selling books on Amazon - tips for more profit

cymro1170 · 20 July 2005 at 7:52PM

How do you know if a book you've put up is sold?

apprentice_tycoon · 20 July 2005 at 8:06PM

When an item is sold you get an email with the buyers name and address that you can cut off to use as a label, you are expected to post the item within 2 days. You get paid every 2 weeks as a direct debit

Swattie · 20 July 2005 at 8:25PM

I've also had a lot of success selling unwanted books, videos, DVDs and games on Amazon.

Anything I sell of my daughters goes into her bank account.

Couple of tips - Amazon have a flat postage charge for each type of product and from that they take commission and VAT.
For DVDs, games and videos it just about covers the cost of the postage and a padded envelope - it doesn't stretch to the cost of posting a double video.

For books it is a P&P charge of £2.75 (and that includes Amazon commission & VAT) so it will not cover the cost of posting most hardbacks and larger, heavier books, for example I posted one off this morning for £5.90. So you should only list big books if the value will more than cover the postage and give you a decent margin. You cannot change the postage rates.

Amazon sellers help are better than eBay and they do have an 0870 contact number, but you still need to be fair and responsible and honest about the condition of items.

Good luck to anyone who tries it, and I'm happy to help anyone who needs it - just PM me.

chickadee · 20 July 2005 at 11:47PM

Thanks everyone for all the advice from this thread. As a reult of your comments I have tonight listed about a dozen of my university text books. Hopefully they will sell quickly because I need the space (and the money!).

I have just had a worrying thought though. I go on holiday in August for a week. I will be camping so no internet link. What if I sell something whilst I am away? Can I temporarily suspend my items from sale for a bit, or will it really matter if I post something late? How have you overcome this problem?

Chickadee

apprentice_tycoon · 20 July 2005 at 11:53PM

hi chickadee - going on your holidays is not a problem. Have a look at your sellers account page, you will see a holiday setting, you can click the button and it takes all your books off sale and suspends them, then you can reverse this as soon as you come back. Well done on getting them up for sale and good luck with them

Graham_The_Book_Man · 20 July 2005 at 11:56PM

Your post makes interesting reading, I too sell books on amazon (hence the name). You make some valid points but I do feel you didn't make enough clear on 3 points.

1) Amazon charges. Basically amazon will charge you 86p + 17.25% of the sale price and will deduct 43p from the £2.75 postage charged to the customer (so you get £2.32 to post with not £2.75). So if you try to sell a modern paperback you will find loads available for 1p.

If (and that is a big if) yours sells you will receive £2.76-86p-43p-say £1 to post-cost of a jiffy bag-cost of petrol to take to the post office-time it takes to list and print and wrap and pack and post.

Even without the time/petrol cost a profit of 60p to 70p isn't a great deal. Of course it gets harder when trying to sell heavier books as anything above £2.32 that it will cost to post will need to be added to the price and things are very competitive out there.

2) Postage: As I say the postage credit you will actually receive is £2.32 so it is vital that you buy a set of scales and put https://www.royalmail.com into your favourites list. I have lost count of the times I have emailed new sellers and yes it is always new sellers, who have a book for sale at £1.50 or some silly price, which is going to cost £5 or more to post. I have had some amazing replies ranging from "oops mistake, entered the wrong price" to "hadn't really given it much thought" !!!!!!!! to "don't care, just trying to get rid of my old uni books" (Would be less of a loss to take them to the tip)

3) Tax. I have seen no mention throughout the thread about registering to pay tax or as a business. The simple rule is that once you buy a book (or anything else) for resale you are liable to tax and NI on the profits you make. You should notify the Tax office within three months or you could face a fine. Amazon and Ebay sellers are currently beng targeted by the Customs and Revenue because they know how much money is being lost to the Treasury this way. If the Customs and Excise ask for your details, the sites are bound to give over that information so if you don't follow the rules you might, in time be getting the 6am knock knock.

Selling your own collection, particularly if valuable may cause problems with your Capital Gains Tax so worth taking professional advice.

