Tony's Tips

Taking out an ad like this is a bold move. You better be ready to answer your telephone all day long. Do not do this until you are ready to handle a large volume of inquiry calls.

You know the three rules of Real Estate, right? Location, Location, Location! Well, what happens when your store's location isn't right?

We did things a little backwards, We already owned a fairly large building, about 10,000 sq. ft. It came to a point that we had too much empty floor space to justify being there. So instead of deciding to open a bookstore, then finding a location, we had the location, looking for a business.

The problem is that the we owned an office building in a business park. One good thing is that we were at the outer perimeter of the business park, on a busy bypass around Rock Hill. (U.S Route 21). We do not share a common parking lot with other businesses. Worse yet, the building code did not allow parking in front of the building, customers must park in the back.. People must drive to the location for one purpose.... to shop with us.

Many of these hints are aimed at overcoming a business problem. Getting, finding and keeping customers.

During the Christmas Season of 2004, our Internet sales became stellar. We exceeded our sales projections by 300%. During the second week-end of December, we were selling a book every 15 seconds. Most of these were brand new books. Sounds great... it is... but. Half.com only pays every 15 days, then it takes about 8 days to complete the funds transfer. You income trails your expense by about three weeks. Normally this is no problem. Our credit limit with our distributors is quite high, but not that high. By Monday morning, our distributor stopped shipping books because we exceeded our credit limit. One call to our banker resulted in him hand delivering a check within a few hours.

"You can't sell from an empty cart." This is as true a cliche as the one above. You must have a good selection of book in order to sell them. Once you are open, trade books will take care of themselves, but you must "prime the pump". Consider this a personal test upon yourself. If you do not succeed here, the chances are that you will not succeed in this business, Get off your butt and out at dawn every Saturday morning to your local yard sales, and buy every nice mass-market paperback book you can find. Set an absolute limit of $.50 per book. Try to buy them at $.30. Do not worry that you have too many. Fill every nook and cranny in your store with bookshelves and books. If the shelves are not full, display your best books face-out to make the store look full.

I am not going to say that your business will not be successful if you do not computerize. I just don't know how you can do it and maintain your sanity. If you organize your books and build an inventory as you are stocking your store, your life will be much easier once you do open. The advantages are massive. No need to go through them here, that is what the rest of this Internet site is all about. If this expenditure makes the difference between eating and not... don't eat, I'll bet you need to loose a little weight anyhow.

A new store opened a few months ago right next to a large Harris-Teeter (big food store chain in the South). An excellent move, a huge amount of traffic. By looking through the window I could see that the store was sparsely stocked, but with some really neat cooking items, grills, and knives. Every time I went to the shopping center, I would notice that the store was closed. A sign "Store Hours Monday through Friday 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM." I am sorry, but I sell books Monday through Friday during normal hours, no time to shop.

Last week both my wife and I had a couple of days off, so I said "Let's go to that store before they go out of business, and see what they have." Too late.

If you can open your business as a hobby... great. If you are opening it as a business, take note.

Let me tell you a story: As a younger man (in the early days of computerization), I worked as a data processing consultant. My largest client was Geo. W. Park Seed company. One of the large computer projects that I helped them with was the computerization of one of their mail-order businesses.

We would receive orders from customers, type them into the computer, then print picking tickets and ship the orders, at the proper planting time for the customers' locations. During the shipping season, this was one busy place. Employees would run around the huge warehouses picking items, placing them in boxes, and placing them on a conveyer belt. They looked like a colony of ants.

One of the employees brought to management's attention the fact that when a small item was at the top of the picking ticket, a small box would be selected/started.... then a peach tree, or the like would be encountered. A large box was then selected. Now there were two boxes (for the same order) humming down the conveyor belt.

Like everything else, the warehouses were ordered by part number, not size. After a great deal of discussion, the (enormously expensive) decision was made to reorganize all products based on size. The computer programs were changed to sort the picking tickets from largest to smallest, based on the size of the box required for that item. The largest items were at the top of the, so smaller items could easily be placed into the larger box. This seems like an obvious solution. Park Seed had been in business for over 100 years, and that was the first time such a radical innovation had been advanced. They just didn't know that they had an easily resolved problem (through computerization).

