Blogs

Did you know that you can get complete and unrestricted access to my book, and just about any other book in print free? All you have to do is stop in your local library and request that they add it to their collection and most libraries will immediately order the book. You should probably give the librarian some information about how to locate and buy the book, so before you run down and request it, write down the information below:

Title: Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips

Author: Michael E. Mould

Publisher: Aardvark Publishing Company, L.L.C.

Year Published: 2006

ISBN for Paperback: 1427600708
ISBN for CD-ROM Book: 1599714876
ISBN for Bookkeeping Software: 1427600694

Over the past several months I have written a number of articles regarding online bookselling and posted them to EzineArticles.com. To make finding them easier for you I have placed an EzineArticle banner at the top of this page which will link you directly to a directory of all the articles I have posted on their website.

Yesterday the 2006 Independent Amazon Booksellers' Convention ended. It was one of the most worthwhile such events I have ever attended. As independent booksellers we got to interact with each other, with the third-party service providers we have grown to rely on, and with some really great people at Amazon.com. I personally got to meet a number of the customers of my book and that was really the highlight of the event for me because I got nothing but appreciative and supportive feedback.

I also got to meet a couple of really great third-party service providers, Dave Anderson of ScoutPal and Kevin O'Brien of SpaceWare (the providers of AMan Pro). Both Dave and Kevin are very highly respected in the bookseller community and I look forward to a long association with both of them.

I will also be including a lot of information I gathered at the convention in my October newsletter, so if you are a customer of my book and you are interested in receiving the newsletter, please visit the newsletter page and use the provided link to send me an email, just Click Here.

I will indeed be attending the 2006 Independent Amazon Booksellers' Conference from August 11 through August 14. Several customers have already let me know they too will be there and plan to come by to meet me - I am really looking forward to meeting as many of you as I can.

After the conference I will be posting a few things here on my website, but I intend to put the majority of what I learn in the October newsletter. I also want to include reader input, so please send in anything you would like included. You can read more about what is planned for the newsletter if you Click Here.

If you have some questions, answers, tips, suggestions, or experiences you would like to share in the October newsletter, Click Here to send me an email.

I did a little more with the statistics shown in the next blog to demonstrate just what can be derived from such numbers by comparing them to similar Amazon.com calculations for what I believe to be the most popular selling book about online bookselling. The results really surprised me and I have posted them below for those statistics available for both books.

1) Words: Online Bookselling has 2.84 times as many words as the other popular book being sold on

2) Characters: Online Bookselling has 2.81 times as many characters as the other popular book being

3) Sentences: Online Bookselling has 1.44 times as many sentences as the other popular book being

4) Words per Sentence: Online Bookselling has 1.77 times as many words per sentence as the other

5) Flesch Kincaid Grade Level (sometimes called a Fog Index): The two books differed very little here

indicating that both authors write at a very similar level of complexity. I have been told before that the

ideal value for this is 12 when writing for a general audience. My book came in at 11.6 and the other

book at 11.5. This really surprised me because it is very difficult to get this close to 12.

6) Words per Dollar: Online Bookselling gives you 1.89 times as many words per dollar than the other

7) Words per Ounce: Online Bookselling gives you 1.87 times as many words per ounce than the other

8) Online Bookselling costs 50% more than the other popular book being sold on Amazon.com.

9) Online Bookselling has 36% more pages than the other popular book being sold on Amazon.com.

10) The area per page (square inches) of Online Bookselling is 54 in² (6" x 9") and the other popular

book selling on Amazon.com is 46.44 in², (8.6" x 5.4"), thus, Online Bookselling has only 16%

more area per page. This substantiates the use of a large font in the other book.

a) Almost three times as many words and characters as the other book selling on Amazon.com for an

increase in cost of only 50%. This equates to getting twice as much in terms of words and

d) Infinitely more pictures (and if they are worth a thousand words each imagine the size Online

e) Infinitely more figures of any kind since the other book has only large text.

I do not want to give the name of the other author or the title of the book because I am not trying to put the other book down. I just wanted to demonstrate what these types of statistics can imply. The other book is in fact well written and I do not want to insinuate that it is not worth what it is selling for. At the same time, I wanted to demonstrate that Online Bookselling is priced very competitively and the statistics suggest it has substantially more information.

"I am researching the various books available that describe how to sell books online and I found some that have a section "Inside This Book" where customers can preview parts of the book and see some of the statistics about the book. Can you tell me why the product pages for your books don't have this section?"

