I put all of my book inventory on hold at Amazon during the month of September because of my wedding and honeymoon.  I didn’t want to have to deal with them while I was getting married and then taking off for a two-week vacation.  I also discontinued my book-scouting service because I wouldn’t be having the time to go out and acquire new inventory.

In October, I took the books off hold at Amazon but I didn’t restart the scouting service.  I didn’t want to acquire any new inventory because my plan was to sell off my old inventory so I wouldn’t have to move so many boxes of books when we move in a couple of months.  I also went through and pulled out all the books that were now worth less than $3 and I took those to a local used bookstore for cash.  I took about 3 grocery bags worth and they gave me $57 for them.

Selling Stats

Number of Sales:  50

Sales:  $438.54

Shipping Credit:  $205.50

Inventory Costs:  $0

Amazon Commission:  $133.31

Shipping Costs: $125.62

Scouting Fee:  $0 (Recurring monthly fee)

Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

My Brother’s Commission:  $44.60

Total Profit: $300.52

Best Sale of the Month was:

Achieving Safe and Reliable Healthcare by Michael Leonard.  Purchased for $2 at a thrift store and sold for $47.99!

As I said, I wasn’t acquiring any new inventory in October and my inventory continues to dwindle.  I purged almost 100 books, so I probably only have about 90 up for sale.  I was actually pleasantly surprised with the amount of sales I got in October.  Here’s hoping the same for November, though I think I’m going to increase my odds by once again signing up for the book-scouting service and trying to really increase my inventory.  The more books, the more chances for a sale.

You can find last month’s stats here.

Now to this month’s stats:

Number of Sales:  228

Sales:  $1,947.35

Shipping Credit:  $923.70

Inventory Costs:  $568.54

Amazon Commission:  $596.58

Shipping Costs: $598.15

Scouting Fee:  $30 (Recurring monthly fee)

Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

My Brother’s Commission:  $247.82

Bubble Mailers:  $200

Total Profit: $587.70

Best Sale of the Month was:

Cop Without a Badge by Charles Kipps (Hardcover, 1996 edition)

Purchased for $1.07 at a local used bookstore.  Sold for $115.00 two days after I bought it!

Looking forward to August.  It’s usually a good month because people start buying books for school, but with my upcoming wedding and move in September, I’m looking to cut back a little bit.  I don’t want to have a million books to move.  Right now, my inventory levels are at about 300 books, which equals about 8 boxes of books in my bedroom.  Once Bird and I get settled in a new place, then I’d like to really ramp up the inventory!

No matter what happens, I’d like a few more months with results like this.  Selling books pays the rent and you can’t beat that!!!

For some perspective on this post, here are last month’s bookselling results.

Now to this month’s stats:

Number of Sales:  140

Sales:  $1,157.22

Shipping Credit:  $569.61

Inventory Costs:  $170.13

Amazon Commission:  $361.23

Shipping Costs: $364.46

Scouting Fee:  $30 (Recurring monthly fee)

Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

My Brother’s Commission:  $155

Miscellaneous Expenses:  $10.68

GRAND TOTAL: $595.34

Woo hoo!

Best Sale of the Month was:
The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender To #45472

Purchased for $2.15 at Goodwill, Sold for $54.95!

I’m very pleased with these results.  Profits were way up even though we didn’t get very much new inventory this month.  We tend to get busy in the Summer so it’s harder to get out there and get new inventory but it’s an important part of the game and we’ll be looking to increase our inventory and our profits even more in July!

For some perspective on this post, here are last month’s bookselling results.

Now to this month’s stats:

Number of Sales:  148

Sales:  $1,221.87

Shipping Credit:  $590.80

Inventory Costs:  $504.88

Amazon Commission:  $377.92

Shipping Costs: $381.90

Packaging Materials: $83.24

Scouting Fee:  $60 (Recurring monthly fee)
Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

My Brother’s Commission:  $150

GRAND TOTAL: $214.71

The first month of profitability!

Best Sale of the Month was:

Disability, Society, and the Individual – Purchased for $2, Sold for $50!

A pretty good month and I hope to have another profitable month in June but internet sales are notoriously slower in the Summer because people spend less time indoors and less time shopping online.  Still, my fingers are crossed.  My brother continues to pick up high quality inventory and I will try to get out there every once in a while and find some good books to sell!

As some of you probably know, back in March I began to sell books online in my spare time.  I analyzed the March results here. I started with $500 and I lost about $26 in March.  I had a lot of one-time expenses, so I was pretty certain I could turn that around and generate a profit in April.

Here is April’s breakdown:

Sales:  $628.58

Inventory Costs:  $317.07

Amazon Commission:  $203.51

Shipping Credit:  $343.89

Shipping Costs: $209.65

Scouting Fee:  $30 (Recurring monthly fee – will be increasing next month)

Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

Misc. Postage:  $2.58 (I had to resend a book that got sent back to me)

Expansion Costs:  $339.98 (Additional equipment for my brother to use)

Brother’s Commission:  $37.22 (My brother’s cut)

GRAND TOTAL: - $207.53

April was not quite what I expected.  But I’m still not worried and here’s why:

My brother recently got laid off and to help keep himself busy and to make a little bit of cash…we made a deal that he would help me in my bookselling.  There were a few large one-time expenses in April that I was not expecting.  If it weren’t for those, I would have been profitable. I’m not worried because sometimes it takes money to make money and expanding the business isn’t a bad thing at this point.  If anything, it’s less work for me.