WOW! The savings in labor and shipping costs were enormous. Shipping (charged to the customer) were based on the dollar value of the order, not weight. Their box supplier would automatically deliver boxes based on the previous years sales. When the order showed up for the next year, there was no room in the warehoused to but the new boxed. That many less were used during the year.

There is no doubt in my mind that the implementation of this simple idea has saved that company millions of dollars. From that day, I have always looked at systems with an eye toward sea-change improvements.

Often, at times more than others, I try to take about 10 - 15 minutes per day for random thinking. Here's how I do it:

After the house clears out, I take a cup of coffee and head to the most comfortable and accustomed space that I know, the side of my bed. I sit there, and let my mind run wild. I don't try to force anything, just try to follow along with my thoughts. A type of meditation, except no chanting.

With a little practice you will soon learn how to do this productively. You will learn how to funnel your mind, but without restricting it.

You will be amazed at the ideas that you will come up with. Write them down. One caution. You must learn to edit out the bad ideas, and act on the good ideas. How do you do that.... experience.

If you don't computerize, be sure to find another way of implementing inventory control, point of sale billing, and book trading/purchasing at the same level of efficiency.

Since 1978, my company, CRT Systems, Inc., has helped hundreds of businesses prosper using computers.

Cull !!

How many books are in your inventory? How much rent does each book need to pay to live in your store?

Lets say you have 50,000 books, and your monthly operating costs, rent, utilities, insurance etc are $4,000. Lets see, that's $48,000.00 per year divided by 50,000 books. You need to charge every book that just sits there a dollar per year. You say it won't pay (its rent)? Out it goes, find one that will (pay).

Trading Method

If not already doing so, abandon your 100% trading method, and go to the 50/50. I honestly do not see how you can survive in today's business climate without being paid real cash on Every transaction. Once you do so, implement the next tip.

Accept almost everything offered to you for trade.

Now, there are exceptions for every rule, and I sometimes refuse trades but...... If you are trading on a 50/50 basis, each transaction results in a profit, Guaranteed! Your used Mass Market Paperbacks are really worth only about $.30 each. The reason you can sell one of these for $4.00 is only because YOU ARE MAKING A MARKET IN USED BOOKS, and hopefully you have organized your store in a manner that every book can be readily found.

Along that line of thinking, hopefully you agree, you want your customers to have lots of credits. Yes, you can sometimes sell that $4.00 book for $4.00, but that is not the market you are trying to develop. I am always happy to sell that $.30 book for $2.00. How many do you want? I'll send you my overstocks.

While we are trading books (taking them in), we watch our computer screens to determine how many we have in stock, and how many we have sold. We also take the condition of the book into consideration, as we may want to swap out those in less pristine condition. But in any event, we give the customer credit for almost every book brought in.

During the process of labeling the books, we cull out the books we do not want to stock on our shelves, or wholesale to other stores, tear off the front covers, and damage the book in other ways so that they are not useable. The covers that are in pristine condition are saved, everything else is filed in the Dipsty Dumpster. We discard enough books to fill ours almost every week.

Here's the catch though. Every once in a while a real sleeper turns up. I'm not sure these books share any one element, but sometimes that raggedy looking hardback will bring a hundred bucks on the Internet. I employ a part-timer whose job it is to go through the suspects to find the gems. She always earns her salary in the ones she finds.

The end result? We have more books than we know what to do with. Our customers are happy and go away thinking that they got the best part of the deal. Since they have credits in their hands, they will come back.

Last Saturday, a customer was awaiting our opening in the parking lot. He had a SUV full of books. He inquired "do we buy books?" "no, but we take them in trade". He seemed disappointed, so like I do in these cases, I followed him out to his car to see what he had. There were 5 boxes of old (1920- 30s) Economics Books of which I had NO interest, plus several bags full of 25 and 35 cent paperbacks. "I'll give you ten bucks for the paperbacks, but don't want the hardbacks." I went on the explain that Yes, there may be some great books in the pile, it will cost me two day's labor to go through them and look the up on the Internet. "Oh, I never thought about that. Take all of them free."

