- Low Sourcing Cost
- Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
- Little to No Long Term Storage Fees
- Easy For Me To Source
Those are the top reasons reasons I want to sell books on Amazon fba, and there are a lot of people who make a good living selling nothing but used books on Amazon. Now, if you start to research selling books at all you'll see a lot of people talk about the sales rank of books. Specifically, you'll see a lot of people talking about how they never buy a book with a rank under 1 million. Why?
Well, let's go into sales rank a little on Amazon. First off it's a number that Amazon assigns an item that, supposedly is an indicator of how well and how fast an item will sell. I say supposedly because frankly, no one really knows exactly how Amazon figures sales rank, and they are keeping that secret tighter than Fort Knox. While no one other than them knows the exact algorithm they use to figure sales rank, it is a decent indicator of how well an item will sell. General wisdom is anything above 1 million will NOT sell fast. So the thought is they don't want to "waste" their time and money buying, and listing these books. I personally have a couple problems with this "general wisdom".
The first is that, as mentioned above, there are no long term storage fees for unique items on FBA. That means if you only have one of an item, like one book, than they aren't going to charge you those extra fees. So, you're not incurring extra fees by having the inventory sitting around. Besides, it's not like it's sitting around your house taking up space. They're sitting in a nice Amazon warehouse, safe and sound, and out of your sight.
The next is that while you may not sell the book fast, chances are you WILL sell it eventually. It just isn't going to be a "quick" (as in under a month) sale. It may be in 3 month, 6 months, or a year later. However, who cares! You're not incurring those extra fees, although you are paying normal storage fees still, and if you bought the book cheap enough, you're still going to make a profit. Likely a good one at that. I'm sure that eventually you will have to choose to destroy some books because they just don't sell, but again, likely the majority will sell. Eventually.
Now I'm not telling you to rush out and buy every book you find with a rank that's above 1 million and send it in. I still think it's smart to have a healthy selection of books with a rank below 1 million that will, hopefully, be fast sellers. The thing is, you're building a business here, and any business has a long term and short term profit strategy. In my mind the 1 million and under books are the "short" term profits, they're the books you're going to send and hope to see sell within that first month. To me though, those books that are 1 million and above, those are the long term profits. These books are the extra profit padding each month. It's just going to take you awhile to start seeing those profits. But if you continued to source consistently over the course of a few months, and then hopefully years, you'll see those numbers continue to grow and grow each month as more and more long tail items (above 1 milion) sell.
My strategy, and obviously I'm not an expert (yet), is to buy books with a "good" rank for quick sales so I can funnel my profits back into buying more inventory AND buy books with "bad" rank ( above 1 million and under 3 million) and patiently wait for them to begin selling. It seems to me that leaving those "bad" ranked books on the table is just like taking money out of your wallet and leaving it on that same proverbial table. Recently, on a blog I follow I had my theory somewhat proven.
I'm signed up for the emails from a website called booktothefuture.com and a few months ago he went to a book sale, and bought a large amount of books. Many of these books had a rank above 1 million, clear to 6 million. He recently published an update on his little experiment with buying so many badly ranked, you can read it HERE. It's really quite interesting, and while I won't go into all the details, if you want to read them just follow the link above. What interested me was the sales of the books above 1 million.
The gist of it is that 30% of the books that he sold over the last five months, from this one sale, were books with a rank above 1 million. A couple were even 5 and 6 million ranked. His profit from the books from that sale that sold was around $725, now 30% of that is around $217. For some people that may not seem like a big number, but you have to remember is that this is from 1 book sale this person attended.
You know that he's attended and sourced far more than just that one sale. That means that if he were to continue to buy those 1 million and above books, and they continued to contribute and 30% to his sales than it's easy to add more and more money to that pot. There are of course other factors to consider, many of which we can't know.
We can't know how many books that he will eventually have to choose to destroy because they aren't selling. We know how much he spent in total for all books, but we don't know how much the badly ranked books cost. Although I suppose you could just divide what he paid by how many books he bought total and get an average cost per book. Yet even with these things to consider I still think it's important to note what he found out in his experiment. Those extra "bad" books sold, and they sold fairly well. Adding an extra 30% to your sales is nothing to sneeze at.
