This morning I visited a local thrift store to find that they had put out quite a few new books sometime yesterday.

When I walked in, a friend who buys books to sell on Amazon, was already there. He had several piles of books on the floor and was just putting his cell phone away when I arrived. One pile had three books in it, the others appeared to each be about 15 to 20 books high.

As I said ‘Good Morning’, he began putting all the books from the larger piles back on the shelves and said, ‘There’s lots of new books here, but you’re wasting your time looking at them. I’ve gone through all the new stuff and those three are the only ones worth buying. I just spent 30 minutes going through all these for three books I’ll probably get $40 for. It’s hardly enough to pay for the gas.’

As he walked up to the counter to pay for his three books, I went to the shelves where they regularly put out cookbooks and, within five minutes using ScoutPal, had found four cookbooks that I can list on Amazon for a total of roughly $85.

From there, moved into a small room where most of their over sized books are shelved and, within another five minutes, found seven more books that will go on Amazon for another $400. Four of these were the same title, were band new, and must have been overstock from one of the bookstores in town. I’ve always gotten at least $75 each for any copies I’ve previously put on Amazon. Apparently since they were brand new, still in shrink wrap, someone felt they were worth $5 each and that’s what I gladly paid for them.

I’m sure my friend never bothered to even glance at any of these books because when he’s out book buying he has certain criteria books must meet for him to buy them.

They must:

• Have an ISBN so he can run them through ScoutPal (all except one of the books I bought did have ISBNs)
• Unless it’s a textbook, he only looks at soft cover books. His thinking is that hardcover books are heavier, and there’s too much of a chance it will cost more to ship them than Amazon reimburses him for (all eleven books I bought were hardcover)
• The first thing he looks at when considering a book is the price. If the price is more than $3, he feels it’s too expensive to consider. (Eight of the eleven books I bought were priced between $3.50 and $7)
• He will only buy books that he can list on Amazon as ‘Like New’. Any highlighting or writing inside or out, even an inscription, is immediately put back on the shelf (Two of the cookbooks I bought were by the same author and were signed by her)

The walls he has created over time caused him to not even consider more than $400 in profitable books that certainly would have more than paid for his gas.

What about you? Have you built your own walls that, over time, have severely limited how much profit you make from your business?

We don’t just build self imposed walls that narrow our focus when looking for inventory. It’s just as easy to build walls restricting how and where we list our inventory, how we deal with customers, and many other areas of our eBay or Amazon businesses.

Photograph by rayphua.

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