sellers. Lots of sellers won't fiddle with their listings until well after their Monday morning coffee.

So I've definitely noticed a difference with fresh listings heading into the weekend, though I've never actually crunched all the numbers. And I usually can't wait until the end of the week to list -- if I think I've got some good books, I want to list and see some cash by the end of the week.

Selling used books online will be ruined by your book!

QUESTION: You're a bookseller, so why would you possibly want to write a book telling people how to sell books? Why create a blueprint for selling and give away the store? You're biting yourself in the butt. If this book does induce people to enter the business, it will further thin an already diluted pool.

You're also giving potential dealers the wrong impression. At last year's Amazon Sellers Conference, we learned that the growth is starting to level out. Last year for the first time, almost as many sellers quit as those who signed up.

You can't possibly earn enough from your book to offset the revenue you're losing by publishing this information. Are you independently wealthy and just have a perverse pleasure in spoiling what's left of the market for everyone else? I just don't get it.

ANSWER: My intention isn't to "spoil" things for anybody, but to provide information to those who want it. Maybe I'm naive, but I believe my book will actually help my business and everyone else engaged in online bookselling.

I think of selling used books online as a classic free marketplace. To thrive, a marketplace needs lots of buyers and sellers. The more sellers there are, the more choices buyers have. When buyers can find more of what they want, they buy more.

Is it possible to have too many sellers? Yes, I suppose so. But I don't think that's ever likely to happen in this marketplace. Selling used books online is a time-consuming, labor-intensive affair. As I say in my book, this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme, it's hard work. My gut tells me the number of used-book buyers will always vastly outnumber sellers, no matter how easy it is for new sellers to enter the marketplace.

I'm sure you're correct that the signup rate of new sellers on Amazon Marketplace has slowed since its launch a few years ago. But that doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of new sellers entering the marketplace each day who can benefit from advice. And the main advice I give in my book is provide good customer service. Some new sellers lose sight of that, and it's the biggest threat to the marketplace: an erosion of trust. I'll bet that over the past few years, Amazon has permanently lost thousands of longtime, profitable customers after they had one bad experience with a sloppy Marketplace seller. And so we've all lost those customers because of some newbie sellers who weren't prepared to run a business.

So if more new sellers take their business seriously, it will benefit all used booksellers. As more people have good experiences buying used books online, I believe they'll buy more often, and they'll tell their friends about buying used books online. That will expand the pool of buyers faster than new sellers can sign up.

And it's not just neophytes who are interested in learning about selling books online. Of the copies I've sold, many have gone to bookshops. I'm unsure whether they are just now getting into online sales, or trying to improve what they're already doing.

So I'm not worried about people cutting into my business. If my business involved going to every book sale in the country, I would be concerned about "giving away the store." But I can only do so much, I'm limited by my geography just like everybody else in this business. That's what I think is so neat about online bookselling -- the Internet has opened up a worldwide sales platform, but in the end it's still a "cottage business" that's limited somewhat by physical geography. The challenge is to push those limits using your resourcefulness in finding books and taking the initiative to provide a good service.

And no, I'm not "independently wealthy." But I do have more money now than I had before I started selling used books.

Q&A: Should I sell my book collection to a shop, or sell the books myself online?

QUESTION: I'd like to sell a few hundred antique books left to me by my late Aunt. They were printed in the late 1800's, early 1900's and later. Since my aunt was an English teacher, many of the books are famous or classic works. I was considering selling them to a local book dealer, who gave me this advice:

As any book dealer will tell you, the Internet has changed bookselling dramatically. Average priced books have dropped in price by a third to 75 percent in the past year. We specialize in books published after 1924. If you have 200 books, you would assume that if they are worth $10 each, then together they are worth $2,000 ... not really. The best thing for you would be to ... organize the books by condition. Tell us about the best first. What we need to know are author names. ... We should be able to tell you very quickly which are or are not worth anything.

What do you think of this evaluation?

ANSWER: What this book dealer is saying is fairly reasonable -- from his perspective. But of course he wants to get books for resale at the lowet price possible. I wouldn't say it sounds unethical at all, he's just trying to maximize his profit, which is what everyone in business wants to do.

