Question: I currently sell bulk lots of paperbacks on eBay, and make about $50,000 in profit a year. If I began selling hardbacks, would it be more profitable to sell them individually?

Answer: If you are making $50K annually selling in bulk on eBay, you are definitely among the more successful sellers around, I'd say. If you are doing that kind of volume, you're obviously benefiting from repeat customers because you're providing good value. So I would caution you against anything that would cause you to lose focus on the successful things you're doing now.

I've never sold any bulk lots. About $50K a year is the most I've ever made from selling individual books, and I considered myself pretty lucky to do that -- lucky in the sense that I've found some good local sources for books. That is mainly because I live in a metro area (Washington D.C.) that has a lot of libraries that have frequent library sales, where it's pretty easy to buy several hundred good hardbacks a month for no more than $1 or $2 apiece. I've been doing it long enough to be able to skim the cream at book sales pretty efficiently.

I could probably squeeze more cash out of the business annually, if I always sold at the lowest price. But I tend to accumulate stock, with the aim of getting higher prices down the road for some of the more unique books.

One thing you might consider is testing the waters of selling individual hardbacks. If you have the time and inclination, I suppose it would be possible to develop a sideline to your bulk bookselling, selling the unique book you find here and there to individual customers. That's only if you have any spare time left from your current business, of course.

I advocate selling individual titles on Amazon because it seems more efficient to me than selling individual titles on eBay. But since you're an active eBayer, if you had an eBay store it might work to cross-promote some higher-end individual titles from your bulk listings. If you wanted, you could list the same books on Amazon Marketplace if they're selling at a higher price there.

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Steve Weber is author of "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site" (ISBN 0977240606). Got a question for Steve? Send to: steve_weber@yahoo.com