Question: I want to sell books on Amazon, but most of my collection is old and the books don't have ISBNs, as Amazon requires. How do I get started?
ANSWER: If you have a big collection of older books, you're likely to have some real gems in there. But some of the books might not be worth anything -- just because a book is old doesn't necessarily mean there's any demand for it.
Most books published before the 1970s don't have an ISBN. So of course you won't be able to look them up in Amazon's catalog in the usual way -- by typing in the ISBN.
To look up these older books on Amazon, you'll have to do an "advanced search," typing in the book title and author name.
But with older books like this, it's likely that some of them won't be in Amazon's catalog. In that case, you can create a product page on Amazon for the book yourself. After you've entered the book into Amazon's catlog, then you can go to that page and list your copy for sale.
One caveat, though: Amazon only allows "Pro-Merchant Subcribers" to create catalog pages, and the subscription costs $40 a month. If you are going to sell books regularly on Amazon, then this $40 fee is worth it, since it eliminates the 99-cent fee customarily charged on Marketplace sales to part-time sellers. So if you sell 40 books per month, the savings will pay for the subscription fee.
Also, for books that don't show up on Amazon's catalog, you should do a bit of research to try to get an idea on their value, before listing them for sale. The fastest way to do this is to enter the title/author name on the AddAll search engine.
For the vast majority of books, you'll be able to find listings for them using this AddAll search engine. Most of the results you find will be listings from used bookshops and dealers who sell online through listing services such as Advanced Book Exchange (abe.com) and Alibris, but not on Amazon.
The reason it's so important to look for other listings on AddAll is that you don't want to price your book too low on Amazon. For example, let's say you enter a book into AddAll and you find three listings for that book. Two are priced at $50 and one is priced at $80. Then you should list it on Amazon at $80 or $100. Or you could even list it at a higher price, and if it didn't sell after six months, you could lower the price if you wish.
When I first started selling books online, a few times I made the mistake of not researching the prices of old books online. In one case, I listed a book for sale for $5 simply because I was too tired to look up the market price on AddAll. The book sold immediately, and I found out it was really worth $25. So another minute or two of work would have made me $20.
See a real-time list of the most highly sought after used and collectible books.
Read more free articles on selling used books profitably online: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm
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