But he wants you to do some of the work yourself -- organizing by condition, subject matter, and so forth. For a bit more trouble, you can sell them yourself on Amazon Marketplace, make lots more money, and perhaps have some fun in the bargain.

My main point is, the Internet has cut out the middleman (in this case the brick-and-mortar used bookstore) and has enabled sellers of books to realize the market price of their goods.

One area where I would disagree with your book dealer friend is his assertion that prices have dropped by "a third to 75 percent in the past year." Certainly, that can be true for current books where supply has overloaded demand (because a book has recently sold well, but is no longer being marketed -- or the book has been "remaindered" and the publisher dumped all their copies into the used market).

But most older scarce books are becoming scarcer online and prices are escalating. In particular, you're talking about the "high spots" of literature, which is exactly what book collectors are looking for these days.

Why are prices for highly collectible books going up? My guess is that used bookselling through popular venues such as Amazon has introduced many new people to book collecting. And since there is a finite supply of collectible books, their supply is rapidly being depleted as more people get into collecting, and the price of the remaining books is going up as they become even more scarce.

Q&A: How can I sell books on Amazon.com without ISBNs

QUESTION: I recently read your book "The Home Based Bookstore." I'm already to start selling my books on Amazon. Unfortunately, all of the books that I have collected are very old. Amazon requires an ISBN number for every item they list without exception. How do I get started?

ANSWER: If you have a big collection of older books, you're likely to have some real gems in there. But some of the books might not be worth anything -- just because a book is old doesn't necessarily mean there's any demand for it.

Most books published before the 1970s don't have an ISBN. So of course you won't be able to look them up in Amazon's catalog in the usual way -- by typing in the ISBN.

To look up these older books on Amazon, you'll have to do an "advanced search," typing in the book title and author name. The link for the advanced search on Amazon is here.

This is certainly a much more tedious process than just typing in the ISBN. But it will probably be well worth your effort, since some of your books may be scarce, and worth a nice sum. Sometimes you'll be able to find the book in Amazon's catalog simply by typing in only the first few words of the title and just the author's last name.

With older books like this, it's likely that some of them won't be in Amazon's catalog. In that case, you can create a product page on Amazon for the book yourself. After you've entered the book into Amazon's catalog, then you can go to that page and list your copy for sale. This is an even more tedious process, but as I said, some of your books could be quite valuable, so it may be worth the time and effort.

Here are the links to Amazon's help sections for creating a product page.
This page gives an overview of process. And here is where you start to actually create a product page.

One caveat, though: Amazon only allows "Pro-Merchant Subcribers" to create catalog pages, and the subscription costs $40 a month. Since you say you're just getting started selling, you may not have made the decision yet to be a Pro-Merchant subscriber. If you are going to sell books regularly on Amazon, then this $40 fee is worth it, since it eliminates the 99-cent fee customarily charged on Marketplace sales to part-time sellers. So if you sell 40 books per month, the savings will pay for the subscription fee. If you're not ready to decide about this yet, you should probably put aside the books you can't find that are already in the catalog, and save them for later if you decide to become a Pro-Merchant.

Here's the link on Amazon for more info on the Pro-Merchant subscription.

Also, for books that don't show up on Amazon's catalog, you should do a bit of research to try to get an idea on their value, before listing them for sale. The fastest way to do this is to enter the title/author name on the AddAll search engine at this link.

For the vast majority of books, you'll be able to find listings for them using this AddAll search engine. Most of the results you find will be listings from used bookshops and dealers who sell online through listing services such as Advanced Book Exchange (abe.com) and Alibris, but not on Amazon.

The reason it's so important to look for other listings on AddAll is that you don't want to price your book too low on Amazon. For example, let's say you enter a book into AddAll and you find three listings for that book. Two are priced at $50 and one is priced at $80. Then you should list it on Amazon at $80 or $100. Or you could even list it at a higher price, and if it didn't sell after six months, you could lower the price if you wish.