Mike, the store manager, just shook his head as he brought out our float to haul them into the store. I could tell that he wanted to drive the thing the other way to the Dipsty. But inside we and the books went.

Two hours later a customer comes into the store. "Hello, I'm looking for Old Economics Books. Got any?".

"Yeah, look in those boxes over there."

About an hour later "Hey, I found 21 books. Will you take four bucks each for them?"

Set a (too) high-volume trading policy.

Moon phase affects the number of books that are traded... of this I am sure. We can go for a week or two with reasonable volumes, then we will get an enormous amount of books at once. I have had periods when were thousands of books behind. That is the traded books sit unsorted and unstocked - although we have an extremely efficient book-trading system. There are days that your labor allocation just cannot handle the volume. It is far more important to transact your cash business than worry about anything else.

This is what we do. We have the customer give us their name and number, and mark all of the boxes of books accordingly. We then inform them that although we will not be able to look at all of their trades today, advance them sufficient credit for them to purchase your books today, then issue them an itemized credit slip at the time of their next visit.. We then process the books at our convenience and file their receipt.

Wow, sometimes it is really tough to remove labels from books. (not our's they're "easy peel"). I have tried several products, some are really great, but pricey. The more cost-effective product I have found is Charcoal Lighter Fluid. This works fine most of the time. Transfer some to a small squeeze bottle. Put some on, and watch the label. As soon as it is saturated, peel it off... then dry/buff with a paper towel.

If the remainder mark is on the glossy part of a book or tape, it can be totally vanished. Just get..... OH... Sorry, I can't tell you all of my secrets on our first date.

Call Tony.

Think before you speak

I really like to fish for trout, and one of by favorite spots on this entire planet to be is in the Ozark Mountains or Arkansas. By chance the home office for Ranger Boats just happens to be about 3 miles from my favorite camp ground.

Well, I rescued an old Ranger Bass Boat from a lake a few years ago, and am restoring it in my spare time. I just happened to need a new windshield, so why not pick one up while out trout fishing?

After the sales person looked up the part, and retrieved it from his archived inventory, he proceeded to fill out the sales slip. "Name, address, city, state.......... hey wait.... you didn't need to drive up from South Carolina (about 800 miles, a day and a half drive) we could have shipped it to you."

... Good Grief, that was about the dumbest thing I have ever had a sales clerk say to me! This happened years ago, and I remember it like it happened yesterday. I didn't know what to say then, nor do I now.

How to save about $300.00 when you buy your next car.

I hate buying cars. When you go on the car dealers turf, chances are you are going to get screwed. I am going to tell you how to beat the car dealers at their own game. You need to practice this to yourself a few times before you execute this game plan. You're going up against the big league.... but you can handle it.

Car dealers have bamboozled our state legislatures to allow them to tack on a $300 - $500 extra fee to a vehicle when you purchase it at a dealership. This fee has many names, but it is a rip off,, plain and simple. After you have made your best deal with a salesman, this is how the transaction goes down.

Filling out a form.... "OK, mister fool your total price is $20,000 for the car, $300 for Sales tax, $50 for tags and $329 for mumble, mumble". He goes off to get a bill of sale. Don't argue with him at this point!!

Because of the questionable sales techniques employed at car dealerships, virtually every state allow you to back out of a transaction within two or three days. Make them think that they have pulled one over on you. Once they get the taste of your blood, their greed will take over. But, don't worry you will once again gain control of the situation.

He returns with a bill of sale. Now look at the form and say "What's this $329.00 for??"

Now the fun starts. Everyone in the show room wants you to pay this fee... it is an extra, hidden profit. Don't pay it! They are going to start marching in sales managers, sales managers, managers, etc to try to intimidate you into paying.

