Can You Really Afford to Start a Book Selling Business?

The startup costs for this business are way less than a traditional brick and mortar business.

You are going to need an Amazon Pro Seller account which costs $39.99 per month. This saves you $1 per item sold in fees, allows you to get the buybox and is necessary for ScoutIQ to work on live mode.

ScoutIQ is an app that analyzes current prices on Amazon for each item, sales history for that item, and associated fees to almost instantly determine profitability. Without this app the business model collapses. ScoutIQ is $44/month.

See this article to learn more about ScoutIQ and how we use it to buy used books.

Then you need Accelerlist which is a listing software that allows you to quickly list, price, and label books. Accelerlist is $34/month and comes with another software that you need which is FBA Box Contents. Amazon needs to know exactly what inventory to expect in every box that you send them and this is the software that records that.

See this article to learn more about Accelerlist and how we use it to save money and time listing books.

You will need to reprice your books which you can do on Amazon Seller Central but you may want to pay for a software to streamline that process. There is one called Nuprice which is $14.95/month. This software displays the necessary information on the screen for you to make pricing decisions quickly and accurately.

Please visit the Nuprice website to learn more about how it works.

You should be following up with each customer using an automatic review software such as Feedback Genius by SellerLabs. This increases your positive reviews which is important for getting the buy box, maintaining your account health, and improving your sales. Feedback Genius is $49 per month.

You will also need a subscription for Keepa which shows you the historical prices and sales of items on Amazon. Keepa is approximately $17 per month but since you are charged in Euros it can vary depending on conversion rates.

See this article to learn more about how to read and understand Keepa.

In total, If you decide to use all the recommended subscriptions, you will be paying about $200 per month.

You will need a bluetooth scanner which we currently sell for $49.99. This is our own scanner and is perfect for book sellers. This allows you to scan very fast which is essential to be able to scan thousands of books a week. The scanner pairs with your mobile phone and sends the information about the scanned book to the ScoutIQ app.

A Dymo thermal label printer will streamline the process of printing labels. You will need to put a label on every book and 3 on each box so you will save a lot of time by using a Dymo. This printer will print both size labels you need to complete the job. This printer is currently $279 on Amazon.

You will need a stand-up scanner that connects to your computer such as the Taotronics barcode scanner which is currently $39.99 on Amazon. If you have a tight budget, then you can use our JSI Tech handheld scanner as it will pair with your computer via USB or bluetooth. The desktop is just much more convenient and will streamline your processing.

You may want to purchase a box resizer and some scotty peelers to make processing books go faster. The box resizer is currently $15 on Amazon and the scotty peelers are $11.

That takes you to about $385 in initial supplies.

The Tracking Spreadsheet by The Book Flipper will be invaluable in monitoring your business but if you are trying to reduce your startup costs you wouldn't have to buy it right away. You could wait until you have a couple months of sales under your belt and pay for it with the profits and then you'd have some data to enter into it and could look at some numbers right away. The Tracking Spreadsheet costs $170.

You will need packaging supplies for every shipment. The heavy duty small boxes from Lowes or Home Depot are the perfect size. You will need tape, tape dispenser,  builders paper, labels - 1 ¼” x 2 ¼” for books and 4” x 6” for boxes, and some basic cleaning supplies such as isopropyl alcohol, Goo Gone, cloth to clean books, "do not separate set" stickers, a scale to weight your boxes, cling wrap to wrap sets together, and finally book adhesive for the rare time that you need to complete a minor repair on a valuable book.

You may also want to get some items to make your life easier in the field, such as: wristband phone holder, posture corrector, collapsable dolly, and finally a foldable lightweight cart.

You will of course need money for inventory. If you want to list 100 books per week and your average local prices are $1.50 per book, then you will need about $650 per month to purchase inventory.

You will also have to pay to ship the books to Amazon. You can expect to pay between $0.20 and $0.70 per pound in shipping costs based on your region and distance from the FBA warehouse.

Your Amazon account will be in the negative at first because you will be paying shipping for all the books you are sending in but you won’t be selling any right away. It can take a couple of weeks for the FBA warehouse to intake your books and activate them. Once they are activated you should see sales right away. That’s the fun part.

A small percentage of your inventory will sell each week. If you are consistently sending off books to Amazon it may be a couple of months before you see your first payout due to shipping costs so until then be prepared to pay out of pocket for inventory.

The articles within this blog contain all the information you'll need to start and run a successful book selling business. Visit our resources page if you'd like to see all of our recommended resources in a list format.

If you'd like a more user friendly way of accessing the directions to starting a book selling business then download the free ebook below.

If you'd like to join a community of students that have gone through the training, then join our Facebook group.