When I first started selling books online, a few times I made the mistake of not researching the prices of old books online. In one case, I listed a book for sale for $5 simply because I was too tired to look up the market price on AddAll. The book sold immediately, and I found out it was really worth $25. So another minute or two of work would have made me $20.

So listing these old books will be a very tedious, time-consuming process, but it will likely pay off in the end. Good luck in your selling!

Q&A: What's the quickest way to look up used book prices online?

QUESTION: I recently learned about using ScoutPal for book scouting, but I'm not sure whether I need a barcode scanner plugged into my phone to input the ISBNs. My initial take is that a scanner is unnecessary, just because there are many books without barcodes. So which is better: using a scanner, or just keying in the ISBNs?

ANSWER: You're right, a lot of valuable books (especially older out-of-print scarce books) don't have a barcode, and some don't even have an ISBN. So to check these, you'll need to type in the title and author name.

I've always used a T-Mobile Sidekick phone that doesn't support a scanner, although I understand the newer Sidekicks have a working USB port. It's not a big deal for me to key in the ISBNs with my thumbs (although if you had really big thumbs it would be a problem). I have seen guys at book sales using scanners, so that they could go through whole stacks of books in a few minutes.

To tell you the truth, checking book prices via cellphone takes some of the fun out of book hunting. If you deal with books long enough you can start recognizing a book that is worth money just by looking at it -- or at least you can recognize those books that are likely to be valuable. When books are cheap enough, say $1 or $2 apiece, I don't even bother looking up the prices. I know that my winners will vastly outnumber the losers, and overall the more books I buy, the more money I'll be making. And you can't dawdle when you're at a busy library sale. While you're waiting for your cellphone to return the prices, most of the cream can be skimmed from the book sale.

But this trial-and-error method works well only if you have a big selection of books to choose from at low prices. If you're shopping in a used bookstore you'd definitely need to look up prices on Amazon Marketplace.

New 13-digit ISBNs will complicate online bookselling

The introduction of the 13-digit ISBN is a year away, but is already causing headaches for online book sellers and buyers. Some college bookstores have already converted existing books to the new system, which has prevented some students from shopping online for used books as an alternative to the college store.

The 10-digit ISBN has been used for three decades as a surefire way to uniquely identify books and their various editions. And after the launch of Amazon Marketplace and Half.com a few years ago, the ISBN has made online bookselling simple as pie -- only the 10-digit number must be entered, instead of the book's full title, author name, yada yada yada....

But the 10-digit numbering scheme is running out of space, forcing the mandatory change to the 13-digit system by January 1, 2007. An ever-higher number of books are being introduced each year, so the ISBN numbering system is nearly exhausted -- much like the proliferation of cellphones has already forced the introduction of additional area codes in some urban areas of the United States.

Next year, ISBNs will resemble the current numbers, with an added prefix of 978 or 979. Existing books with 10-digit ISBNs must be converted to the 13-digit format by adding one of the 3-digit prefixes and changing the last existing digit. A book industry trade group has published a free "Dummies" guide to ISBN conversion.

This web site will automatically convert a 10-digit ISBN to the 13-digit format.

For bookstores that need to convert their barcodes to the new format, more resources are provided by the U.S. ISBN Agency.

On Amazon.com, most products are uniquely identified by an "ASIN" (Amazon Standard Identification Number), and in the case of most books, it's the same number as the ISBN.

It will be interesting to see how well the major online bookselling sites manage the transition to the 13-digit ISBN transition. Certainly, Web sites with full-time programmers will be able to invent some type of automatic converter for people who type in the old ISBN format, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. For example, when I typed in the ISBN for my title "The Home-Based Bookstore" using its ISBN and the 978 prefix today, Amazon returned this result: "we found no results that closely match your search."

Should sellers describe the "smell" of their used books?

QUESTION: I think sellers should note the odor of the book when rating its condition. I'm referring to the smell of mold or mildew, cigarette smoke, and mothballs, etc., I'm not talking about just the normal smell of old paper.

But there seems to be no official guidelines. No book condition-rating guidelines mention odor. I've bought books on eBay which have smelled horrible, yet the seller rated their condition "very good." Now I always ask about odor before purchasing a used book.

