1. Set a percentage price of retail - Standard is 10-15% for paperbacks, 25-30% for hard cover, and up to 50% for Rare books/textbooks and more popular titles that are easy to sell.
2. Determine current value of book to determine what you will pay - To do this when buying a book you can look online for that book and determine the current value of books are going in similar condition and then buy the book based upon that price.  I would not recommend going above 50%, but 33% is a good value to stay under for most purchases.

We currently have software that scans a barcode and compares it to online prices, takes the average of books online, uses an algorithm that determines value based upon past sales volume, to determine the max we should pay. This has taken much of the guess work out of determine a fair purchase price and sales price for a book. It is not perfect though, and that is why it is important to have an instinct for buying and selling books which develops over time.
Other factors to consider are you going to sell the book on or offline.  We sell all used books offline in our store for 50% of retail or less.  Most are 50% of retail unless the value is determined to be less.

Of course with online books the value can be above retail if the book is rare, harder to find, or contains valuable information.  So this must also be taken into account when buying and selling books.

22 Card Star Lot 55T Duke Snider 59T Unitas VG to Poor Book Value $97700    US $98.99

Captain America Vol 1 34 Book LOT 401 422 424 426 429 432 436 440 441    US $45.00

Lot 12 ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN Chapter Book RL3 D Sobol VG    US $24.90

Batman Comic Book Cartoon Older Pinback Button Lot FREE SHIPPING    US $8.99

2 LOT Only Astrology Book Woolfolk World ephemeris planets stars zodiac charts    US $11.99

2 Book Set The Science of Life by H G Wells Complete 1931 lot     US $35.00

Barbara Cartland 6 Book LotA Rebel PrincessInnocent ImposterTempted To Love    US $18.99

The Care Keeping of You Body Book for Girls by Valorie Schaefer 25 Lot    US $99.00

42 Magic Tree House Book Set Brand New Lot 1 42 Mary Pope Osborne AR    US $83.00

Lot Of Different Vintage Comic Book Pages And Papers Ephemera    US $10.00

Amelia Rules Superheroes TPB GN BOOK LOT Graphic Novel Set Jimmy Gownley    US $14.00

Lot of 10 Disney Record and Book See Hear Read Sets Disneyland Records    US $16.00

I CHING ORACLE DIVINATION BOOKS LOT 1 BOXED GAME INCLUDING BOOK COINS    US $39.99

Karin Slaughter 7 Book Lot Undone Blindsighted Fractured Broken Triptych    US $7.00

3 Fatima pb book lot Fatima Tragedy and Triumph FREE SHIPPING    US $8.88

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The tool isn't a normal tool, but rather a site -- BookFinder4U.com

Bookfinder4U.com provides you with the tools to find new book inventory and rare books. It does this with its "Price Alert" Feature. I'll use a quote from their site to explain it better:

"Price Alert" feature enables user to set a requested price for each book in his/her Wish List and our price scanning bot will periodically search the lowest price of the selected book, and an alert email will be sent out if the requested price is met by the new lowest price. For each book in your Wish List, there's a "Price Alert" link, the default is set to Price Alert [Off]. If you click that link, you will be brought to the page where you can set and enable price alert for "total price"(incl. shipping) or "item price". Your price alert information will be stored in our database and our price scanning robot will periodically scan your requested books and you will be alerted via your member email once your requested price is met.

As you can see Price Alerts is simple, but powerful. I recommend spending a week just putting in all the books you commonly resell, and more obscure harder to find books in the price alert and setting the price at which you want the price alert to occur.  This will always give you instant notification when these books come up for sale at good deals, and you can snatch it up resell it(often at the same site you bought it from).

Bookfinder4u.com's Price Alert - an important tool in your online book selling arsenal.

So some tips to selling textbooks:

• buy textbooks in the off season and the end of semester -  You can easily buy textbooks online from the same outlets you sell from if you monitor and know price levels.  Also, contacting students at the local college at the end of the semester gives you an opportunity to get good deals on books.
• Let college students know you buy books - Go to the school, post flyers, and advertise.  Make  sure it is okay first to do these things on campus because some schools don't want competition with their in house bookstore.  If that's the case advertise where students still look but won't interfere with campus rules
• Keep track of current books - College curriculum can change quickly so it is important to know what books are being used.  You can check at colleges online and locally.  Also, especially in technical in computer fields, make sure that the book you are getting is up to date as these technologies change rapidly and books become out of date
• Use a monitoring service - Many outlets, Amazon, Half, etc. allow you to make wishlists and notifications of books you want.  This helps you monitor for good deals.  I recommend using Bookfinder4u.com which allows price triggers and monitoring service all for free.  Setup a price trigger and you will be notified by email whenever the price of a book comes up on a site for what you are willing to pay.