Being unemployed, my brother has all the time in the world (when he’s not looking for a real job) to be out scouring the used bookstores and thrift stores and garage sales  for books valuable enough to be resold.  It’s a good partnership.  He finds the books, I list them on Amazon and then package and ship them when they sell.

I reimburse him for all the books he buys.  Because I carry 100% of the risk of the books not selling, I take 60% and give him a 40% cut of the profits on the books that he finds that sell.  Any books that I find and sell on my own, I take 100% of the profits.

So now that the expenses for getting my brother started are taken care of I REALLY think May should be a profitable month for us.  I’m really hoping to make some money to put towards the honeymoon.  Hopefully more money than the $10 here and there that I am picking up from MySurvey.

I’ve updated the sidebar for the book business.  We started with $500 in March and now we’re down to $268.  We need to turn that around!

In an effort to make some extra income to help pay for my upcoming wedding, I decided last month to get back into bookselling.

On March 1st, I set up an ING sub-account with $500 as my initial business capital.  I think I’ll start a sidebar for this so we can track how well the business does.

Here’s a breakdown on how the month of March went:

Sales: $940.96

Inventory Costs: $210.24

Amazon Commission: $186.48

Shipping Supplies: $107.82 (I bought 300 bubble mailers…should last a while)

Amazon Marketplace Membership: $39.99 (This is a recurring monthly fee)

Scouting Software: $9.95 (This was actually a mistake and next month it will be $30)

Rubber Stamp: $9.24 (This was a one-time expense)

Postage Scale: $48.34 (Another one-time expense)

Miscellaneous: $185 (I sold a bunch of my brothers’  textbooks and I gave them the profit while keeping a very small commission)

Postage: $170.03

Drum roll….

Grand Total: - $26.13

Definitely not great, but I can live with that for my first month back in the biz.  There were a lot of one-time expenses that took away from profitability last  month.  I think I only went shopping for inventory about three times in March.  If I can increase my book hunting, I should be able to increase my bottom line.  However, I will admit that the textbooks my brother gave me were very valuable and one sold for almost $100, so that really helped too.  We’ll just have to wait and see how April goes and I will keep you guys posted.

While prepping the house for sale last weekend, I ran out of boxes and knew that we had plenty of empty ones in the “book room” at my business partner’s house. So I drove over there to get some boxes and we ended up having an impromptu meeting where we basically talked over the future of the business and I essentially quit. As much as I love the book business, there are just more important things that are taking up my time these days.

We hashed out a quick plan on what the split was going to look like and we both left satisfied. I’m getting a payout and he’s going to continue on with the business with his wife taking over my spot. There were no hard feelings and it’s all good — we’re still great friends.

While it only lasted a little over a year for me and it didn’t make me rich (financially), I really treasure the experience I gained. In college, I was an English major which is close to the furthest away from a Business major (maybe Art is a tad further) that you can be. So I’ve learned a lot about “business” over the last year and whether you like it or not, it seems the world runs on Business and not literature. Sad, but true.

Still, I’m looking forward to taking all the knowledge I gained over the last year and applying it to my next venture, whatever that may be.

For the last few months, sales have really slowed down. Whether it’s due to American’s reducing their discretionary spending I can’t be sure, but I know it probably has something to do with the fact that I haven’t put much effort into acquiring any new inventory.

The main problem is my motivation. The book business was never meant to replace my primary income. It was meant to be supplemental; fun money, if you will. However, two months ago I got a new day job and the pay increase has really diminished my feeling that I need to make a little more on the side. It’s always nice to have a bit more, but I’m questioning whether the amount I am making with the books is worth the time I put in to them.

It actually takes quite a bit of work. At my old job, I had every Friday off and I would spend them traveling between thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, and used bookstores, looking for books that were worth more than their price. Then I’d go home and list them all on Amazon and right a short description of their condition after checking them for underlining, highlighting, etc. I’d also have to list them in our accounting spreadsheets and peel off all the price stickers. Peeling price stickers is by far the worst part of selling used books online (I go through a lot of Goo-Gone and have sticky fingernails). Anyway, with my new job I have to work Fridays again and I don’t necessarily want to spend my weekends (especially in Summer) scouring the local thrift shops and book sales.

At this point, we are still slowly selling off our old inventory, but I haven’t been acquiring anything new. My business partner and I will be meeting later this month to discuss the future of the venture. I’m leaning towards calling it quits because it’s just not worth it to me at this point in time. I will keep you posted on what we decide.

As I mentioned before, one of my streams of income comes from a side business that I run part-time during my evenings and weekends. That business is an online used bookstore.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved books. I like reading them. I like holding them in my hands (no e- or audio books for me). I like collecting them. I like organizing them on my shelves (author, genre, color – I like to switch it up). I own a lot of books.

In college, I watched my friends buy and resell their books at the campus bookstore (getting ripped off in the process). I was an early adapter to buying textbooks online and then reselling them on Half.com when the semester was over. It was such a success that during the summer I turned it into a new hobby. I would spend some of my free time acquiring antique books at estate/garage sales and then selling them on eBay. In the process, I learned a lot about what makes a book valuable and got good at identifying them. After college, I continued my hobby of buying and selling books, but only when I felt like it or stumbled upon a great deal I knew I could flip for profit. It was fun, but also very tempting as I was bound to find plenty of books I wanted for my personal collection while I hunted for those I could sell.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how I turned the hobby into a business.