Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites [Paperback]

Stephen Windwalker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2002

Book Description

Selling Used Books Online is a comprehensive how-to bible for America's newest and fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, the sellers on Amazon Marketplace and other online venues. Author Stephen Windwalker, a successful online seller himself who has also operated a brick-and-mortar bookshop, provides a treasure trove of up-to-date information with verve, clarity, and wit.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has reported that the number of third-party sellers on his company's website grew from over 100,000 in the fourth quarter of 2001 to over 150,000 in the first quarter of 2002, and roughly one-third of these appear to be entrepreneurial sellers who are operating full- or part-time businesses in competition with each other, with Amazon, and with very large Amazon Marketplace sellers such as Powell's, the Strand bookstore, and Alibris. For these 50,000 entrepreneurs, Selling Used Books Online will be a powerful business resource that will help them level the playing field, stay in business, and prosper.

Selling Used Books Online meets the needs of booksellers and business readers who want to stay current on market changes, best sources, insider's tips and tactics, and best practices, and is also a essential addition for public libraries, the small business and entrepreneurship market and related agency and educational markets, and publishing industry and bibliophile readers. Back matter includes several useful appendices that online booksellers will use on a daily basis: a glossary, a list of standard bookseller abbreviations, a casual bibliography of resources on bookselling and collecting, and an online bookseller's "Rolodex."

The Most Up-To-Date Book In Its Field, Covering:
· THE BOOKSELLING BUSINESS· SUPPLIERS AND SOURCES
· WHERE TO GET YOUR BOOKS
· WHAT BOOKS TO GET
· WHERE TO SELL YOUR BOOKS
· GRADING AND DESCRIBING YOUR BOOKS
· POSTING AND PRICING YOUR BOOKS
· ORGANIZING YOUR BUSINESS AND HANDLING TAX ISSUES
· FULFILLMENT AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
· EXPANSION ISSUES AND FUTURE PLANS
· HANDY REFERENCE TOOLS YOU WILL USE EVERY DAY

Editorial Reviews

Review

A wealth of information about the bookselling business, including descriptions of major online bookselling resources complete with detailed fee structures. -- News Update, A Friends of Libraries U.S.A. Publication

Incredible business resource.... an experienced authority candidly describes the pitfalls and the realities of ... book dealing with no punches withheld. -- from Bob Spear, Heartland Reviews, October 2002

Thousands of book enthusiasts are selling books online. If you'd like to join their ranks, this book is a must-read. -- Rebecca Hanneman, About.com, October 2002

From the Publisher

For Online Booksellers, Authors, Independent Publishers, Public Libraries, and Software Authors: Whether your bookselling vision is brick-and-mortar, click-and-mortar, dot-com or dream-on, this is the book that will take you to the next level!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 173 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Perspectives Press (June 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971577838
• ISBN-13: 978-0971577831
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Antiques & Collectibles > Books

More About the Author

I cut my teeth as a writer covering the Cape Cod Baseball League and other sports for what was then called the Cape Cod Standard-Times and later the Boston Globe, studied the craft of writing with Robert Lowell, Kurt Vonnegut, Monroe Engel and Carter Wilson, and served as Fiction Editor of the Harvard Advocate. In 1999 I founded a small independent publishing company called Harvard Perspectives Press (named after two of my favorite institutions from my undergraduate years, the Harvard House of Pizza and the Harvard Wine Company), and it has done astonishingly well, with a couple of niche bestsellers, other work that we have been proud to published, and now some stunning successes with the Kindle publishing platform. I have three wonderful children, and along the way I've been an author, a community organizer, a bookseller, a publishing executive, a marathoner, an elected official, and some other things unsuitable for mention here.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

115 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful for basics, but becoming dated, December 13, 2004

By 

T. Borden "Bookmonger" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites (Paperback)

I first read this book two years ago, soon after it came out, when I was first starting my online book selling business. The book is useful in laying out the basics of the business model and the nuts and bolts of Amazon.com Marketplace selling. It goes through where to find books, how to list them for sale, how to fulfill orders, and how to manage your inventory. This is the best and most specific book available on these topics. It also goes into some basics regarding accounting and future business growth issues, but these topics are treated much more cursorily. The biggest weakness of the book, however, is that the information is becoming dated.

