How To Make Money With Penny Books On Amazon

When I first started selling books online, I couldn't help but notice that several of the Amazon booksellers were selling books for a penny. My assumption was that they were making money off the shipping charges, and were probably very large companies that could take advantage of bulk mailing prices.

I was sort of right on that assumption. Although, they did have to manage that part of the business closely.

Now to me, making a small profit is fine, but when you have to put in more effort to sell used books and make less money it just didn't make sense. I'm not the only person that thinks this. Most of the booksellers in the Amazon community basically look at the penny book business as a waste of time and energy.

But I have been selling penny books for almost a year! The craziest thing about it is, that I'm making money from those penny books! Without any extra effort.

Ok, now you're probably wondering how I do it. Well first off let me tell you that I don't make a lot of money from these penny books but I do make a decent profit.

Here's how I do it. In addition to selling and shipping books that I've sold, I also ship boxes of books to Amazons' FBA Program. FBA stands for Fulfillment By Amazon. FBA is a great program. It allows me to concentrate on growing my inventory while Amazon handles all the transactions and shipping. Anyway, within these boxes are several of the penny books.

Typically when I sell books through FBA I profit about 40% to 60% on each of the normally priced books. As for the penny books, I'll make $.75 to about $1.47 per copy. That profit depends on the weight of the book and what the book costs to acquire it.

So basically, All I have to do to make money on penny books is ship them, along with my higher priced books to Amazon after I've listed them. Amazon does the rest and I make .75 to $1.47 profit.

Now here's some things I look out for when getting penny books. First thing is the condition of the book, then the weight and size of each book. Then lastly, I never include penny books in my FBA inventory that have an Amazon ranking of greater than 20,000. I don't want them sitting around on Amazon shelves waiting to be sold. When you're dealing with smaller profits it's important to keep them moving. Thats it!

So to reiterate, I would not be able to make money on the penny books without utilizing the FBA Program. Since I already do utilize FBA, it's nothing for me to include the penny books in the FBA shipment.

I know I've probably confused people who are not familier with selling books on Amazon, but hopefully I've given some answers and ideas to those who already sell on Amazon and want to include penny books in their inventory.

For those of you who are looking into selling books on Amazon, I've include links to several books that will help you gain more knowledge of this business. If you have any questions, feel free to send them. I' always happy to help when I can.