Mold and mildew can really bother people. Even though I've never been diagnosed with allergies, one whiff of mold or mildew gives me a headache that can last three days!

On my book chat list, the sellers are divided. Half think the odor has nothing to do with the condition rating; others not only consider it in the condition rating, but also mention it in their auction.

Sometimes people who live in damp areas such as New England are exposed to mildew odors so much, they don't notice them anymore. Our noses get used to smells that we are exposed to, and they get desensitized to it. Perhaps the booksellers don’t even realize their books reek.

I try to avoid buying books with odors. Sometimes I'll buy a book at a library sale and forget to check it. Rather than just toss it in the trash I try to fix it. I've been using Tidy Cat brand cat litter to rid books of odors, but it's not foolproof. Sometimes a couple of months later, the mildew odor returns. Cigarette smoke and mothball odor also come out with Tidy Cat, and those don’t seem to return.

ANSWER: Great topic and one that isn't discussed much. One thing that's definitely true, people have very different senses of smell. For example, I absolutely love the smell of mothballs, while most people detest it. Go figure.

A few months ago, a buyer of mine e-mailed me, complaining bitterly about a "stinky book" I had sold her. She accused me of deliberately misrepresenting the book's condition by failing to mention the smell in my description on Amazon Marketplace. And of course this angry buyer left negative feedback. But I hadn't noticed any odor at all. Luckily I was able to ship a complimentary replacement book, and the buyer removed the negative feedback.

I think I'm lucky here in Northern Virginia because the air gets extremely dry during the winter, which probably retards the growth of mold and odors. My used book stock turns over fairly rapidly too, which probably doesn't hurt.

With a rare book, it might pay to invest some time in deodorizing the book. I've heard of lots of techniques for freshening up used books, including cat litter, cedar chips, and baking soda. Here is one forum on the subject.

Q&A: How can I sell used books on multiple Web sites?

QUESTION: I've been selling used books on Amazon Marketplace for a few months and would like to expand to other sites. What is the best software program that would enable me to list my books on more bookselling Web sites? I'd like to be able to track all my transactions and sales tax.

ANSWER: Back when I started five years ago, the Seller Engine software (www.sellerengine.com) was available for a one-time fee of $150. Now it's much more expensive, available only as a subscription service, about $40 a month. And it sounds as if you need more capability as far as bookkeeping, etc., which is not handled by Seller Engine.

Personally, the only software I've used for handling my Amazon business is Seller Engine and Intuit's Quicken personal-finance software. I have a business checking account where I can download all my transactions from my bank, and assign them to categories such as books, postage, mailing supplies, etc. This has worked fine for me, but it only allows me to view my total sales.

To figure my sales tax obligation, I use a Microsoft Excel worksheet containing my individual Amazon Payments transactions. I sort the transactions by state in my worksheet, then get a total.

It sounds like you may need more capability. If you need to track sales tax and the amount of each transaction, you may need to integrate Intuit's Quickbooks small-business accounting software with one of the Amazon inventory-management programs.

Are you familiar with the Amazon Sellers message board? It's moderated by Amazon, although anyone can post. If you post a question there, with some ideas of what specific capabilities you're looking for, I am sure you'll get several replies from vendors, as well as from fellow booksellers willing to share their experiences working with various software and make recommendations. There's a wide range of capabilities and fees for these products, so you may want to mention what sort of price range is acceptable.

I know some of the Amazon seller software products will let you export all your transaction data, which could then be imported into Quicken/Quickbooks. One that I know of offhand that has this capability is AMan (see http://www.spaceware.com).

Below I've pasted the text from the section of my book that lists the third-party software available from vendors. Some of them won't handle the kind of recordkeeping you're interested in, but I've pasted the whole list below.

[Update: Since this post was written, another free repricing service has debuted, read more here.]