So what I've taken away from this is that those "bad" books are a good investment, when used wisely. Again, I'm not going to rush out and buy nothing but badly ranked books, or even a large majority of badly ranked books. However, if there is a good profit margin, and there are only one or no other FBA sellers for that book, and it seems unique enough that it won't be easily sourced by other sellers, than yes, I'm going to buy it. I'm still looking for those books with a rank under a million, because again, I do need sales that are fairly quick so that I can continue to source for more books. Hopefully after a few months, let's say 6, I'll start to see more and more of those long tail books selling out of my inventory and padding my profits.
There is one more thing to consier with this strategy though, and I'm actually adding this section a couple months after writing this post. It's something I "missed" in my initial musings but have thought of since. That is the time you will spend sourcing books. If you are going for more books to sell, and more that are a higher Amazon ranking, than it's likely you will spend more time sourcing. Some people use this as the reason they won't buy anything above 1 million, and it's a legitimate reason. However, if you are scanning books you're probably going to come across a few of the "bad" ranked books along the way. A few quick seconds to check other sellers and profit margin and you can still add these books to your selling portfolio. So I can't really see how it would add that much time to what you are already doing. Especially in the beginning when you will be scanning tons of books until you start to get a feel for a "good" book to sell.
So there you go, my "strategy" for selling books on FBA. Buy the quick sales for more sourcing money, and buy the long tail books for higher sales down the road. I'll be sure to update you as I go along as to how well this is working for me, but obviously it's going to take a few months to realize. In the meanwhile you can chew over what we talked about and decide for yourself, are you only going to go for the books that are under a million in rank, or are you going to supplement your inventory with a selection of books that are above a million? Only you can decide that. If your curious about sales rank numbers for the different categories on Amazon and what's considered "good" than here's another good article I found that will give you a rough idea; just go here to check it out
The gist of it is that 30% of the books that he sold over the last five months, from this one sale, were books with a rank above 1 million. A couple were even 5 and 6 million ranked. His profit from the books from that sale that sold was around $725, now 30% of that is around $217. For some people that may not seem like a big number, but you have to remember is that this is from 1 book sale this person attended.
You know that he's attended and sourced far more than just that one sale. That means that if he were to continue to buy those 1 million and above books, and they continued to contribute and 30% to his sales than it's easy to add more and more money to that pot. There are of course other factors to consider, many of which we can't know.
We can't know how many books that he will eventually have to choose to destroy because they aren't selling. We know how much he spent in total for all books, but we don't know how much the badly ranked books cost. Although I suppose you could just divide what he paid by how many books he bought total and get an average cost per book. Yet even with these things to consider I still think it's important to note what he found out in his experiment. Those extra "bad" books sold, and they sold fairly well. Adding an extra 30% to your sales is nothing to sneeze at.
So what I've taken away from this is that those "bad" books are a good investment, when used wisely. Again, I'm not going to rush out and buy nothing but badly ranked books, or even a large majority of badly ranked books. However, if there is a good profit margin, and there are only one or no other FBA sellers for that book, and it seems unique enough that it won't be easily sourced by other sellers, than yes, I'm going to buy it. I'm still looking for those books with a rank under a million, because again, I do need sales that are fairly quick so that I can continue to source for more books. Hopefully after a few months, let's say 6, I'll start to see more and more of those long tail books selling out of my inventory and padding my profits.
There is one more thing to consier with this strategy though, and I'm actually adding this section a couple months after writing this post. It's something I "missed" in my initial musings but have thought of since. That is the time you will spend sourcing books. If you are going for more books to sell, and more that are a higher Amazon ranking, than it's likely you will spend more time sourcing. Some people use this as the reason they won't buy anything above 1 million, and it's a legitimate reason. However, if you are scanning books you're probably going to come across a few of the "bad" ranked books along the way. A few quick seconds to check other sellers and profit margin and you can still add these books to your selling portfolio. So I can't really see how it would add that much time to what you are already doing. Especially in the beginning when you will be scanning tons of books until you start to get a feel for a "good" book to sell.
So there you go, my "strategy" for selling books on FBA. Buy the quick sales for more sourcing money, and buy the long tail books for higher sales down the road. I'll be sure to update you as I go along as to how well this is working for me, but obviously it's going to take a few months to realize. In the meanwhile you can chew over what we talked about and decide for yourself, are you only going to go for the books that are under a million in rank, or are you going to supplement your inventory with a selection of books that are above a million? Only you can decide that. If your curious about sales rank numbers for the different categories on Amazon and what's considered "good" than here's another good article I found that will give you a rough idea; just go here to check it out
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