How to Start Sell Used Books on Amazon in 2024

Learning how to sell books to Amazon is a great start for online selling. I sell books through Amazon because it’s a good way to begin without storing inventory, which reduces financial risk. Plus, if you sell new or used books without private labels, you can save money for your first Amazon launch and private label products.

So, how do you sell used books on Amazon? Here’s a step-by-step guide on the fundamentals of selling on Amazon and tips to thrive in the online bookselling niche.

Why Is Selling Amazon Used Books Profitable and Simple?

At first, I didn’t have much money. I was scared to risk the little money I had, so I looked for another way. I found my old comic book collection, which was a safe way to start selling used books on Amazon. I wanted to sell the comics I had kept for a long time and learned tips and secrets about selling books on Amazon online. It was exciting to be my own boss without risking my savings. But enough about that. Here are a few reasons to start selling books on Amazon right away:

1. It’s easier than you think

Before I started, I didn’t know much about how Amazon works. Now, I understand that over half of the sales on Amazon come from third-party sellers.

In a 2018 article by CNBC, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, told shareholders that third-party sellers were responsible for over half of Amazon’s sales for the first time. He also said Amazon made $100,000 in sales from over 140,000 businesses that sell products.

Many third-party sellers are selling used books on Amazon. At the start of the year, Amazon had over 53.38 million used books for sale!

What does this mean for you as a future bookseller? It means many people find their next book on Amazon. An average American reads 12 books a year, and 90 million people have Amazon Prime. Selling used books on Amazon can be a great way to make some cash.

As a third-party seller, you have three options:

• Fulfilled-by-Merchant (FBM) – You make the listing, then pack and ship the item yourself. This is for those with a good network.
• Amazon Vendors (AMZ) – You sell your inventory directly to Amazon through Vendor Central. This is for big sellers who want to sell lots of inventory quickly.
• Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) – You make the listing, and Amazon stores, packs, and ships the products for a fee. FBA sellers get fast and free shipping for their products. This option is the most popular for new sellers.

I started as an FBM seller, but now many people begin as FBA sellers. You can choose the best option. Listing your books on Amazon is easier than other products. When you want to sell a book, you follow a Master Listing process. Books are organized by condition and price, which is better than creating a full listing.

If your listing has the lowest price and a good rating, you can win the Buy Box. It’s the important orange “Add-to-Cart” button that shoppers click to buy a product, which could be yours!

If you want to sell new or collectible books, Amazon is a good choice. You can sell new books, paperbacks, or hardcovers. Use a calculator to find out how much does it cost to sell. Prices can be $39.99 or $0.99, depending on the type of book. A publisher can also list their books on Amazon.

2. Amazon is great for selling books, thanks to its Best-Seller-Ranking system (BSR)

If a product is sold, Amazon assigns it a BSR. A lower BSR means the product can make more sales. If a book has a BSR of one, it’s the best-selling book on Amazon. A book with a BSR of two million might take sixty days to sell one copy. The lower the book’s BSR, the better it sells. Using this information helps make informed decisions about profitable books on Amazon.

3. FBA makes selling simpler

I sell ten books every day. I used to earn well, but packaging and shipping books took a lot of time. Then I found out about Amazon FBA, which is one of the services provided by Amazon Seller Central.

For those who don’t know, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a program where Amazon helps sellers with:

• Using Amazon fulfillment centers to store and ship products for a fee (FBA fees)
• Picking, packing, and shipping the seller’s product to the customer when a sale happens
• Handling customer service issues like returns and complaints for the seller
• Access to the Amazon Prime shipping program, allowing faster delivery for customers

Instead of spending three to four hours packing books and then waiting at the post office, now I just pack the used books and send them to Amazon, which takes care of everything else. Plus, my books are available on PRIME, so sales can increase quickly.

Selling Books Online on Amazon: Tips and Secrets

Throughout my years of selling books on Amazon, I’ve learned some helpful tips to boost your bookselling business. Here’s everything you need to know:

Tip #1:

To sell books on Amazon, list them at the lowest price to win the Buy Box. This helps you sell more online. I learned the value of pricing when I sold my first book on April 23, 2015, and discovered the Best Seller Ranking (BSR) System.

Tip #2:

A lower BSR is better. Usually, I don’t sell books with a BSR over 200,000. I use Amazon to check each book’s BSR. Books below 200,000 get listed on Amazon, others get set aside or donated.

Tip #3:

If you’re looking to sell but lack a way to fulfill your orders, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is useful. It helps sell books faster by letting Amazon handle most of the work. You just need to provide inventory.

Tip #4:

Find good deals at sales by buying large bundles of books. People usually sell books cheaply, so I often buy over 200 books for about twenty dollars. Sometimes, they are even free.

Tip #5:

Students often buy textbooks last minute, paying more for quick shipping. You can buy used copies as Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) and sell them on Amazon Prime for more. This can be more profitable than the stock market.