Now it is true that if they charge any customer this fee, they must charge every customer this fee. Don't pay it.

Stay calm. You have the one thing these guys want.... Your MONEY. Remember the golden rule... "He who has the gold makes the rules." One more thing... say something then KEEP QUIET. Make sure that they talk first. Here's a couple of one-liners you can effectively use if you practice them (for best results). Remember, it's all in the delivery....if you laugh, you loose.

No matter how much pressure you feel, remember, they never really take customers out back and torture them, nor will the hide your trade vehicle forever. If you play your part well the transaction will go down this way... They will re-calculate the invoice, subtracting the fools' fee from the agreed price, then they will add in the fools' fee back in. he end result is that you will save the $329.00.

Do NOT stamp your name inside the front covers of your books.

If you want to advertise on the book (a good idea), put your name somewhere else. If you do not already know why, someday it will become evident to you why you do not want to damage the front covers in any way.

Advertise!

I put this bill-board up on I77 in November, 2004. It is impossible to precisely determine how much good it has done, but our business had definitely improved.

Every single thing I have done to get the word out has added to our customer base.

When our 3 month contract expired, I renewed, but moved the sign to what I felt was a better Billboard location. What a difference!! We are now getting an average of two people per week mentioning the sign. There is a great deal of "snow bird" traffic on I77 (which runs to high- population centers in OHIO, and farther west in Central USA). We seem to be getting a good number of retirees as they migrate to and from Florida.

After one year, I cancelled the contract. I think that most of the good had already been done. Additionally the population in our area is rapidly expanding, and the advertising company was getting a bit harder to negotiate with. The terms were just not as good. I invested the money spent on the billboard in the following way:

We bought a two-month run from a local cable TV outfit. The commercials ran between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. It really was less expensive than I had initially thought. The results were fantastic. Many new folks patronized the store. \\

OK! through one method or another you have enticed a new customer into your bookstore. It would be great if at the end of the transaction you would hear "This store is GREAT, I will shop her twice a week for the rest of my life!" We hear something like that constantly. Please remember, there is an open invitation for you to visit the Book Rack in Rock Hill, SC anytime.

Shopping at a trading bookstore may well be an entirely alien experience for a new customer. First of all it is imperative that you explain your trading policy, and your new customer understands the policy. As hard as we try, some folks trade in their books thinking that our policy is other than it is. Most feel that they can leave the store without spending any money.... not so. After you have taken the time to go through their pile of used books, and your new customer has spent several hours in the store selecting scores of books, you do not need a confrontation at check-out time. Unfortunately this does happen for time to time. Most of the time a solution can be negotiated, but sometimes the customers wants all of her books back. Hopefully the books have not yet been shelved.

Second, take some extra time to explain your store's layout. Our books are shelved by category Genre/Category List. This layout can intimidate many customers. Perhaps some are not (yet) "book people", and may not know fiction from non-fiction, or one author from another. I am sometimes overwhelmed in stores, and therefor leave without purchasing anything at all. Take the time to find out what their interests are, and lead them to the proper section. Pull a book off of a shelf and put it in your costumers hand. This is psychologically very powerful. You will be surprised to find that the customers still has that title in his hand at checkout time.

Third, I like to show them the difference between our store and the huge chains. Explain that your selection is very large, that is why you may have only one copy of a book, where store X has a hundred. They only have a thousand titles, but you have many thousands to choose from.

If you are expending resources to attract new customers, it is essential that you make them steady customers.

Here's a way to get one up on your competition Most stores only carry a few new books by any given author.

I have found that when a customer finds a new author, they want to read everything that author has ever written. This is your chance to increase your sales. I try to watch what a customer is looking at while shipping. If I see that a customer is reading Evanovich, I know that they will run out of stores after ten books. So I try to start that customer on Anne George books.

It is very important that you always maintain stock of each popular author's entire collection. Many times you will sell five or six books rather than a single title by carrying the author's entire collection. This is why Inventory Control is so important. You could never afford to carry several titles by each author, but you can carry just one. You need to know that you have sold a book so that it can replenished on your next order. Sure once you see that a given title sells well, buy several.