A number of third party services have become available since 2002 that help sellers in book scouting, inventory management, and order fulfillment (e.g., Scoutpal, Sellerengine, Aman, Mail Extractor, etc.). These have altered the way most successful sellers run their businesses. Most high volume sellers don't edit individual listings when re-pricing but instead use one of these new tools to batch edit large portions of their inventory. Most successful sellers don't guess when buying books at sales but use Scoutpal to check the price before buying. In all likelihood future innovations like these ones will continue to alter the landscape of Amazon.com Marketplace selling and online book selling generally.

So, this is indeed the best basic primer for the nuts and bolts for selling books on Amazon, but let's hope that the author considers issuing a revised edition sometime soon that takes into account new seller tools and changing practices. He would also undercut the used market for his book...

185 of 194 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent resource!, June 25, 2002

By 

"mommatiger_books" (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites (Paperback)

"Wow! I sold a few of my used books on Amazon and made a nice little chunk of change! I think I'll find some more to list, and become a bookseller!"

Whoa, hoss. Yes, this is exactly how many people start selling used books online. But before you grab those Grisham and Clancy paperbacks at your neighbor's yard sale, do yourself and the marketplace a huge favor: Read this book.

Whether you've been selling used books for years or just barely getting started, there's much to be found between the covers of "Selling Used Books Online". It's a well-organized, thoughtfully presented and thoroughly readable business resource. The selection and pricing strategies alone, if conscientiously applied, will likely return your investment in this book many times over. But this should also go hand-in-hand with appropriate book grading and description, as well as good customer service; these, too, are covered quite well and amount to best-practice models which would significantly improve the buying and selling experiences alike if widely adopted.

The only book of its kind (at this writing) with relevant and up-to-date information specific to selling at Amazon, "Selling Used Books Online" is far more than a narrow formula for success in that venue alone. A cover-to-cover read will leave you more knowledgable about the used book marketplace in general, help you to avoid common mistakes, and give you the tools you need to achieve your goals. From a part-time "kitchen table" enterprise for extra spending money to a full-time career, there aren't many who wouldn't benefit from the advice of an articulate mentor with a great sense of humor who really knows his business. If you buy only one book on the subject, you can't go wrong with this one. You'll refer to it time and time again.

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some Excellent Advice for the New & Experienced Seller!, December 18, 2003

By 

Silmarwen (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites (Paperback)

Stephen Windwalker has written a very good how-to guide on selling used books online, specifically on Amazon.com's own website. He begins with a brief section that must be required for any author to write if they are writing about something entrepreneurial - is this business for you? and continues with a brief overview of the bookselling business in general. Then he walks the beginners through setting up an account online so that you can begin selling. The middle section was one of the strongest with sections on suppliers & sources (who to buy from, how to find suppliers, mailing materials, etc.), building your inventory: where to get your books, which contains some interesting ideas as to where to go to buy the books (libraries, garage sales, dumpster diving, local churches, etc.), and what books to get, which provided some excellent advice, especially for beginners, on what books to avoid purchasing because they do not sell well or there is a big glut in the market for ($0.01 book, anyone?). I feel that these chapters in the middle would be a great reminder and resource for anyone who is already selling, as well. Still, take the author's advice with a grain of salt because I have been quite successful doing some of the things that the author encourages sellers to avoid. The author then continues with basic selling advice including where to sell your books, grading & describing your books, and posting and pricing your books, all of which are pretty obvious to the experienced seller, but may be of use to newer sellers. Probably my favorite section was on book repairs, which was by no means extensive, but did provide some good, basic tips on what to do with books that are slightly damaged so that you can maximize your profit from them. The end section is mainly for serious sellers, as it contains sections on business organization, taxes, dreams of getting bigger, and some fulfillment & customer service advice.

Again, I would recommend this book to beginning sellers as it does answer quite a few questions that they may have and experienced sellers will find some value in there as well, but it is a pretty expensive trade paperback so if you already know what you are doing, you may not feel that you are getting your money's worth. My only complaint with the book is that the author doesn't deal with a few issues that I feel are very important if you are going to be selling on Amazon.com's marketplace. The number one thing that he didn't deal with is the shipping charges issues, as in Amazon keeping $1+ per transaction as "shipping charges" that the seller never sees, but the buyer is always complaining about. It would have been nice for him to go over this, or at least mention it, as it is one of the most difficult things for new sellers to understand. A few more specific tips would have made this book a 5 star instead of a 4.