What Writers Need to Know About Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA

Today, author Stephen Woodfin tells us about a very successful, but little known, Amazon program which is well suited to writers.  Woodfin is a talented writer who makes it his business to study Amazon, learn as much as he can about the giant, and utilize those parts that make sense for him.  He’s also an attorney, so he knows how to evaluate facts.   Here is a gem for us – an Amazon program many of us could profit from.  You’re on stage, Stephen.

 

Most writers are small business owners who focus on one line of products, the books they have written. However, they would be well served to broaden their horizons and think about selling other authors’ books.

What I’m talking about is a service Amazon offers called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).

There are two ways a person can sell books on Amazon. The first is the traditional method known as Merchant Fulfilled (MF). In MF, a person lists books for sale on Amazon, and when a customer purchases a book the seller receives a notice of the sale and ships the books to the buyer. This process is laborious, time-consuming and requires the seller to warehouse the books herself.

FBA is a horse of a different color. Under FBA the seller acquires the inventory, i.e., the books, and ships them to Amazon. Amazon stores the books in its own warehouses and ships the books to customers when they purchase them.  Books sold through FBA receive the Amazon Prime perks of free two-day shipping and the protections that come from purchasing directly from Amazon. In other words, the customer base for FBA books is primarily customers who have Amazon Prime accounts.

There are about twenty million Amazon Prime members, and many of them are avid book buyers.

This is a match made in heaven for sellers and buyers.

Combine this with the fact that many authors have a storehouse of books in their homes which they have acquired over a lifetime of book hoarding and one can see the opportunity FBA presents for authors.  They already have an inventory of free books, many of which are good candidates for sale through FBA.

What books fit the FBA model best?

It is really quite simple: Used books, primarily non-fiction, with a good sales ranking on Amazon. For purposes of our discussion, a good sales ranking is from 1 to 1,000,000, although that is not a hard and fast rule. Books ranked  1,000,000 plus sell every day on Amazon.  They just don’t sell as quickly as better-ranked books.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of the process to sell successfully on FBA.

Create an Amazon Professional Seller account. This costs $39.99 per month.
Learn how to scan books. What one scans is the barcode on the back of the book. The seller must acquire a barcode scanner and the software necessary to interpret barcodes.  To begin with, the seller can use her smart phone to scan the barcodes.  Apps are available for less than $10 per month, which provide sales data for the books when they are scanned.
List the books on Amazon.
Ship the books to Amazon using Amazon’s very favorable shipping rates.
Wait for Amazon to sell the books.
Get paid.  Amazon pays every other Monday like clockwork.

Is there any money in selling used books on FBA?

A lot of money.  A conservative estimate is that a seller can expect an average sales amount of $10 per book. After fees, the seller nets about $6 per sale.

That’s an amazing number. The seller makes $6 per sale on books that she has sitting in boxes in her garage, or for which she has paid $.25 to $1.00 at a Friend of the Library sale, a thrift shop or an estate sale.

I have only touched the tip of the FBA iceberg in this post.  But anyone interested in learning more about the details can Google “FBA” and read blogs and watch YouTube videos about it.

So if an author is interested in supplementing her income by selling other authors’ books, she should check out FBA.

I mean, a little extra cash always comes in handy.

Especially for writers.

 

JIM:  Stephen Woodfin is an attorney, author, blogger, and FBA seller. Please take a minute to check out his Amazon author page. I have read a  number of his books, and do not hesitate to recommend them.