My Response

The reason is that I just recently got around to submitting my books to Amazon to have this added to my product pages because I have been out of the country for the past month. It will take 4-8 weeks before this information will be available for previewing my books, but in the meantime I ran an analysis of the file used for the paperback and I can give you some of the statistics that MSWord(tm) provides. When this information is added by Amazon, the numbers should be very close to those I am providing here:

Words 69,984

Characters 326,788

Paragraphs 3,126

Sentences 2,452

Sentences/Paragraph 2.2

Words/Sentence 25.6

Characters/Word 4.4

Flesch Reading Ease 56.3

Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level 11.6

I also calculated the following for the paperback edition:

Words per Dollar: 2,334

Words per Ounce: 5,644

A few other statistics that might be of interest are:

Photographs: 36

Graphs: 10

Other Figures and Tables: Several

I taught engineering statistics and probability theory in a university and I do find these statistics interesting. I can also see that they shed a very favorable light on my book when I simply compare them to those of other books on this topic, but I will leave it to you to be the judge.

There is an old saying, "Figures don't lie, but liars figure." I am certainly not saying that these numbers are not representative of the quality of my book, but there is more to judging the book than simply comparing the statistics to those of a book by another author. So, while these types of numbers are interesting and may reflect on a book, don't get too wrapped up in making your decision based solely on this type of information. I have several other books about online bookselling myself, and like any other author, I am inclined to think my work is better and more comprehensive, but I will also admit that at least a couple of the other books on this topic are well written, and done so by authors with credible experience.

Do as you like with the figures and interpret as you wish, but please consider that "You cannot judge a book by its cover" and similarly, you cannot recreate one or cite its contents by knowing these types of statistics alone.

A Recent Finding with Respect to the Reporting of State Retail Sales Tax for In-State Book Sales

In a discussion with another online bookseller, I learned that he did not know how to properly calculate the retail sales tax he paid the state for book sales in his state. This intrigued me and made me wonder how many other online booksellers were overpaying their retail sales tax, so I contacted a few more and learned that almost all of them were overpaying, or they were paying a bookkeeper to figure it out for them.

I want to give an example so the logic is understood, but first, I want to make it clear that I am not a bookkeeper, a tax consultant, a CPA, or a lawyer, I am an engineer, and the information I am providing should not be construed as accounting, tax, or legal advice. I have derived my method of calculating my state sales tax obligation from discussions with accountants and am passing it on to you as my opinion only.

In my example of how most of the online booksellers I spoke with calculated their state sales tax obligation for the sale of books in their own state, I will make the following assumptions:

The method that I found most booksellers used to calculate their state sales tax obligation is:

Total Payment Received x State Retail Sales Tax Rate = State Retail Sales Tax

$10.00 x .065 = $0.65 (and this is what they were paying the state for the $10.00 transaction)

The error (as I interpret the tax rules) is that they are assuming that the Book Selling Price is $10.00. This implies that the Book Selling Price is the same as the total transaction amount instead of adopting a position that the $10.00 represents the Book Selling Price plus the State Retail Sales Tax they collected. Using this logic:

Book Selling Price x State Retail Sales Tax Rate = State Retail Sales Tax [Equation 2]

or, by substituting the left-hand side of the equality from Equation 2 for the State Retail Sales Tax Obligation into Equation 1, we get:

Book Selling Price + Book Selling Price x State Retail Sales Tax Rate = $10.00

We can check our logic now. If we sold a book for $9.39 and collected a state retail sales tax of 6.5%, we would need to collect:

So, we collected $9.39 from our in-state customer for the book we sold them, plus we collected $0.61 in state retail sales tax, and our assumption adds up. Thus our state retail sales tax (that we are obligated to pay the state) is $0.61, not $0.65.

Now, in this example, the difference between what the booksellers I spoke with were paying and what they really needed to pay was only $0.04 and that doesn't amount to much, but if you were to have $3,000 a year of in-state sales and your state charges 6.5% retail sales tax, it would add up to an overpayment of state retail sales tax of $11.90 per year. This still doesn't amount to much, but the objective is to pay the taxes that are owed and maximize the bottom line of your online bookselling business. Every online bookseller that incorrectly calculates their in-state retail sales tax obligation is overpaying their retail sales taxes by a percentage equal to the state retail sales tax rate, i.e., if your state charges 6.5% retail sales tax and you incorrectly calculate your retail sales tax obligation as the booksellers I spoke with are doing, the retail sales tax you are paying is 6.5% too much.

I don't know many people that owe $10,000 in federal income taxes that are willing to pay another $650 because they don't want to bother with calculating their tax obligation correctly, and the scenario is analogous to overpaying state retail sales tax.

With the tools available, particularly computers, there is no reason to get caught up in spending a lot of time trying to figure it out yourself, even my spreadsheet program, "Bookkeeping for Booksellers" will calculate your state retail sales tax obligation correctly, and in the example I cited above, the tax savings alone will almost pay for the software in the first year alone, plus you would have a lot more information presented to you visually that will show you just how well your online bookselling business is doing at any time.