Along the same lines as above, we have an annual Easter Egg Hunt. This year we "hid" 1,000 eggs, and had about 200 kids. The event grew by 100% over last year through word of mouth advertising. We gave away some kids books that wouldn't have otherwise moved (I later discuss buying lots of kids' books). The best feature is that we saw a bunch of NEW FACES. We also did about $700.00 in two hours.

We have four or five great, local authors here in our corner of South Carolina. I offer them carte blanche access to my store. I love for them to do signings,

etc. We had five of them in the store at one time in January, 2005. That was one of our business days, ever. No we didn't sell that many of the authors' books, but they attracted a great deal of new customers, thus sales of all types.

I didn't know how to treat the books at signings. Although each author may request variations on this, we generally buy the books from normal distribution, and sell them at our normal prices. Some authors bring their own books, and sell them directly.

Be aware that there are a lot of want-to-be authors around who have printed their own books via the Vanity Press. Do not pre-buy books from them for the signing.... you will probably eat them.

Because of the high volume that we do with Ingram, we can buy their (the authors works) books for less than they can, so we give them special deals when they order in quantity (usually cartons of 48 books). You would be surprised at the volume this generates.

Close spaces intimidate customers. We are constantly told that folks like shopping here because the store is very spacious. We designed our bookshelves so that they don't tower over people. Also, there is enough room to for a wheelchair to navigate anywhere in the store. Our situation is a bit unique. We own our building, and share the floor space between the bookstore and our software development bruises. As the book business continues to grow, we steal space from the other side of the business. With each increase in space, the volume of our sales proportionately increased.

I guess you can tell that I don't do things in a small way, never have. Internet_Sales_Results. In order to sell that many books, you need some serious bulk storage capability. At about 125,000 books, things got very, very tight. I didn't feel as though we could and any additional books, and still quick locate them when they sold.

I buy lots of books from S&L Sales. One of the things that Rick, the owner, does is that he keeps about a dozen 18 Wheeler type trailers on his premises. This provides about 5 or 6 thousands additional feet of inventory storage. There are a lot advantages to using these trailers:

Additionally, the trailers are at the same height as the trucks delivering the pallets of books that we purchase. This eliminates the necessity to have a fork lift on hand to deal with the pallets. We do, however own a used pallet jack for moving the pallets.

No I will admit that I am very lucky. The building we own is in an industrial park, and it came with about 3 acres of land. But, \f you really think about it, I am certain that you can find a place to set up a few of these.

We have wired all of them, and one has a WiFi computer access, with a scanner and a label printer (it has a combo cooling heating window A/C). All of them are equipped with medium duty warehouse shelving

The 8 units give us about 4,000 sq. ft. of additional space, allowing us to store a huge number of books. BookAccents provides total inventory control of the books contained in the trailers' boxes. We generally make a single trip per day to the trucks to pull the Internet wales for that day.

Your banker will love you for it

. It is a million times better to show a thousand dollar profit than a single dollar loss. Surely you don't want to deprive your IRS of such a small payment?

My "personal banker" saved the day during the 2004 Christmas Season. After launching our new Internet Software, the sales volume on half.com and Amazon.com grew instantly to gargantuan proportions. During the second week-end in December, our sales averaged one book every 15 seconds. Although our major supplier doubled our credit limit, we quickly exceeded our credit limit with our major suppliers. Doing business with half.com is difficult since your cash is held up in their Accounts Payable system for about 22 days. When you total sales are exceeding $300,000.00 per month you require some help to fuel the cash flow engine.

Yes, it took a minute or two to explain what we were doing, but he quickly came to the store with a check for enough cash to save the day.

If you want your banker to love you, show him that you love him. How do you do this?

Take a business trip to the beach

Do you want to really learn something about merchandising? Take a business trip to the beach, and visit the largest tourist trap, "surfer" shop there. These boys really know how to retail. Take a pad and pencil, and make notes. Keep you expense receipts... this is a legitimate tax deduction! What these high profit, high volume stores have in common:

Get an account with Ingram Books, and start selling new books.

