Selling Books on eBay - THIS IS HOW to sell books in bundles

today we're going to be talking about selling books on ebay specifically we're going to be talking about how to sell book bundles on ebay i want to talk to you about how i source the bundles how i'm photographing them how i'm listing them what type of books i'm buying and why i'm selling so many book bundles now if you're new here and you don't know me my name is mel i'm a full-time ebay seller here in australia and i primarily sell second-hand books in my ebay store that i buy from the thrift stores and the charity shops and i buy them for sheep and i sell them on for profit now most of the books that i'm bundling up to sell on ebay consist of low-end fiction books or fiction books that come as part of a series you know a trilogy i do still bundle up non-fiction books i try to put them into the same category so for instance i will bundle up cookbooks or i will bundle up self-help books that are along the same topic the best thing about bundles is it enables you to sell more so instead of listing all these books at individual books which is time consuming and a lot of the individual books that you sell they're only low end books but when you bundle the books together you can have a bunch of low end books put them all together and all of a sudden you're making more profit because you're sending them out in the same parcel which means you only have one shipping cost and quite often you'd fit multiple books into the same packaging size that you would send an individual book the thing with books is you have to buy them at low prices to be able to make profit because a lot of them are low in sales so not only does bundling help you sell more but it also helps you to increase your average sale price which is what we all want in our business we want to be able to increase the sales rate and make more profit per order now what the customer sees when they're looking for books to buy on ebay is when they see a bundle they see value let's say there's four books in a bundle they can get those four books for often cheaper than if they were to go and buy two or three books individually so when the buyer is seeing the value the seller is getting the sale now my ebay room is a bit of a mess but i'm going to take you through the back room and show you where i'm keeping all my bundles of books now most of these shelves in here are holding book bundles and as you can see i've still got a little bit of space on some of the shelves so that i've got room to be increasing my stock levels and adding more bundles of books into my store you might notice that every single one of my shelves has its own number and that's so when i'm entering the bundle into my ebay listing i'm making a note of what shelf i put that bundle in so that when it sells i know exactly where i have to go to get that bundle all these individual books on the shelves in this room these are also listed in my ebay store so i try and keep it separate with the individual books out here and the bundles of books in the room so these books here sitting on top of the table these are all the books i bought last week to bundle now a really common question that i get asked a lot is how do i know which books that i should buy to bundle up and where do i source these books for bundling so all the books in my store are bought second hand and all of them are bought from either thrift stores garage sales or facebook marketplace now when i buy off facebook marketplace i'm looking for big bulk hauls i'm not going to people's houses and buying individual books or just a couple of books at a time i want to buy bulk books so i get books that have come from people who have maybe passed away people who are moving into retirement homes people who are older and are downsizing so quite often i find ads on facebook marketplace and these are people who have shown photos they've got a whole lot of books for sale and some of them are trying to sell these books individually come and buy my books i've got lots of them two dollars a book i would just send messages straight up how much for all of them i don't waste any time i tell them straight away i am a bookseller i tell them i've got an online bookstore and i tell them i buy books in bulk so these people are normally so happy to be able to get rid of boxes and boxes of books all at once rather than having multiple people come to their house and buying two dollar book a two dollar book or two or book i can get some really great deals on facebook marketplace now my general rule of thumb when i'm buying off facebook marketplace is i don't want to be paying any more than 50 cents a book if i'm buying a large haul because a lot of the time when you buy a large haul there is a lot of books in that hall that you don't actually want to sell some of them will be damaged some of them will be low end books that just aren't worth your time but one of the positives from buying facebook marketplace is you are buying somebody's library so quite often that person has a lot of books by the same author so the benefit of buying from facebook marketplace is i quite often get these halls where i'm really able to bundle these books up because there's so much of the same within somebody else's personal library whereas when you're buying at a thrift store you are just getting a total random mixture of whatever books people have donated and are on the shelves now when i go to the thrift store to source my books it's a little bit different sometimes i have to pay up a little bit higher to get my books so i need to be a little bit more choosy on which book bundles i buy i will pay sometimes up to three dollars a book if i can buy a set or a collection of that book then i know he's gonna sell for fifty dollars plus you'd be surprised at how many book bundles i can sell that are priced to 70 80 90 100 for these book sets of about six to eight books now all of these books that i have sourced i have sourced them for cheap most of these books i've only paid a dollar for there was an exception there was a couple of bundles here where i paid up two maybe there was one set here that i paid three dollars for but the majority of them i'm trying to source for a dollar a book now all of these books on that table i didn't get them all at the same thrift store sometimes i have to go around to multiple stores and hunt for these bundles of books so what i'm looking for when i'm going out to source bundles