Bookrouter. www.bookrouter.com
Bookrouter enables booksellers to list their in-ventory on up to 19 online selling venues. Instead of having to upload inventory files to each site, Bookrouter automatically configures the data for each site. The serv-ice offers a way to adjust prices on different venues. You can raise or lower your prices by a percentage, a dollar amount, or a combination of those two factors on a site-by-site basis. Bookrouter also allows you to define a price range for books at various selling sites. It works with Amazon.com, ABAA/ILAB, Abebooks, Alibris, An-tiQbook, Biblio.com, BiblioDirect, Bibliology, Biblion, Bibliophile, BookAvenue, Books&Collectibles, Book-SellerSolutions, Choosebooks, Chrislands, Half.com, TomFolio, UsedBookCentral, and Wantedbooks.
Fees. Users pay $25 per month for up to five sell-ing venues and $5 for each additional site. Bookrouter charges a one-time setup fee of $50, which covers listing on up to five selling venues — additional sites cost $5 each. The setup fee covers testing a sample upload and troubleshooting for each site.

Mail Extractor. www.mailextractor.com
Mail Extractor is an order fulfillment and inven-tory management program for booksellers using Amazon Marketplace and Half.com. The software resides on your PC. The program parses the information contained in Amazon order fulfillment reports and in Half.com and PayPal/eBay e-mails to build packing slips and invoices. Users can send automated e-mail shipment notifications to buyers and manage inventory. Mail Extractor also automates the printing of postage for users of the Endicia online postage service.
Fees. Users pay a monthly fee that depends on how many items they have listed for sale — starting at $6.95 for up to 1,500 listings and climbing to $44.95 a month for sellers with more than 30,000 listings.

AMan for Marketplace Sellers.
www.spaceware.com
AMan is an order fulfillment and inventory man-agement software program designed for either low- or high-volume Amazon Marketplace and zShops sellers. It creates customized shipping labels, packing slips, and customer e-mails, as well as picklists for order fulfillment. AMan also exports customer addresses for online postage printing.
Fees. Users pay a one-time fee of $299. A 21-day free trial of the program is available.

BookHound. www.bibliopolis.com
The company Bibliopolis distributes BookHound, an inventory-management software tool for independent booksellers and dealers in antiquarian and out-of-print books. Based on the FileMaker Pro database engine, BookHound automates entering new stock, uploading inventory, and invoicing customers, among other tasks.
Fees. Use and technical support of BookHound costs $175 per year. A network version, BookHound Un-leashed, is customized for each bookseller and its cost varies. The company has been selling BookHound for six years and says it has about 400 users.
Bibliopolis also offers database development and e-commerce and Web hosting services for independent booksellers. One example of an online bookstore hosted by Bibliopolis is Bray Books, www.braybooks.com.

HomeBase. http://dogbert.abebooks.com/docs/homebase/main.shtml
HomeBase is a free bookstore management soft-ware program distributed by Abebooks, a listing service for independent book dealers. It can be used to manage your inventory and issue receipts and invoices. The pro-gram is available for free download to anyone, regardless of membership in Abebooks.

PricePartner. www.abebooks.com/docs/homebase/HB2PricePartner.shtml
PricePartner is an application for users of Home-Base 2.0 and higher (see above) that allows you to quickly adjust prices of listed books.

FillZ. www.fillz.com
FillZ is an online inventory and order manage-ment system for Amazon booksellers with a high volume of sales. Users can upload their Amazon inventory to many additional bookselling sites. Inventory levels are adjusted automatically at each selling site. FillZ supports Amazon, eBay Stores, Abebooks, Alibris, and others.
You can add inventory using a bar code scanner or your existing software. Fulfillment functions include generation of picklists and packing slips by location, SKU number, and order number. The software also generates shipment confirmation e-mails and works with different online postage services.
Fees. There is a minimum monthly fee of $50 for sellers with under $3,000 in monthly sales. Sellers with between $3,000 and $10,000 in monthly revenue are charged the $50 minimum plus 1 percent of their monthly sales revenue over $3,000. Sellers with revenue over $10,000 in monthly revenue are charged a $120 monthly fee plus 0.5 percent of monthly revenue over $10,000. Shipping fees aren’t included in calculating a seller’s monthly revenue.
FillZ charges eBay sellers a flat monthly fee of $5 plus $2 for each thousand uploaded records, which in-cludes new listings, updates, and deletions.