"If you are an engineer and you know all the math and programming stuff, why don't you come up with some software to help online booksellers keep their books and make doing their taxes easier?"

It would seem you are something of a mind-reader. From the day I set out to publish my book I had plans to put together a spreadsheet to help online booksellers (particularly myself) keep their books organized, i.e., something that would make sales tax reporting easy and their Schedule C a less daunting task.

It has taken me since the day I finished my book to complete the spreadsheet, and spreadsheet is not really an accurate description. It is in Excel, but it is 19 sheets all tabbed at the bottom of the workbook to make navigation easy. It also does a lot more than just tell you what your sales and expenses are, IT SHOWS YOU with 55 different graphs and charts. You can very quickly SEE how your online bookselling business is doing, whether you are meeting your profit goals, and if you are growing your inventory at the rate you set out to do.

I have a couple engineering friends that have looked this over and commented how well organized and complete it is. A couple commented that they did not know anything that useful could be done with Excel.

Well, I am very happy with it and have started using it myself. I can already see that when it comes time to do my taxes, I will have all the data I need for my Schedule C in less than a minute because the way the spreadsheet is set up, I am motivated to enter all my sales and expenses as they occur just to SEE the performance chart changes.

I don't even think the spreadsheet is limited to a bookselling business although I would need to change some text and get another ISBN to market it as a bookkeeping spreadsheet for eBay sellers.

Anyway, your question was anticipated and in the plans when you asked, but it does confirm my suspicion that online booksellers want something that is not as expensive, complicated, or awkward as some of the bookkeeping software packages available. I sincerely hope you find the complimentary copy I sent you very helpful and look forward to your comments.

"Do you spend any time in bookstores to see what books are currently being promoted in their displays or trying to identify bestsellers?"

No, because I have found that there is no correlation between what is in demand in brick and mortar stores and what is profitable as an online bookseller, but the conception of there being a correlation has put a lot of firewood on the shelves of many online booksellers.

To see this for yourself, go to your local brick and mortar bookstore and jot down the ISBN's for several of the novels that are being promoted. When you get home, look them up online. My bet is that the new novel available in your local bookstore for $29.99 is available online for a few cents.

As a successful online bookseller you will need to accept that just because a book is in demand at the local bookstore does not mean it would be a good one to sell online. Almost any day I can find books on the clearance shelves of a brick and mortar store that are in demand online, but cannot be sold for more than a dollar or two in their store. This does work both ways, what is no good for selling online can often be sold in a brick and mortar store for considerable profit. All you have to do is accept that they are totally different marketplaces and you need to focus on finding the books that will make you profitable online.

A customer recently posed the following scenario to me and asked for my response.

"I was thinking about selling books online, but when I started looking into it I discovered that there are some companies out there that will give me a cell phone and an Internet account to find books for them. They will pay me for every book I find and I don't have to sell anything. If I can get paid for every book they tell me to buy, why would I even consider bothering with selling online myself?"

This, at face value alone, appears to be a good argument for book scouting, but as I describe in my book, there is more to be considered and this is a perfect application of the old saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover."

I guess the first thing you should consider is how much money you think you are going to get paid as a book scout, and to illustrate the trade-off between being a book scout of having your own online bookstore. I will share an example here that can easily be scaled to monthly sales.

If you are scouting for a service, you will be told to purchase the book and that you will be paid $30.00 for it in addition to the $1.99 reimbursement for purchasing it. You will not be told the real value of the book, but since I recently sold a copy of it for $199.99, I can say for the sake of simplicity that it is worth $200.00. The $30.00 that you will get for "finding" it represents 15% of the real value, which is probably generous because most "services" you can scout for will pay you closer to 10% of the real value.

If you were scouting for your own online bookselling business using a wireless lookup service, you would see that the book has a low online value of $190, a high online value of $220.00, and an Amazon.com sales rank of about 100,000, which means that even at this high price, the book is fairly popular. There is no question, you buy the book and put it up for sale online. If like me, you price the book toward the middle of those being offered, you will probably have it in your inventory for a couple months before it sells, at which time you will make a profit of about $168.00 after paying a 15% sales commission to the marketplace it sells through. That is 5.6 times as much as you will get finding it as a scout for someone else, or $138.00 more!

In my case, I only paid $0.90 for the book and realized a profit of $169.09, or 18,788%, and had it in my inventory for about two months.

I don't want to mislead you, this was a gem that I sold, and this kind of sale does not happen every day, but I do have a dozen or so such sales each month and you could too. The difference in 12 such sales each month (for sales comparable to the example above) is $1,656.00 more in your pocket as an independent online bookseller than as someone's scout.

