QUESTION: I’m about to attend my first seriously HUGE book sale in a few weeks. I’m a small-time seller hoping to slowly grow larger. I’ve got an idea of what I’m looking for, and the thrill of the hunt is always my favorite thing in these situations. But was curious of any tips you may offer.
ANSWER: Library sales are a great learning experience. They’re the best opportunity for finding good books and getting good stock for an online used book business.
As far as your strategy for your first big sale, my advice depends a bit on how much experience you have picking books so far. As you surely know by now, this is not a get-rich-quick business.
However, assuming you’ve got a couple of months experience and are fairly good at recognizing the crappy books that don’t sell online, my best advice is to go hogwild. That’s assuming the books are priced fairly cheap (say, $1 to $3 apiece).
That’s the approach I’ve always taken — in my first six months, and now in my sixth year. I buy enough books so that I know my winners will outnumber my losers.
We can never control when an opportunity to find some great books comes along. There are never more than a few good library sales a month in my area. So you’ve got to take advantage when you can.
At a typical medium-sized library sale I’ll buy $200 to $300 worth of books but end up with about $2,000 worth of stock. Sure, I’ll end up with some junk and have to get rid of it later. But it’s a great learning experience when you sit down at your computer and find out which of the books you picked were winners, and which were the dogs.
I don’t really specialize in any type of book, but I usually avoid fiction since I don’t know much about the demand for those books. Unless you have some expertise in fiction or collectibles, I’d stick with nonfiction in the beginning.
I use a cellphone for price checking, but I usually don’t use it at a big sale, there isn’t time. I check prices only when I’m buying from a used bookstore. I don’t want to take the chance on a book that costs $10 for example, if the price on Amazon is $1.
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2 Comments
Whether your buying big or small one important point is that you don’t have to make a profit on every book. If the price is right, you can buy a big batch of books and maybe throw away half of them and still make money. Remember that you are a bottom-feeder, not a predator. I buy at estate auctions and if I buy 200 books for $100.00 I can throw away 100, sell 50 for $2.00 to $5.00 each, sell 30 for $10.00 to $25.00 each and another 20 for over $25.00 each. If I am lucky, i may find a couple of $100.00+ items. As they say in the romance game, you’ve gotta kiss alot of frogs to find a prince.
Steve – wondering if you would do an update to you Google Base Store Connector column? After reading it, I downloaded GBSC and it really helped my Amazon sales. I refreshed it every 10 days or so and things were great. Then about two weeks ago, I signed on to Store Connector to refresh and it gave me a message saying it was performing an automatic upgrade. Since then the Store Connector won’t connect and my sales are dropping. I have had a nightmare trying to get help from Google Base. . .it is hard to email directly, when you do, you get canned responses, etc. The help boards have been no help either. I thought a new column from you may help them address issues. . .I am reading on the help board that lots of people are having problems. Thanks for your consideration!