The Art of Books. www.theartofbooks.com
The Art of Books is an online service that enables booksellers to manage their inventory across several selling venues from a single interface. It includes tools to automate order fulfillment, postage printing, inventory repricing, and pricing information via cell phone. Sup-ported venues include Amazon’s U.S., Canadian, German, and U.K. sites; Alibris; Abebooks; and Half.com sellers with FTP accounts.
Fees. No fee is charged on the first $500 in monthly revenue, but users pay 1 percent of their monthly revenue between $500 and $10,000. A fee of 0.5 percent is paid on revenue over $10,000.

Prager Software. www.pragersoftware.com
Prager has a suite of PC software applications for inventory, pricing, and listing books on Amazon.
The inventory program enables sellers to upload to more than 18 bookselling sites and to generate customer invoices. The pricing program allows entry of up to 30 ISBNs at a time to retrieve pricing information, and a bar code scanner can be used to list inventory. Several op-tions are available for adjusting prices, and Prager’s list-ing synchronizer can be used to alert you to discrepancies in your inventory listings across different selling sites.
The programs are free. A licensing fee will be re-quired for an enhanced version of the inventory program beginning in 2006.

Re-Price Machine. www.repricemachine.com
Doolicity Innovations makes software to help Amazon booksellers adjust their pricing and respond to customer e-mails.
The Re-Price Machine is a free program that en-ables sellers to automatically lower prices to match com-petitors. An upgraded version with more features is being planned that will require a fee.
Doolicity’s Zipkeys is a data-entry tool that enables sellers to store customized responses to frequently asked questions from customers. Users can respond to certain e-mail inquiries with only one click.

Readerware. www.readerware.com
Readerware is a program for cataloging books, music, and video. The software has been used by collec-tors, booksellers, schools, churches, and libraries since 1999.
Fees. The basic version of the program costs $40. There’s also a version for Palm handheld computers.

SellerMagic. www.sellermagic.com
Bordee Enterprises began promoting its Seller-Magic Amazon ListTool in late 2005. The software carries a strong resemblance to Seller Engine but has a few extra features. For example, when comparing your prices to competitors’, Seller Magic enables you to put selected competitors into a separate group.
Fees. $24.95 a month.

ChannelAdvisor. www.channeladvisor.com
ChannelAdvisor Pro is an eBay auction manage-ment service designed for individuals and small busi-nesses. The service helps you organize and track your inventory, and to create standardized auction listings. The service can also be used for eBay stores’ fixed-priced listings.
Fees. ChannelAdvisor starts at $29.95 a month.

Feedback Assistant, Feedback Forager.
www.amazon.wolfire.com
Feedback Assistant automates the task of leaving feedback for your Amazon buyers. Feedback Forager automatically sends an e-mail to Amazon customers who haven’t left a feedback rating and requests that they do so. The customer can rate the seller directly from the e-mail. This company also makes custom software for Ama-zon sellers.
Fees. One-time licensing fees are $20 for Feed-back Assistant and $49.95 for Feedback Forager.

BookRepricer. www.bookrepricer.com
BookRepricer is an online service that compares your Amazon inventory with prices of competing sellers and then reprices your items automatically. Several op-tions are supported for lowering and raising your prices. The company is based in the United Kingdom and sup-ports Amazon’s Marketplace platforms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Fees. Users pay a monthly subscription fee of $22 or an annual subscription fee of $180. A two-week free trial of the service is available.

BookSku. www.booksku.com
BookSku is an online service that enables Amazon sellers to automate the tasks of cataloging items, proc-essing orders, printing packing slips, and connecting with online postage vendors. The service enables you to auto-matically reprice your inventory, track inventory loca-tions, and send e-mails to customers, among other tasks.
Fees. Users pay $20 monthly for their first 500 listings, $2 per hundred listings between 500 and 5,000, and $1 per hundred listings over 5,000. The number of listings is calculated using an average from open listings reports.

