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A Brief Respite
By Jay | April 21, 2008
So for the first time in a few weeks I got home at a decent hour tonight. Was out of work by 5:30, and home before 7pm! So I will take some of my time to write a blog entry, and then will do a full hour of yoga after I’ve finished.
Matt from Onemillionandbeyond asked if I was still finding time to work on my book business. Yes, I have been. I went out Saturday armed with my scanner and picked up several hundred dollars of inventory for about $50. I came home last night to find that I’d sold 32 books already, so was up until midnight packing them. I’ve got 16 to pack tonight. The money is good though, and it offers an escape route from my day job, so I can’t complain. btw, love the new blog design!
I looked at a blog I used (it had gone dark for a while) to read called Bizarro World Debt Elimination Freakshow and saw that Basil and Bianca have finally paid off all their debt. Congratulations! I hope to follow in their footsteps. I certainly understand their inability to blog AND pursue their business. It’s tough.
Other than that I don’t have much to say right now, so it’s off to do my yoga routine. It’s warmish tonight, so I think I’ll do it in my back yard. It’s dark, so none of the neighbors will see me!
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Topics: Book Selling, Work |
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 am
Wow the book business sounds good for you, well done. I am finding that my book business is not doing as well because there is so much competition and the sources of good quality, cheap books is drying up.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Thanks for the comment and welcome to Midlife Beginnings!
I’m finding good books around NYC, but I agree with you that there seems to be more competition. More and more people are lowering their prices to the point where it seems that almost every book on Amazon is going for under a dollar.
I’ve stopped buying high-priced but low-sales books; the prices on them fall too fast. Instead I’m concentrating on $5 to $20 books that have an Amazon sales rank of under 100,000. I’m usually able to sell them before the price goes down more than 5%.
But I am not counting on this business to make money for me much longer. Too many people are getting into selling books online. And the charities (Salvation Army and Goodwill) are selling hundreds of thousands of used books on Amazon now too. They don’t care if they sell their books for a dollar on the internet, but at a dollar per sale, it’s certainly not worth my time.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Hey Jay - thanks for the update, good to hear that you’re still managing to keep the book business going. You seem to have had a good run with it and helped your bottom line.
Thanks for the feedback on the design! :)