QUESTION: What is the Secret to Being a Successful Online Bookseller?

There are no secrets to online bookselling or to beingprofits. I turned to an experienced online bookseller,
a successful online bookseller, but there are manymy son, for a few tips to get things going. Five
lessons that can be quite expensive to learn by trialyears and thousands of book sales later, I am not
and error. My suggestion for anyone contemplatingonly successful, I am the one that friends and friends
becoming an online bookseller would be to get aof friends are asking about how to do it.
detailed book about the business and learn all you canRecently when I was out book scouting I had a
before starting. If you are already an onlinewoman in her late 50's start asking me a lot of
bookseller it would not hurt you to pick up a couplequestions about what I was doing. She told me she
books on the subject for ideas and tips to beingwas interested because she had a large collection of
more profitable.books that she was interested in having someone sell
There are only so many things that a book aboutfor her. As our conversation progressed it became
online bookselling can tell you, so look for one that isapparent that she was really trying to learn as much
detailed, comprehensive, and explicitly states that itas she could about online bookselling because she
includes the personal learning experiences of thewas considering getting into the business. That is
author. Almost all of the will tell you how to buy,when I went into a discussion about generalities only
price, and grade books as well as where to sell them,because she was interrogating me to tell her what
but you don't even need a book to tell you thesecost me a lot of time and money to learn. I offered
things. Some books rely on "secret" lists of wholesaleher my business card and told her that if she wanted
and remainder book distributors to sell their books,to have me look at her collection and possibly sell it
but I consider these lists worthy of mention in thefor her on a consignment basis, I would be happy to
appendices only because finding these distributors ismeet with her. I also pointed out that conveniently
not too difficult on the Internet. What is not free areprinted on my card is a link to my book about online
the personal experiences and tips offered in somebookselling should she happen to be interested in
books. These are things that booksellers learned thegoing into the business.
hard and expensive way, selling them in a book is aI am happy to discuss the business with anyone in
means of offsetting the losses for the author andgeneral terms, and even in specific terms when the
helping others avoid the cost of learning them bysame information is available to anyone with the
experience. It really is a win-win scenario becauseambition to do some research. This is what most
both the buyer and the seller of the informationbooks about online bookselling have put between
come out ahead.their covers, i.e., what is available to all that are willing
Much of the online bookselling mystique is attributableto do a little research. What I am unwilling to freely
to not knowing where to start. The fundamentals ofshare are the things I paid time and money to learn,
learning how to do it are easy, but if they are notand that is no different than how things are done in
applied properly the cost of making the mistakes areany other business. As I said before, there are no
more than financial, they can be stressful,secrets to online bookselling, but you are not likely to
de-motivating, discouraging, and ultimately they canfind the information and insight to being successful
result in one giving up. I can personally speak to thisfor free because the source probably put his/her
from experience as my initial attempts resulted intime and money into learning these things from
buying a lot of expensive firewood and negativeexperience.