Monsoon. www.monsoonworks.com
Monsoon began offering three levels of online service for booksellers in 2005. The service automates several processes, such as listing inventory, adjusting prices, and managing customers. The service supports sellers using Amazon Marketplace and six other booksel-ling venues. The company says its service can reprice up to 30,000 items per hour.
Fees. Monsoon asks that interested parties com-plete a signup form on their Web site because rates vary by the level of service a seller requires. Company repre-sentatives indicate that fees start at $199 for setup plus 3 percent of monthly sales.

BookWriter Web. www.bookwritersoftware.com
BookWriter Web is designed for booksellers who want to sell items on their own Web site. It automates the process of building Web pages to display your inventory. For booksellers who aren’t interested in creating Web pages themselves, the company will customize a Web site for you for about $500.
Fees. Users pay a one-time licensing fee of $79 for BookWriter Web.

AZGrabber. www.tuffcase.com/AZ/AZGrabber.htm
AZGrabber is a free Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that allows Amazon Marketplace sellers to generate a packing slip, shipping label, confirmation e-mail, and address file from Web pages in their seller account.
Fees. Tuffcase, the company that distributes AZ-Grabber, does not charge a fee but does solicit PayPal donations from active users.

Q&A: How can I get books in bulk for resale?

QUESTION: Is there a better way to get used books for resale besides picking them each by hand at library sales? For instance, do you know of any cases whereby good stock was procured from library sales in bulk? Surely there are many libraries that would see the benefit of letting go of "unfiltered" books in bulk rather than waiting for them to sell one at a time or not at all.

ANSWER: One thing I don't mention in "The Home-Based Bookstore" is that I've gotten a ton of good books out of library dumpsters. The particular dumpsters I've snatched books out of didn't have any trash, thank goodness, just books. I've gotten quite a few books worth more than $100 apiece from library dumpsters.

So I think public libraries get a ton of book donations (and they have some discards that are valuable too) and they just don't go to the trouble of trying to sell them all. So from time to time, I've thought about approaching the libraries in my area and asking if I could handle their discards. The ones I wanted, I'd keep, the others I'd dispose of. I've just never gotten around to doing this.

On the other hand, lots of public libraries are beginning to sell the cream of their donated stock online. If that's the way they want to handle their donations, it's up to them, but it makes it harder for book scouts to find good books at library sales when the stock has been cherry-picked.

I know of one guy who started as a part-time Amazon seller, who set up a company to warehouse library book discards/donations, with the libraries getting a cut of the proceeds, and I suppose the libraries get a tax deducation. I imagine it would involve lots of paperwork and bookeeping but it's an idea for getting scale.

Q&A: What profit margin can I expect by selling used books on Amazon or eBay?

QUESTION: I'm getting started in online bookselling and I want to build a large business with low startup costs. Gathering discarded books (in bulk) seems to be a sure-fire way to build the right inventory rather quickly. After all, the cost of goods is perfect -- free. I'm curious what type of profit margins can be achieved selling used books online.

ANSWER: Over my five years in online bookselling, I've run the numbers several times, and I always come out to averages of a book cost of about $1.75 each and an average sale of $10 or $11. However, I have limited storage space, and for every 10 books I buy, I probably discard a couple later on.

I hand-pick most of my books at library book sales, so that helps keep the value of my individual sales high. Certainly if you were taking in inventory for free or very low cost you could live with a lower per-item sales price.

To answer your question directly, I'd say that for every $1 in cash I put into my business, I'd say I get about $5 back within two months. But like I said, that involves my time in hand-picking books, and I'm not counting the cost of my time picking books. When I say in my book "The Home-Based Bookstore" that I sold $1 million of books, that doesn't include what I paid for the books or the cost of the 50-60 hours a week of my time (probably more the first year or two).

So to sum up, selling books on the Internet is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but if you're willing to work hard to make $30,000 to $50,000 a year, it's an opportunity wide enough to drive a bookmobile through. You just have to get organized and put some elbow grease into it. Most people who start a business just want to know how they can make money without doing much of anything. That leaves a lot of opportunity for the people like us who are willing to provide a service that people want.