We bought $255,488.24 in new books from Ingram (Jan. 2003 - Dec. 2003) $688,253.25 (Jan. 2004 - Dec. 2004).. I am not bragging, that's just the facts. Our gross sales from Halloween until the first week in January (about 10 weeks) exceeded $600,000.00. Our Christmas Season sales were over 90% in New Books.

What sells in new books? For us; Children, Mass Market Papers (Fiction), Religion, Mass Market Papers (True Crime), Young Adult, Self Help, Coffee Table and Feeling Good books in that order.

We display these new books in different ways. We have about 1,000 linear feet for new Mass Market Paperbacks. About the same space is allotted to a mixture of new and remainder trades. Our non-fiction new and used books are mixed together. The bottom line is: the more brand new books we display, the more we sell, and the wider our customer base becomes. (not just in seat size

We have just started mixing the new mass-market paperbacks in with our used books. Previously, we kept them separated. We just ran out of shelf space for the (just) new ones.

The idea is that people looking for new books might buy used ones, and visa versa. It seems to be working far beyond expectations. Our sales of new books has dramatically increased by doing so. Just be aware that long term customers who have become conditioned to finding all used books grouped will pick up new books in error Although the new ones say "no credits allowed" on the labels). Be sure that you and you employees know how to handle this potential "customer relations" situation at the cash register.

Now, let me warn you that you can get into trouble with new books. You MUST maintain tight control of your inventory on hand. See Tony’s Five Minute Accounting Course. We have been in the book selling business for four years, and because we have an ever-increasing number of new books, our clientele is evolving from female (only general fiction and romance) to a more general clientele (who are) buying the entire spectrum of genres.

How to Find Next Month's HOT Sellers on Ingram With Ipage

I have found that mixing new books in with used books will greatly enhance your sales of both. You can find next month's releases by performing a "Forthcoming Search" Here are the parameters I used. They are highlighted.

When you execute this process may take a minute or two , so be patient. Ingram has a huge inventory to sort through.

By default, the books are displayed by title. This isn't what you want, your need them displayed by Ingram Demand.

Now what you have is a list sorted by the titles available the next calendar month

. You can easily order the ones that suit you.

I do know that this is hard to do, especially when you just start building your inventory. But you need to keep in mind that there are several costs in adding books to your inventory. Two that are quite important are:

I am starting, more and more, to consider the cost of the second item. There is a negligible difference in the cost (in labor) of adding one book to inventory than several..

Whenever a customer asks if you have a particular title, walk over to the shelf with him, pick the book and place it into the customers hand. Most of the time you will sell the book because humans do not like to put items down.

For those of you who might not know, a remaindered book is a book that is sold on a secondary market by those who buy books en-mass from publishers or other sources. These books may be:

The remainder brokers sell these books for 80 to 90% off of the original retail price. You can make big bucks on these books, but you can also loose big bucks.... if you don't know what you are doing.

Mixed Pallets

Just like anything else, you have to know what you are doing when you commit to buy a pallet of books. It took us a few trys to get it right. We generally pay one dollars each for trade paperbacks (average retail price is about 12.00). There are between 600 and 800 books per "skid" (a cubic yard; 3 x 3 x 3 palette) Our remainder dealer works well with us because I buy large quantities from him. The best ones are written by (to me at least) obscure authors. We mark them at 40% off (no credit allowed) in the store, and they sell like wild fire on the internet for an average of 4.00 each.

It is very hard to move remainders of really hot books. By the time they reach the remainder brokers, everyone in the world has already read them. In any case, the Internet is full of these books being sold by every mom & pop outfit, or (worse yet) individuals. They are being offered for whatever the market will bring. This really drives the prices down.

Caution, if you don't work something else out, you are going to get one large, heavy box, delivered by truck, requiring a fork lift to get into your store!

