Updated: A to Z On How to Sell Books Successfully On Amazon in 2022

Selling books on Amazon is a fantastic platform to make money and perhaps establish your own Amazon business. However, before you get started, you’ll need to understand how Amazon works, how to select books to sell on Amazon, and what sort of books you should and shouldn’t sell.

What is the best way to sell second-hand books on Amazon?

To sell a book on Amazon, you must make three decisions:

1. Your method of delivery (FBA or FBM)

2. The kind of seller you’d like to be.

3. How you source inventory

Once you’ve made those choices, you can instantly list your books on Amazon and then sit back and wait for your first sale! Let’s take a closer look:

1. What method will you use to fulfil orders?

On Amazon, you have two options for order fulfilment: FBA and FBM.

Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM)

When a book is sold on Amazon using this technique, you pick, pack, and ship the book yourself, using the carrier of your choice (e.g. FedEx, UPS, etc.). FBM vendors are also in charge of their inventory storage.

Remember to add in storage fees if you’re not storing the books at home, as well as shipping and handling costs and the time it takes you to pack and send your orders when estimating your costs.

Use FBM if you have a few orders to fulfil or your organization is large enough that your shipping costs are less than Amazon’s. And, once again, you’ll need a location to keep your books.

Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)

When a book is sold on Amazon using this approach, Amazon picks, packs, and ships the book on your behalf. Amazon will also store your products and handle customer service for you.

As a result, rather than paying for storage, shipping, and labour on your own, you pay Amazon an FBA charge to cover those costs.

If you have a high number of orders to fulfil and your business isn’t huge enough to have shipping expenses that are less than the FBA fees, use FBA. On the plus side, Amazon’s fulfilment centres will retain your books for you until they sell, so you won’t need a location to store them.

2. What kind of Amazon seller do you want to be?

Amazon merchants are divided into two categories.

Individual sellers

Each month, an individual vendor’s average number of products sold is less than 40. This strategy is best for sellers with a small number of products to sell or sell as a hobby. Professional and individual vendors have various fees.

Professional sellers

Amazon merchants who sell 40 or more items per month are considered professional sellers. This strategy is best for sellers with huge inventories who wish to make a consistent monthly wage from Amazon sales.

3. Where do you look for books to sell?

Most people prefer to sell books they already own online, but you may get your inventory from various areas to keep your Amazon book sales growing.

Here are a few of the most common approaches.

Sell your books

This is arguably the simplest approach to find books to sell, and it’s how many people begin. Look around your house to check if there are any old books gathering dust.

Sales of books

Many authors enjoy going to book sales because they feel like they’re on a treasure hunt. In addition, there’s usually a book sale someplace, especially at libraries.

Bring a book scanner to these sales and check for items that would be nice to list on Amazon. You’ll be able to find valuable books far faster than the competition during these sales if you use a Bluetooth scanner and a book scanning app.

Arbitrage on the internet

You don’t want to go out? Some sellers hunt for books on websites other than Amazon that are cheaper than what they can offer the identical book for on Amazon. This is commonly referred to as online arbitrage.

All you have to do is buy the book for a low price from one website, wait for it to arrive, and then sell it on Amazon for a greater price.

Purchase in bulk/wholesale

You may frequently find large books for really low prices on the internet. On eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook, you can find many old books listed at affordable prices.

Make sure you buy books that haven’t been sorted or scanned if you go this route. If that’s the case, you might be purchasing “duds” from another Amazon seller that aren’t profitable for Amazon.

Estate/closing sales

Because enormous collections of books will be sold all at once, estate sales, closing sales, and moving sales are fantastic places to find books. You can usually get full collections for pennies on the dollar if you offer.

Free books

Look on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace; someone is constantly looking to get rid of books for free. You only need to go collect them.

Just be aware that these free books may be advertised by other vendors looking to get rid of unsold books.

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