Q&A: How can I view seller descriptions for my previous Amazon Marketplace book purchases?

Question: I bought a used book on Amazon and had an awful experience. I seem to remember the book was described as being in "very good" condition, but the book I received was in bad shape. How can I view the original book description? I just can't find this anywhere on Amazon's site, on my invoice, e-mails, or anywhere else. Before I leave negative feedback I want to check my memory against what the dealer said the the condition of the book was.

ANSWER: Amazon doesn't make this easy, but it can be done. Here is how you can view seller descriptions for all your Marketplace transactions:

1. Go to the "Your Account" page. (The link is at the top right corner of any Amazon Web page.) On the right, the second box down is labeled "Your Auctions & zShops Account."

2. Click the "Auctions & zShops" link, and on the next page, third line down, is "Amazon.com Payments: View all recent purchases."

3. Click there, then choose the appropriate date range for the transaction, and you'll get a listing of your orders.

4. Locate the order and click on its "Listing ID" column. That will pull up the seller's description that was displayed when you purchased. Amazon calls calls it "Seller's Comments."

So if the seller made an honest mistake when listing, I am sure they would be happy to refund you at least 50 percent, since you didn't receive what was promised. So I'd give them the opportunity to do the right thing. If they don't apologize profusely and offer at least a partial refund, I'd leave negative feedback. This will warn other customers that, at best, the seller unreliable and won't correct mistakes.

Q&A: How can I use Amazon's 'Buyer's Waiting' list for scouting used books?

Question: Does your book "The Home-Based Bookstore" explain how to use the Amazon "Buyers Waiting" list while book scouting? Is the list just something to review or do I want to have it printed out and available when I go scouting?

Answer:
Well, the thing about Amazon's buyer's waiting list is that it would be really hard to find the specific books. I think the odds are just too high that you would stumble onto one of the books listed on there right after scanning the list. I think the most useful thing about it is that it shows you a crash course in what types of books are in demand. Books priced higher on the list will be truly rare, those at lower prices may be only scarce, but demand has outstripped supply.

So how useful is the list while you're actually scouting used books at a sale? Not much, the odds are high, precisely because the books on the list are scarce.

However, you can use Amazon's buyer's waiting list in the opposite direction: Say you find a book that looks rare, you can't find any listed online. Say you can buy it for $10, but you don't want to fork over the $10 unless you're sure you can sell it. If it's on the buyer's waiting list (say there's a pending order for $50), then you've got it made. The easiest way to find out if there's a pending order for a book is to click on the "sell yours here" link on Amazon, list your copy as "very good," and then on the next screen you'll see a message "Average pending pre-order price: $XX."

Say you find a book on the list, what price should you list it at? Selling it at auction on eBay may leave some of your money on the table. Sometimes you can make more by letting a book sit on Amazon for six months. Then if it doesn't sell, then you could try eBay with a reserve price of $20, say.

That reminds me of one of my best book finds ever. I was at a library sale in a rural area. In the back of the room under a table, there was a box of about 15 dog books. The whole box was priced at $5. I figured most of the books in there were junk, but I'd take the chance. The book that turned out to be a winner was about how to breed dogs to get a certain coat color, I can't remember the title. The book was about 20 or 30 years old. So I went to list it on Amazon and I saw there was a pending order for about $100. I priced it at $250 and it sold in two weeks. Woo hoo!

Top Amazon Buyers Waiting Pre-orders

Buyers Waiting 1

Buyers Waiting 2

Buyers Waiting 3

Buyers Waiting 4

Buyers Waiting 5

Buyers Waiting 6

Buyers Waiting 7

Buyers Waiting 8

Buyers Waiting 9

Buyers Waiting 10

Buyers Waiting 11

Buyers Waiting 12

Buyers Waiting 13

Buyers Waiting 14

Buyers Waiting 15

Buyers Waiting 16

Buyers Waiting 17

Buyers Waiting 18

Buyers Waiting 19

Buyers Waiting 20

Buyers Waiting 21

Buyers Waiting 22

Buyers Waiting 23