I too hate to pay and wait for by books to be delivered by truck. We bought a really nice trailer to haul them. I'll tell you though, that I could have paid for limo service in the costs associated with breaking each of the three tips below.

Never haul books in a trailer that is not equipped with brakes.
Do not exceed the weight load of your trailer.
Only use a tow vehicle especially prepared for hauling (especially in hot weather).

I have (individually) broken all of these rules. I promise that I will never do so again. The entire episodes are just too gruesome and embarrassing to detail to you.

Always keep an attentive ear when you hear people talking about School Reading Lists. We make it a habit to personally contact all of the schools within a ten mile radius and bug them until they provide us with a list of suggested/required books. We order AT LEAST ONE of each title. If a book on a list sells, we immediately reorder five. We compete with several national chains. They could care less which books are on local reading lists. WE DO!

Become an expert in locating Hard to Find Books.

We do lots of this. We have a reputation, locally, of being the place to go for special orders. For new books that can be easily located, we charge 80% of the retail price. For books that we obtain from the Internet, we charge asking price, plus shipping, plus a minimum of $4.00 for our time. In all cases the customer must pay in advance BEFORE we place the item on order. Needless to say, paying in advance solves the problem of a customer "forgetting" to pick up an item. Refunds are ONLY given if we can get a refund. Being the local experts on quickly locating books, led to the next item...

Learn how to do business with your local School Districts.

We found some books for the School District that none of the local chains were willing to hunt down. They liked our service so well, that we quickly won all of their business. NO, you can't compete on text books, but they regularly require all types of children and young adult books. They do most of their buying in January, June and September, and are generally instructed to purchase from local vendors. We did about Twenty Grand with them in 2003, thirty in 2004. Sometimes the books they are seeking are hard to find. The other bookstore in the area were not willing to put in the research to find these books.

When they order, the POs that the send can have something wrong with the author or title. But.. they want 30 of these, 15 of those, 10 of these. Trust me, it's worth the aggravation. Individual orders of two to three thousand dollars are very common.

Generally speaking, there is no "bidding process" required for small book purchases. Terms such as "Fair Price" on a PO indicate that bidding will not be required. You will sell these books as long as you charge a fair price.

You have to be able to cut a professional-looking invoice, accept purchase orders (POs), and wait thirty days for your money. But the rewards are great. When they learn to trust that you will take care of them, just watch your fax machine.

The added side benefit is that hundreds of teachers find out about your business and start using you for their books. Our teachers in South Carolina are allotted a budget to purchase books for their classrooms. We give teachers an additional discount, and their numbers are constantly growing. Typically a teacher will spend a hundred dollars on kids books. The children and young adult (high margin) remainder books sell like crazy, once you learn how to spot the books that the teachers will want.

Unless you are absolutely sure that you know what you are doing. Don't buy pallets of children's books. Or buy them "site unseen" in any packaging. The market on kids books is really tough (too many different types of stores sell them), and you will be getting books that have no value, and already picked over by everyone..

When buying this type of books, your are competing with some real experts/specialists. I have lost money every time I have done this.

Back Up Your Data

This is just something you have to do on a daily basis. You will feel like a fool if you don't.

How about a round of Russian Roulette? You go first! And second and third and ........

On Boxes of Books!
When buying books in a box. The best books are always on the top. This is very puzzling! I didn't learn that best books will float to the top in my high school physics class. Look at every book, when you don't, the ones you assumed were OK, Aren't. I learned this on my very first buy, and I still get taken, occasionally.
When you go through boxes of books, know what is in the box BEFORE you put you hand in it. We live in the South, and we have found some boxes with scores of Black Widows. They seem to love the old, dry box environment.
Additionally, learn how to spot a Brown Recluse. Being bitten by one IS AN EMINENT, LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY. This is nothing to play with! Regardless of what you have heard, I personally knew two (previously) reasonably healthy people who have died from these bites. Yes, both people had a bit of age on them, and neither could run the Boston Marathon. But dead is dead! Should you find one inside, call an exterminator. The pictures of a bite victim contained at this link may bother you, so please click at your own risk.