Tip #6:

Start with old books from home if you have no capital. I began with comic books and found valuable titles. Older textbooks printed before 1970 are popular with students for being cheaper yet relevant.

Tip #7:

If you’re able to sell forty books a month, get a professional selling plan on Amazon. It costs $39.95 per month but saves a one-dollar fee for each sale.

Tip #8:

Books in different conditions have different prices. Books in Very Good condition sell higher than those in Good or Acceptable conditions. If BSR is over 250,000, price it similar to Good or Acceptable books.

Tip #9:

Don’t spend too much personal money at first. Budget to buy new inventory. As your book-selling business grows, try other methods like Wholesaling or Private Label.

How to Find Books for Amazon Selling?

As someone who has invested in the buy-and-sell book business, I assure you it is much more rewarding than old-school canvassing. Sellers use unique ways for sourcing books. Here are some methods to find good books to resell on Amazon:

Scanning

It is one of the most common ways to find books. People use the scanning method by going to sales where books are cheap (around one dollar) and scanning all barcodes with portable scanners or smartphone apps.

There is another app that checks the book’s BSR and lowest sales price. It tells the seller if the book is a good deal. A scanner usually brings a box, a shopping cart, or many reusable bags to carry the books. This method is similar to Retail Arbitrage.

Wholesaling

It is for finding books to be sold. Instead of trying to scan every book in a sale, I would make offers for the whole bundle upfront. This wholesale method works well at yard sales, estate sales, and bookstore closings. Being unselective can lower the price of each book and leave me with unsellable books. For every good purchase, I will have three books for donation for each new book worth listing. Effectively, the inventory will cost one dollar per item.

Online Arbitrage (OA)

It is another way to make money by looking for an inventory of books. You buy books at low prices on one marketplace (like Craigslist or eBay) and resell them on another marketplace. This takes more time than scanning or wholesaling, so aim for books you can sell for $25 or more. First edition books and text books are great targets.

9 Simple Steps for Starting a Book Selling Business on Amazon

After learning the basics of selling used books on Amazon, here are simple steps as a guide to help you start selling books on Amazon. Use the Amazon Seller app for the resale business you want to start.

Step 1: Pick the sourcing method

Among the methods listed before, pick the one that suits you and your personality.

If you enjoy thrills and love hunting, the scanning method is likely a good fit. For this, get an app that scans books to resell with one button press.

If you like haggling and making deals, try the wholesaling method.

If you’re okay with flipping the same ten textbooks often, online arbitrage might suit you for sourcing books.

Step 2: Look for an inventory

If you want to build your inventory by buying a lot of books, start by looking for book sales. Check your local library and old bookstores often to find out when the next sale is happening. You can also look on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for yard sales and estate sales near you. Lastly, you might find someone selling hundreds of books as a whole collection.

Step 3: Register your own Amazon seller account

To sell on Amazon, you need an Amazon seller account. There are two types:

1. Individual Seller – This account is free but charges an extra one dollar for every item you sell.
2. Professional Seller – This account costs a monthly subscription fee of thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents, but there’s no extra one dollar fee per sale.

If you believe you can sell at least forty items a month (like I sold three hundred books per month at first), a Professional Seller account is cheaper. This makes it easier for fulfillment by merchant.

Step 4: Use Fetcher for monitoring purposes

It’s pretty common to lose track of a book’s price when you own hundreds of different titles. When I started, I might spend five hundred dollars for five hundred books in one day and then eighty dollars for another two thousand books. Since I didn’t know where each book came from, I couldn’t tell if the sales I made were profitable.

It was confusing, but luckily, I found a solution with Fetcher. Fetcher is an app that works with your Amazon Seller Account, helps you understand your Seller Central data, and lets you monitor sales and profit by entering the cost of each book.

Other features include the following:

• Breakdown of a product on a per ASIN basis
• Analysis of sales and PPC cost
• Tracking of product promotion and real costs
• Fees in Amazon, like FBA, storage, etc.
• Tracking of refunds with costs and comparisons
• Tracking and calculation of costs of sold goods
• Inventory dashboard
• Statement of loss and professional profit
• Sales per day and profit email

Since I started using Fetcher, my profits increased by thirty-eight percent. It makes it easier to decide if books to sell on Amazon are worth listing by tracking cost-of-goods. The user-friendly interface is more convenient than Seller Central, which I rarely use now.

An app to scan listings like this can often sell for ninety-seven dollars per month as a startup subscription. However, Fetcher can be much cheaper, costing as low as nineteen dollars per month, depending on the number of sales you make within a single month.

The people at Fetcher are confident in the app’s ability to track your profits on Amazon accurately. They even offer a FREE trial for thirty-one days.

Step 5: Start listing the inventory on Amazon

The next step is to make a list of your inventory. You can have your inventory scanned automatically, but if you’re like me, you might choose to add each book manually by typing the ISBN into the Amazon search bar and clicking “I have one to sell.” This way, you can also check the book’s condition. When you find your book’s product detail page, you’ll start listing it under one of the five conditions. These are the conditions you can use to list the books:

• New
• Like New
• Very Good
• Good
• Acceptable

After listing, remember to adjust your prices accordingly.