is i'm looking for books that are either part of the same series or they're by the same author so these books here these are all part of the june series now i'm not worried about the condition of the book so you can see these books are in like horrible horrible condition this one looks like it's been chewed i can guarantee you that this set of books will sell now the other thing that i'm looking for is books that are all by the same author so they don't have to be books that are in a specific series they're not part of a trilogy but they are all the same kind of genre that's been written by the same author one of the reasons why i picked these books up is they're all in really nice condition but they're all these hardcover books as well you can still sell a book bundle that is mixed between hard cover and soft cover some people don't really mind that but i find that it is better to try and lot the same types of books i know that i'm one of these people who doesn't like to read a hardcover book i find it awkward i'm one of these people that likes to get the paperback book break the spine and pull it right back and really you know roll the book up and get into it i can't do that with a hardcover book so don't think you can't match those covers you can put a set together that has got a mixture between hard cover and soft cover however i prefer not to wherever possible now here's an example of a book set i've bought where i've got books three four five six and seven in the bundle now ideally it would have been better if i'd also had books one and two so that i could sell the whole series books one to seven so often with a series what you'll find is people will read the first book they'll buy that individually and then they'll decide if they want to read the rest of the series if they liked it or not so quite often books that start with number two and go upwards in a series they still do quite well for me because a lot of people have already bought book one and then they've decided they want to continue to read that series so then they buy the whole lot as a bundle so they don't have to keep buying the books individually now this book set here is starting at three it didn't deter me from buying this book series i have sold this series before i know it sells well so i'm happy to lock that up as books three to seven but what i've learnt while selling books for the last few years is it doesn't matter if there's a book missing in the series now here's a bundle that i have specifically sourced that are all different authors but they are on the same genre now if i was to sell any of these books as individual fiction they'd probably only fetch 15 or 16 including postage but i can put four of these books together you can see they're all on the same theme here it's kind of like country outback outback australia family drama women's chick lit and these would probably be a slow seller if i was selling them individually because i would be competing against the masses the masses of people who are all selling everyday low end fiction that you can find in abundance every single shop that you go to now by putting these four books together i can probably sell this bundle now for about 35 to 40 dollars and i've also created a unique bundle here nobody else is probably selling this exact bundle so what this means is not only does this become value to the customer they can get four books for 35 rather than going and buying one individual book for 15 and the best part is i'm probably not competing against any other reseller for that particular bundle it would be very rare to find another reseller who's picked those specific four books to bundle them up and make a lot so my listing is going to be different than any other seller i'm not going to have to compete with the masses so much and i'm offering great value to somebody who loves this particular style of book so when i bought these books the other day i bought them with this exact intention i did not buy these books thinking i was going to sell them as individual fiction books now this set of books that wasn't even out on the shelves when i went into the thrift store but the lady who was working there could see that i was buying a whole heap of books so she actually came up to me and she said we've just been given this whole set of books i'm wondering if you would be interested in it so i was kind of put on the spot with those because she hadn't even put the stickers on them to put them out on the shelves she was asking me straight away if i wanted them i wasn't going to sit there on the phone and price company in front of her and i've never actually sold this author but i decided to take a gamble on them because there was so many in the set and she told me i could have them for a dollar each now what you'll see here is these books are actually two different sizes so now i've got to decide do i sell this as one big bundle or do i sell this as two bundles so before i photograph these it's going to be really important for me to sit down at the computer spend a few minutes researching this author and trying to work out which way is the best way for me to bundle these so what i'll do is i'll be checking the sold comps on the ebay website to see how much this lady is selling for whether or not there's been other bundles that have sold that are similar and then i'll be making an educated guess basically on which way to sell these books another question i get asked a lot about bundles is how do you know what to charge for them so it's a little bit tricky and sometimes you have to take an educated guess but basically i just look on the ebay website i'm looking at what other books have sold quite often there will be other bundles of books that you can make a rough guess of look at how much the other ones are selling for individually look how they're selling in packs of pairs or threes or fours now there's some type of authors that i sell regularly and on repeat and michael connolly is one of those people but because i've sold him so many times i've got a rough idea in my head so i really even need to price michael connolly now because he is a very common regular crime thriller type author i know generally that i can put his books into a bundle of three or four and i generally get between 29 and 39 for those bundles and remember these books i'm buying for cheap i don't want to be paying up three dollars a book for books that i'm selling for 39 including free post