$60 Loss in April Reselling College Textbooks
Spell check
Welcome, Anon!
As you can see from the title, it was a very slow month of selling for my college textbook reselling busines.
However, let’s think for a second… Who’s buying college textbooks in April?
Let alone at busy season prices…
Remember, our thesis. As children go back to college, supply decreases and demand (price) increases.
Conversely, during the semester, supply increases will deamand (price) decreases.
What do I mean by that?
Take a look at the Keepa chart below:
We’re in the phase where demand (green line) decreases from <100,000 sales rank to nearly 500,000.
When that happens, the price (black line) also decreases
As a college textbook reseller, now is the time to accumulate inventory for the summer.
Although this month did not have yuge sales numbers, I spent a lot of time sourcing deals and adding inventory. I purchased 30 books (which met my criteria) and have 6 50-lb boxes ready to send in.
Our goal was to have 250 books in inventory by July and right now we’re sitting at 186. Time to get to work!
So with that being said, here’s the breakdown from April:
Breaking Down the Numbers:
Revenue: $0
COGS: $0
Gross Profit: $0
Expenses: $60 (Keepa and Amazon Seller Central)
Net Profit: -$60
Now let’s get into the good stuff: Sustains and improves
Sustains:
Come in Every Day: Building anything (muscles, businesses, real estate) takes consistency. Doing the same tasks repeatedly over time are what allow progress to be made.
Why’re you saying this is a sustain BowTiedBookSeller?
Because I am starting to see significant progress towards my goal for this summer (250 books in inventory for July). When you first start out, it is frustrating having days go by where you don’t have any books come across that you can purchase (Note: see the thumbnail for this article to understand what I’m talking about).
You start to question if what you’re doing is even worth it. However, I’m at the point now where although I don’t see progress on a day-to-day level, I see the broader progress that’s been made over months of work and that’s a sustain.
Interact with others: Part of the reason I started a Substack and made a twitter account was to have the credibility to interact with other. I don’t think I have much, if any, credibility now. However, if I DM someone on twitter, they’re able to click on my profile and see that I’m activly building something instead of being some anon account.
Now, just because I have a profile and 5 Substack articles doesn’t mean people respond or I have respect. However, I’ve noticed that people are more willing to be candid and helpful when you’re trying as well.
I haven’t sought out or expected crazy alfa from people in the DM’s, but it’s been helpful and will continue to be as I grow.
Improves:
Continue repricing: During the last two months, I moved and now have my packaging station setup at a friend’s house. I used to be on a cadence where I shipped in packages as my inventory grew (e.g., once I got 14 books in stock, I’d send them right to Amazon).
Given my new living situation, I’ve built up ~6 boxes worth of books and haven’t shipped them in yet. With that, I also haven’t adjusted my listing prices. I’ve set all of my inventory to 50% ROI and not thought about it since Febraury (end of winter busy season).
From a capital perspective, it makes more sense for me to be intentional with monitoring the prices and performances of my inventory to see if there’s opportunity to flip some books during the off-season. I’m at a point now where my initial investment has been churned a few times and I don’t need to continue injecting liquidity into the business. But it’d be helpful to get some sales during the off-season and remaining congnizent of prices.
Maintain Cadence: From the structure of my writing and way of running a business, maybe you can tell I used to be in the Army. My brain works well with a lot of structure and if I don’t stay on top of it, I lose momentum.
During the last month, I lost momentum with my reconciliation process.
I need to reconcile my purchases from eBay, to my excel tracker, to Amazon shipments, and then inventory. Reconciling 5 books might take me 10 minutes. However, reconicling 30 books will take me an hour…
The longer I put off reconiling, the more I don’t want to do it. With that, I need to continue carving out 30 minutes every week to reconcile my purchases so I don’t lose accountability of my purchases and it doesn’t become a task I don’t want to do.
Conclusion:
I’m expecting May and June to be similar stories; accumulate inventory, set pricing, and repeat.
Given our performance in January, we’re trying to set ourselves up for the best performance possible this summer.
And like most professionals, we’ll take time to reflect on sustains and improves to drive our preparation for the following busy season.
With that, happy to talk through any questions or comments.
Good Luck, Anon.
Need help getting started?
Guide to Reselling College Textbooks - Step-by-step process to starting your college textbook reselling business from the equipment needed to generating your first sale
Book List - I’ve created a list of over 2,000 College Textbook ISBNs for you to use to get started setting alerts in Keepa
Great point about procrastination vis a vis reconciliation