The numbers are dramatic, but when you also consider the hundreds of books I sell in the $10.00 to $35.00 each month, you can see that as an independent bookseller the totals add up to a lot.

One other thing to consider is the large number of books in the $8.00 to $10.00 range. As a scout you might be instructed to pass on these books because the cost of the book, shipping it to a warehouse, and paying you a commission don't leave enough profit to be had by the service you are scouting for. As an independent online bookseller, these same books could make you $5.80 to $7.50 each if you were to pay a dollar for them.

Thus, you can now see and understand why it is to your benefit to be an independent online bookseller and not just a minimum commission scout for someone else. The costs associated with being an independent bookseller are covered by the sale of just a few books each month. The sale of a single "gem" can cover the costs for a few months.

Thank you Kate Moss! When I discovered your book on a bookstore clearance shelf and learned it was worth $200.00, I had to read it myself. While it is mostly pictures, I enjoyed it, and then I got to enjoy selling it too!

[I have submitted an ezine article on this subject as well, it should be published the week of April 2 - 8, it covers this scenario in greater detail.]

I was recently speaking with a colleague at work and he told me his daughter could not find a job other than waiting tables, tossing pizza, flipping burgers, or delivering fast-food. He asked if I had any suggestions.

You'll never guess what I suggested. Well, maybe you will. I suggested that he take my book, read it with his daughter and see if she might be interested in being self-employed selling books online. I also pointed out that there were several advantages:

This is a great income source for a high school or college student. The only thing that must be considered is the age of a high school student. If they are not 18, the online marketplaces like Amazon.com, Alibris.com, etc., all require that the accounts be in an adults name. If you have a teenager that you want to suggest this to, keep in mind that the bookseller account will have to be in your name. You will also have to set aside some space in your home for your teenage entrepreneur to store inventory. All of that considered, there is no reason not to allow a responsible teenager to conduct an online bookselling business from your home.

College students have a tremendous advantage if they are interested in selling books online. On campus, they are surrounded by stores with some of the most valuable online inventory available. In fact, it was my son, as a college student, that got me involved in this business. He has been doing it now for about seven years and when he did this exclusively, his income rivaled my income as a senior design engineer, and he was only doing it about half-time.

Anyone willing to put in 15-20 hours a week can build up an online bookselling business and make $2,000.00 a month. It is not going to happen immediately, it will take a few months to build up your inventory, but persistence and dedication will get you there. If you are contemplating doing this full time to make $5,000.00 or more per month, expect to spend 6 to 12 months building up an inventory to get to that level. If you have the space to store a large enough inventory, say 15,000 to 20,000 books, you could make more than $10,000.00 per month, but to build an inventory that large will take some time and require that you attend some large book sales.

No, and it is not likely that it will be any time soon. You see, most of the conventional brick and mortar bookstores view online bookselling with negative bias because they perceive the industry as taking market share away from their stores. There is one chain that does not seem to view us this way and actually gives online booksellers a 10% discount on books purchased from them, but I do not think they would be interested in promoting online bookselling to their walk-in customers either.

A Prospective Customer Asks: Would You Put A Preview Of Your Book On Your Website?

The only part I can really put up on my website is that part which covers the fundamentals of online bookselling. When this is all that a prospective customer can read, they tend to think my book is just like all of the others they have already bought and found to be of not much use. If I posted the parts of my book that were of the most interest and value, there wouldn't be much point in selling it because everyone would already have the information from my website.

Based on the other books about online bookselling that I have read, and the feedback I have received from both prospective booksellers and experienced online booksellers, my book is much more comprehensive than others available. I do not want to put my experiences and tips (that both cost me a lot to learn and write about) on the Internet for free, it would create too much more competition for me and other booksellers. I am sure that anyone thinking of getting into the business or already in it can understand and appreciate my position. I know other authors have posted considerable portions of their books for preview, I have looked at the previews and bought their books myself, and in summary, there really isn't much of anything in most of their books that is not being posted for free.

I also know that several other authors have marketed their books based on "secret" lists of wholesale and remainder book distributors. There is nothing secret about wholesale and remainder book distributors! If you do an Internet search for wholesale books or remainder book distributors, most of the ones listed in the "secret" lists will immediately come up. I didn't even dedicate much discussion to them and put my list in the appendices because it is public knowledge information. The same goes for shipping material suppliers and for the most part, inventory management software, online postage services, price lookup services, and re-pricing tools. I dedicated the text of my book to sharing my experiences and providing useful tips to save you money, boost your bottom line, and to help you avoid making the costly mistakes that I and others have learned from experience. I just can't put this up without giving away my book.