Following these simple tidbits will get you into the textbook selling field quickly, and provide you with an advantage over the competition.

But after watching them over the years I have learned some valuable lessons that can be applied to online book selling to make my online business more valuable and help it make more money.

Some of these examples include:

• Go big! - Most used book stores cram themselves into a tiny hole in a strip mall or worse, and barely give enough room to navigate the shelves. Not having enough space cramps your customers, limits your inventory, and provides an untidy unprofessional atmosphere.
• Have enough money to obtain inventory - Speaking with the owner of this bookstore he has over $100,000 in book inventory and whenever I go in there is a section of the store where all the new books are coming in. They are always buying fresh inventory, and always will buy books that they know they can resell.
• Provide special deals for loyal customers - This used book store provides a free card you can have stamped every time you make a purchase. After you've bought $50 or $100 you get either $5 or $15 in in store credit. This not only provides return customers, ensures there trust, and is just another reason for the buyer to buy from you over the competition
• Provide a good atmosphere - This is harder to do online, but by providing a professionally built website along with the usual bookselling hubs makes a user more comfortable they can trust you and will come back to buy. They will even buy directly from your website which cuts out the middle man and makes more profit for you. The book store in our example provides a good atmosphere by having a large store, playing soft music and providing a section where kids can grab books and read, and also color, allowing the adults to browse and shop easier. They also provide comfortable chairs so people can relax and read.
• Have a wide selection - This is obvious, the wider your selection the larger the customer base you will reach.
• Geotarget - Our area is a highly Christian, highly LDS(mormon) community and the bookstore has provided a large selection of these books specializing in a target market general to the area. There is also a section for local books, and books on the area. You can do similar by researching niche books and finding the areas people will be looking for them. Also you can advertise through many online outlets with geotargeting which will target areas based on geography or demographic making for effective ad campaigns
• Advertise -My local book store advertises at least once weekly in the newspaper, and provides coupons and special promotions with this ad.  Advertising can take your business to the next level.

By following some simple examples from this used book store a book seller can learn better ways to sell online, and alternatively if your online business is also a brick and mortar bookstore, these are just a few things you can do to improve your sales offline.

Why?  Because the majority of people buy books online because they can get a discount.  I will rarely buy a book at Barnes and Noble because I know that if I check online I can pay 25-50% less.  Yes, that's even for new releases and best sellers.  And there are many people like me that have a hard time parting with their money when they know they can get the same book online for half the price.

Here are more reasons to sell online:

• Volume - simply put, you will increase sales volume, which will increase your income.  Instead of having a customer base of a few hundred or thousand, you will have a customer base that reaches all parts of the globe.  You may have to sell for a lower profit margin, but if you can sell it today instead of two weeks to a month from now, than you will make up for that lower profit margin with volume sales
• Less returns - The great thing about books is there are low returns.  That's why Amazon.com, the biggest online book seller was started.  The CEO and owner asked himself, "What product can I sell where I have the lowest amount of returns possible?"  Guess what, its books!
• Return customers - If you have a good store your customers will keep coming.  Again your customer base will grow.
• Better price for many books - Above I mentioned you might have to sacrifice profit margins, but not in all cases.  If you have a rare book, or technical book, or a niche book that is harder to find you often can sell it for more online than in store.  And again you will turnover the book quicker because the customer base that is looking for that book will be larger
• Multiple sales outlet - You do not have to build up a brand name, because there are book outlets already online including Amazon, Half.com, eBay, Abe Books, and more.  Just list your books and the customers come to you.
• No advertising - as with the above mentioned item since you sell at these established book outlets, you don't have to pay any advertising since the customer will go to these big guys that advertise for you, and will find your product.
• Low fees - It's free to sell in these marketplaces - you only pay after you have sold the book.  The fees are reasonable: 3-10%

These are just a few of the many reasons to start selling books online.  Another great thing is great resources for cheap book inventory including WholesaleBookDealers.net, which supplies cheap prices and a huge selection of books.