Strep Throat Blues Post

Here's another benefit of working at home - when my daughter came down with strep throat yesterday, there was no scrambling to call in sick at work and try to get someone to cover my workload. She sleeps peacefully on the couch now, having traumatically downed her first dose of antibiotics, and I sit beside her on the recliner and try to get some work done. I still have most of my 2000+ used books to list and more personalized books product spotlights to write...

A lot of used books from EBay

I alluded to the fact that I had something in the works to jumpstart my Amazon Marketplace used book selling business (to supplement the off-season income that the personalized books are not bringing in) in my last post. Well the something in the works was that I was bidding on a lot of used books that someone was selling on Ebay. The lot was over 2000 books, supposedly from an ex-Amazon book seller that had gone on vacation accidentally leaving her inventory up for sell on Amazon - the books were selling and she wasn't shipping and Amazon froze her account, or so the story went from the guy that was selling them on EBay. I went ahead and bid on the books site unseen and ended up winning the bid for a little over $200. I had been looking for something like this - that is a bunch of books for a low price from a local seller (they were stored in a shed some 40 miles from my home.)

So I rented a Van and picked up over a thousand of the books on the first Monday after winning the bid, and paid off the seller in cash (and recieved no receipt, not so smart I know). And have since picked up another 1000 or so from the shed - all that I deemed worth taking.

My total expenditure was about $350.00 (buying price plus van rental plus gas), and what did I get? Of course I haven't looked at every one of them yet but I can tell you what I've seen so far. The general condition of the books is not that good - most of the ones I've listed, I've had to list as "acceptable" the lowest rating Amazon allows (you are not allowed to list "unacceptable" or "poor" or "piece of trash" books - don't ask me why, I don't know...) And many of them have the back blank page suspiciously ripped out (this would be the page that the library would put its pocket or electronic signal thingy in - I don't want to think too hard on why they would be ripped out). Of the 2000 books I'll probably be able to list about 200-500 of them for an average price of $10.00 or more - so say $2000.00 to $5000.00 worth of books - so a decent profit, though a lot of work in weeding out and discarding the junk.

Would I do it again? Maybe, but probably not site unseen...

Steve Weber's Selling Books

I believe I touched on this before but one of the blogs I generally follow is Steve Weber's Selling Books blog, wherin Weber imparts his wisdom and experience in selling used books on Amazon.com. I am trying to make used books sales a major part of my business activities (instead of the $250 or so in sales I made from them last year. I have a few things in the works including finally coughing up the 20 bucks to by Weber's book, The Home-Based Bookstore, which I just ordered form Amazon of course. I'll give a review here once I get it and have some time to read it. And look for an upcoming post on a recent (actually I am still in the middle of it) adventure in buying used books to sell.

Still selling

So I haven't posted anything here since October 9, 2006 as I threatened in my last post. But I am still around: the Children's Book Blog is alive and thriving, and we are still selling personalized children's books over at MadLuck Books. I am also working on growing the online used books business slowly but surely.

What's not going so well: Staying focused on doing work instead of goofing off now that the Christmas rush is over. And while we made great strides in the business end, it still looks like I will need to keep working part time for some time before I can truly, completely quit the day job. And my fiction writing is at a stand still, though I have gotten back into sending the old stories out and collecting the rejection letters for them. I have time to write (see the note on goofing off) just am fighting motivation issues...