Basic Strategy of Sourcing Books for Online Book Arbitrage on Amazon.com
Our strategy is simple. Our focus is you. We want to share with you some tips for sourcing books to sell Amazon FBA, and create a picture for you, of what is involved in some basic strategy for online book arbitrage.
Our main goal is to show you how online book arbitrage works, and ultimately, how it can work for you in either beginning your journey selling books, or to enhance what you already know.
If you like the idea of being your own boss, dream of setting your own work hours and working remotely from the location of your choice, then online book arbitrage may be for you!
You can easily utilize our methods for your own business, and work from anywhere that has an established internet connection. Digital nomad, let’s begin.
How to Source Books for Amazon FBA
Four Book Categories
As you may or may not know, there are four distinctive categories involved for listing books on Amazon:
Our focus is on flipping USED books due to their wide availability for book flipping.
Five Strategy Steps
There are five functional, basic strategy steps, and in the corresponding video, each of which will teach you how to effectively purchase books on Amazon.com., and return a profit. These strategy steps are what I use in my own book arbitrage business, and I believe these steps will help you in understanding the basics of what is involved in researching, making purchases, and returning a profit once you begin selling books.
1 - Restrictions
Restricted Inventory
If, for some reason, you are restricted from selling a particular book on Amazon.com, then you likely should NOT purchase that book for flipping. Refer to this video for more information regarding restricted inventory, myths of restricted inventory, the big benefit of being restricted, how to find many profitable books (even if you are heavily restricted), and what to do with the restricted books you already have in your possession.
2 - Understand the Sales Pattern
Sales Patterns
We have designated four categories for books, to help you understand the sales pattern of the books you are buying, via Keepa charts. Keepa charts is an effective, super time saving tool that shows the sales rank overtime, which in turn reveals a useful pattern. Understanding these patterns will help you make better purchasing decisions. The four book patterns are:
3 - Supply and Demand
Keepa charts show, for your reference, both the supply (how many new and how many used offers are out there), and demand. Keepa charts include the pricing of the book, for easy reference in your decision-making process.
It is also important to check the historical sales data for any given book, for the purpose of noticing if the demand of a book has dropped due to a price increase. Keepa Charts are an invaluable part of a book flipper’s tool box.
4 - Pricing Tips
5 - Other Factors
Condition Notes, Seller Feedback & Delivery Time. Make sure that the condition notes match the condition of the book. Check if the book is shipping from outside of the U.S., which should be found in the condition notes or under the delivery heading.
If shipping time is thirty days, the book more than likely is shipping from out of the U.S. and you should proceed with caution; I’m okay with sourcing from Europe & Canada, but leery if coming in from anywhere else. You may want to pay attention to seller feedback as well, but again use your own judgment.
Subject Matter of the Book - generally speaking, don’t spend a lot of time here; instead, refer to the Keepa charts, and let the data do the talking.
The reason you want to pay attention to the subject matter, in a few cases, is to try to anticipate a future reduction in the demand due to a new edition coming out -- in which case you’ll usually want to stay away from these books.
To be clear, I do NOT recommend looking to see if there's a new edition coming out for every book you're potentially looking to buy to flip. Instead, I suggest only looking for new editions in certain instances, especially when the book has an older year in the title (e.g., law books, computer books, prep study books, etc.).
Also, unless the year has just started out, stay away from calendar books from the previous year; they will usually continue to lose demand as the new year progresses.
Amazon’s New Price (and recent new price if out of stock). For example, if Amazon is selling a new book for lower than what you are listing your used book for, then its very unlikely you’ll sell at the price you have listed.
Fortunately, if using our software since we curate our books, you won’t find this happening too often when looking for books to flip.
Got it – Now How to I Find these Profitable Books?
Amazon has millions upon millions of used books in their catalog. I'm guessing you probably won't have the time to look through all of them to find the ones you can flip for a profit. To do online book arbitrage , you'll need some software to speed up the process.
That's where Master Book Flippers comes in. We curate our database and do a bunch of cool things behind the scenes; our focus it to help you finding great profitable books in the least amount of time AND with the least amount of effort. Using our service, you'll find profitable books within seconds each time you sit down to source inventory for your Amazon Business.
Learn More and try us FREE Today