the way to make money in books and book bundles is to buy cheap i can't say it enough times buy low buy low buy low when it comes to books so we're sourcing bundles anywhere they sell second-hand books we're buying books that either by the same author to bundle by the same series or set or trilogy or by the same genre what i would never do is put together different genres so i wouldn't have a bundle that consists of one book about fantasy one chiclet women's drama one book on crime and thriller and one book on true crime no that would not make a good bundle now here's another thing that's a big no-no i want to show you this take note i'm going to use james patterson here because james patterson is a very common crime and thriller author and this guy has written so many books i couldn't even count there must be literally hundreds of books written by james patterson but something to remember with authors like this is a lot of the times these books are not just individual crime and thriller books these a lot of the time come from series so for example here this is the james patterson private series this is the james patterson michael bennett series this is james patterson women's murder club series this is the alex cross series this is just plain generic thriller you can't bundle up alex cross with michael bennett it just wouldn't make sense if these are part of a series you need to bundle them up with the right series so when you find these big authors don't just think that any of these james patterson books you can put together and make a bundle no you have to be very specific about the bundles that you are making but one of the biggest mistakes i made when i was learning how to sell books and bundles was i was bundling up books from the wrong series and then i was wondering why these books weren't selling nobody wants mixed books books three and four from one series and books one and two from another series nobody wants that so really be checking on the front of the books what the actual series is so you can make sure you're selling the right match now you might have noticed that all the book bundles on my shelves are wrapped in this mini shrink wrap to hold them together so this is the mini shrink wrap and i just buy this from our local hardware store bunnings here in australia i'm sure if you're in america or somewhere you can buy it from walmart but it's very cheap to buy it's just like a thin cling wrap it doesn't damage the books in any way but it holds them together to make sure i'm not losing any books from that particular bundle i want to make sure that the customer is getting the exact amount of books that came in the bundle that was listed on my listing it's really easy to use you just wrap it around the books and cut it off now another benefit of the mini shrink wrap is when you put it inside a padded mailer and i send all my books via padded mailers the mini shrink wrap helps to hold the books together while in the mailer which also means that you don't have books going loose and flicking around inside the mailer causing any extra damage i feel like by having the books wrapped up it also helps to protect the books while they're in shipping now when i'm photographing the book bundles i do mix up my main photo sometimes i'll put a main photo up that looks like this sometimes i'll put a main photo up that looks like this and sometimes my main photo will look like this i also make sure i take a photograph of each angle of the books the front of all the books and the backs of all the books i mean there's only so many ways that you can show what a book bundle looks like on the main photo for your listing but i just try and mix it up and keep it a little bit different keep things interesting now obviously when it comes to writing a title for your book listing you can't fit six different books titles into your one ebay listing title so it's really important when you're bundling books to make sure you put the most important things towards the front of your title you've got your six books you've got your author's name you've got your genre you've got your paperback you can put any keyword you like after that i would always use the word bundle but some people do like to use the word lot and maybe i would write love romantic chick lit obviously some titles have got more room to write than others then down in the item specifics where it says book title obviously you're not going to put in six different book titles just choose one it doesn't really matter which one it is if you're listing a series or a trilogy i would probably put book number one's name into the book title now another thing i want to tell you when i'm selling bundles is i will only grade the condition of books as good or acceptable the thing is when you're selling a bundle of books you can't really grade each individual books so if you've got one book that's in much poorer condition than the other books you're going to need to downgrade the whole bundle if you've got one book that's in terrible condition and three books that are in excellent condition do not put books are in excellent condition because one of those books isn't and i can guarantee you'll get a item not as described case so i hope i've answered a few of your questions about book bundles and if i haven't please drop them down in the comments and i'll do my very best to try and answer them where i can now if you are new here and you want to learn more about how i sell books on ebay i have got a ton of videos down below so make sure you go back and have a look through my playlists and there's plenty of videos there with heaps of my tips and tricks on selling books on ebay i will link another video here on how to get started selling books if you are new to it thanks very much for watching guys and i'll see you tomorrow in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: Back from Burnout

Views: 2,872

Keywords: Selling Books on eBay, how do I get started selling books on ebay, what books sell on ebay, how to sell books on ebay, selling books on ebay, how to sell a book on ebay, selling books on ebay (step by step tutorial), selling books for ebay for profit, how to sell a book on ebay 2022, selling books on ebay for huge profits, how to buy books to sell on ebay, what books sell, full time reseller, ebay tips for beginners, best ebay tips, i buy books to resell on ebay, Ebay reseller

Id: ZIcfRJqaoGA

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021