New

This means the book’s condition is brand-new. It hasn’t been opened or used, and it’s still in its original packaging with all the original wrapping materials. If there’s a protective wrapper, it should be intact as well. The book should also have the original manufacturer’s warranty, if available, including all details in the printed listing comments.

Used – Like New

The book’s condition is almost untouched. The original protective wrapper might be missing, but the packaging is still intact and pristine. Often, the difference between “Used – Like New” and “New” is small. You might consider listing the book as “New” for a higher price and a better chance at the Buy Box when you sell online on Amazon, especially with many other sellers.

Used – Very Good

The item’s condition is used but well-cared and seen traces of limited usage but still remains in great condition. The item is still complete, undamaged, and unmarked but may have shallow signs of wear. It remains working perfectly.

Note that if the used book has no specks of writing, it can be listed as Very Good. If the used book had writings in it or even missed a dust jacket, then book nerds will criticize you negatively, and worse, you will even receive negative seller feedback.

Used – Good

The item’s condition is used with the description noted under the Category-Specific Condition Guidelines. The item may be worn from constant use but still in good condition enough to be working properly. It can contain markings or any obvious signs that the book has previously used. Note that this is the lowest condition I’ll ever consider in terms of book quality.

Used – Acceptable

The item’s condition is used with the description still noted under the Category-Specific Condition Guidelines. The item may be looking worn down but still working fine. Issues can be reflected in the aesthetics, dents, scratches, and worn corners. It may contain markings.

For the record, books under Acceptable condition are items that went through a lot of usages. Therefore, I will only consider selling a book under this condition if I purchase them beforehand at a very low cost and if the book can return more than what I have been investing and has an extremely low BSR.

Many consumers, including myself, avoid books in this condition, so please take extra caution when considering buying them. People who spend money to buy used books are often very keen on the conditions.

If a certain book lover finds writing in the book bought that’s in a condition under Very Good, then they will contact you. Ninety percent of the time, you, as the seller, will have to refund the purchased price (often, refunds are cheaper than asking to return the item) to avoid negative seller feedback. In conclusion, it will be ideal to have the book listings under the appropriate conditions for the first time to prevent refunds after having an issue of mislabeling items.

Step 6: Send the books to the closest Fulfillment center

If you resell books, you will need to send them to the nearest fulfillment center. Fortunately, that is conveniently done. You just need to store the books in a box that can be bought from Home Depot and ship one or all of them to the preferred carriers of Amazon. Also, please remember to mark the shipping costs to your account in Fetcher.

Step 7: Observe incoming sales via Fetcher

Once you’ve completed the earlier steps correctly, like choosing books based on Amazon Best Seller Ranks (BSRs), pricing them according to their condition, and sending them to the nearest fulfillment centers, you’ll notice incoming sales rise quickly. Make sure to log in to Fetcher daily to check your stats and see how much profit Amazon may be bringing you.

Step 8: Make sure to provide quality customer service

Fortunately, since you didn’t write or contribute to the book you’re selling, you don’t have to worry much about reviews. Just make sure you’re keeping your customers happy. You can maintain communication with your customers by using an automated email service like Launch. If you’re selling FBA, Amazon handles customer service. Platforms like SageMailer help you follow up with buyers to see if they’re satisfied with their orders.

It can be rare to have such negative seller feedback from any buyer, but when it does happen, it will usually be to the improper labeling of the item’s condition.

Get more information about “how to ask customers to remove negative feedback”.

Let me remind you again never to list books under the wrong condition to avoid negative seller feedback.

Step 9: Start promoting your business

As technology keeps advancing, social media is becoming more powerful. It’s not just for chatting with family and friends over long distances, but also a great way to market your books and boost sales on Amazon.

If you’re not connected yet, try setting up accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Use these platforms to upload original content about the books you’re selling. Share your recommendations with groups like book clubs, friends, and even your followers who you might not know personally. This way, you can make some cash and share your book world on YouTube too!

Conclusion

I had been selling used books on Amazon for about nine months before switching to a full-time Private Label. I hope I was able to guide you through the process of selling used books on Amazon so that you can have a head start on the Amazon online business that you are dreaming of.

By following the Amazon tips and secrets above, and along with the two thousand to three thousand dollars of profits I made each month while selling books, I used this as a launching pad to start creating my labels. There’s nothing stopping you from following my complete guide. Always be sure to start selling books.

The buy-and-sell business will be difficult in a competitive environment if you won’t utilize the power the internet brings. But, whatever status you are, as long as you are familiar with the basic operations of a computer or even a smartphone and vigilant enough to do good research, the possibilities can be endless.

Growing a business with Amazon can be a full-time job or just a solid part-time backup. Still, the convenience it can offer and the door of opportunities it can open are possibly plenty more than you can ever imagine.