Pricing College Textbooks to Sell

Greetings, Anon.

Today we’re going to be discussing how to price college textbooks to sell. Before we get into the specifics, it’s crucial that we recap our general strategy of college textbook reselling.

TLDR: Every year college students wait to buy their books when school is starting (August & January). During the other months of the year, they sell their textbooks for a cheaper price to try to recapture some of their costs. As college textbook resellers, we buy low during the off-season and sell high when students return to school. Click here for a full assessment of our strategy.

With that, we need to tailor our pricing strategy to align with our overall hypothesis of college textbook reselling: seek 50% ROI on books during busy season and be complacent sitting on inventory during the off months.

I want to make sure that idea is solidified before getting into the pricing strategy, so let’s also take a look at a price chart from keepa.

The black line = Used Price

The green line = Sales Rank

During August and January, we want to try to capture as much profit as possible. Aka when black line and green line go up, we sell. When black line and green line go down, we buy.

This pricing strategy is unique to the demand of the product. Unlike beauty products or clothes, there’s only seasonal demand. Therefore, we need to adjust accordingly.

The last point I want to make about pricing before we dive into this, is about the fulfillment method. There are plenty of booksellers who will have listings on Amazon, eBay, and Chegg all at the same time. Therefore, they might be the cheapest on Amazon, but will not be fulfilled as quickly as Prime products.

I say again, a seller that is not fulfilling through Amazon, will not be listed as a Prime offer.

Since we are fulfilling through Amazon, we are seeking to be the lowest cost seller that is fulfilled by Amazon.

So, we are not competing with all sellers, we want to be the lowest priced “used” book fulfilled by Amazon.

With all of that being said, today we’ll discuss the following:

1. Selecting a Pricing Tool

2. Setting the Price Rules

3. Adjusting your Pricing Over Time