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Amateur bookselling...
Sep. 20th, 2013 06:59 pmA book I ordered from an Amazon bookseller arrived today and, as expected, it had been sent at the media mail rate ($2.53, based on weight and size, not distance). The cost of the book was $0.01 plus $3.99 for shipping and handling, which means the seller made $1.47 on the deal, less the cost of packaging , labeling, and a trip to the post office. I estimate the seller is getting a bit over a dollar for the book. In terms of conventional brick-and-mortar markup, that means the seller would've had to acquire the book for not more than 50 cents or so, but that figure does not factor in a heap of assumptions.
I recall, back when we had the mail store in Pagosa, there was a constant turnover in folks trying to make a living in this manner. The common denominator among them was that they had not really figured out what was involved in the business. My guess is that online bookselling only works if you have a good niche market with steady demand (in which you don't necessarily sell many books, but where the price of a book will be far greater than $0.01) or you put a heck of a lot of "penny" books up for sale for which there is equally a steady demand and rely on the law of averages. For example, if you figure that 1% of your stock will sell every day, and you have 10,000 books listed, you can expect to sell about 100 x 30 books per month. At 50 cents profit per book, that's adds up to $18,000 annually, which is nothing to sneeze at, but is not a figure that exactly makes a strong case for achieving financial independence, either. And while we're on the subject, selling an average of 100 books per day also means acquiring and putting up that same number per day, or watch revenues gradually dwindle.
By the way, it occurs to me that folks who tell you that you don't need math or algebra are—whether they realize it or not—basically delivering you, bound hand and foot, to those who do use math and algebra in business. For example, I recently ran across a party who was under the impression that having a "mortgage with a 5% interest rate" meant that 5% of the monthly payment was interest (and the rest applied to principal) when almost quite the opposite was true: very nearly all of the monthly payment went to service accrued interest, and only a small amount of principal was retired each month.
The point is not that the bank is cheating anyone, per se; heck, everything is spelled out in black and white and even printed out in the form of an amortization table. But if you lack the skills to interpret that information... watch out! As I said, anyone who says you don't need math or algebra is encouraging you to remain helpless, to your long-term disadvantage.
I recall, back when we had the mail store in Pagosa, there was a constant turnover in folks trying to make a living in this manner. The common denominator among them was that they had not really figured out what was involved in the business. My guess is that online bookselling only works if you have a good niche market with steady demand (in which you don't necessarily sell many books, but where the price of a book will be far greater than $0.01) or you put a heck of a lot of "penny" books up for sale for which there is equally a steady demand and rely on the law of averages. For example, if you figure that 1% of your stock will sell every day, and you have 10,000 books listed, you can expect to sell about 100 x 30 books per month. At 50 cents profit per book, that's adds up to $18,000 annually, which is nothing to sneeze at, but is not a figure that exactly makes a strong case for achieving financial independence, either. And while we're on the subject, selling an average of 100 books per day also means acquiring and putting up that same number per day, or watch revenues gradually dwindle.
By the way, it occurs to me that folks who tell you that you don't need math or algebra are—whether they realize it or not—basically delivering you, bound hand and foot, to those who do use math and algebra in business. For example, I recently ran across a party who was under the impression that having a "mortgage with a 5% interest rate" meant that 5% of the monthly payment was interest (and the rest applied to principal) when almost quite the opposite was true: very nearly all of the monthly payment went to service accrued interest, and only a small amount of principal was retired each month.
The point is not that the bank is cheating anyone, per se; heck, everything is spelled out in black and white and even printed out in the form of an amortization table. But if you lack the skills to interpret that information... watch out! As I said, anyone who says you don't need math or algebra is encouraging you to remain helpless, to your long-term disadvantage.