Selling online on amazon/ebay CAN be fun but is not for everyone and care has to be taken on many counts so I hope fervently that I may have put off one or two people planning on starting to sell without doing the maths or giving it much thought because they are the ones who will lose money.

Cheers
Graham

raeble · 21 July 2005 at 2:56AM

chickadee wrote:

Thanks everyone for all the advice from this thread. As a reult of your comments I have tonight listed about a dozen of my university text books. Hopefully they will sell quickly because I need the space (and the money!).

You might have a while to wait for text books to sell as the Uni's have finished for the year. It may differ but where I work new students won't get an approved reading list until they start which would be September, current students may already have bought any textbooks they need from graduating students or the uni second hand bookshops. Have you taken the cost of postage into account, which will eat into what you get? Not to mention the amount Amazon takes increases the more the item is sold for - eg I sold something for £22, I got £18 before I took into account how much postage and packaging would cost me - dropped to about £15 after that.

apprentice_tycoon · 21 July 2005 at 6:45AM

Hello Graham - welcome to MoneySaving Old Style - you make some very valid points - the postage allowance, you are right to point out that it is less than I said, I had the lower figure in my post originally but a later poster gave the higher figure and I wrongly assumed that they had seen something I hadn't, I checked it a few minutes ago and it seems that I was right in the first place.
I am registered with the Inland Revenue because all my work involves buying, selling and the odd mystery shopping job, but I doubt whether anyone reading these posts would be going into this to raise more than a few pounds from their own and other family members books plus a few that they pick up elsewhere, it would be very hard to prove that they didn't buy the book for their own use then sell it on after reading it whereas buying in bulk from auctions as I have done is a very different matter, I agree.

Lillie_2 · 21 July 2005 at 9:39AM

Hi - thanks for all the info on this topic - very useful. I have sold books of my own on Amazon for quite a good profit, and bought a few from charity shops etc to try, but agree with others that it's difficult to predict what will sell (on an individual book basis). My best one was a book on conception that I bought from a library sale for 75p and sold for £18 because it was really difficult to get hold of - just sheer luck though rather than skill. Also have shelves full of errors of judgement

Am interested in auctions to get hold of stock on a more efficient basis (hmm, could be more efficiently losing money, I suppose!) Are there are auction houses (esp in North-West) which specialise in books, and what do the lots tend to consist of? Are they usually a hotch potch of different books or are they stocks of the same texts? Also, any tips on where to get remaindered books from?

apprentice_tycoon · 21 July 2005 at 10:03AM

Hello Lillie - welcome to MSE Old Style, the book on conception was lucky, I wonder if it was lucky for the new owner too?
I agree that it can be hit and miss, if you can check on a books saleablity before buying that might stop errors being made but if you see a book at a boot sale or whatever you have to make up your mind on the spot - if that's the case and I'm really not sure if it's a sought after book I have a spend limit of 50 pence or £1 ( maybe £2 if it's a very neat and tidy book) that way if I get it wrong it's not a lot to lose and it can always either go to a charity shop or passed on to a friend.
As far as buying a box at auction goes, I hit a lucky find a while back with a box of audio books that were in perfect condition and a box of slightly more esoteric paperbacks that weren't too common, I didn't really know that at the time of buying, I just took a chance, knowing that I would read them in any case. I sold most of them pretty quickly.
Other boxes of books that I've seen have been very mixed, auctioneers will put shabby books with few smarter looking ones so that you have to have the bad to get the good (they don't want to be left with the shabby ones so it makes sense to mix'em up). This is OK if you are prepared to take them all home and sort through them and accept that you will be throwing a lot away. I'm afraid that I just don't have the space to handle boxes like this so I leave well enough alone
To find the auction houses have a look at the BBC lifestyle websites (advertised on their antique shows) I expect that they are all listed there

edit - These sales were estate auctions (where the owner has died or given up their home) so you don't get book dealers at these auctions, they will go to the specialist sales .
I'm afraid that I've no experience with remaindered books - sorry

selling books on Amazon - tips for more profit

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