Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset
podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash
used book guy to join the channel
and gain access to the full length podcast Zoom call
and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset podcast.
Mike sitting next to Johnny, special guest today.
And you can tell from his background
if you're watching on YouTube already.
This guy loves selling books.
We got Kent with us today.
And he's a fellow YouTuber.
Kent, introduce yourself, take us away,
get us right into this episode.
Well, hello, everyone.
My name is Kent Genteman.
I've been selling books on eBay full time for about 11 years.
I was selling out of my house for about eight years.
And then three years ago, I bought a commercial building
and opened a bookstore in rural Wisconsin.
So eBay is still 90, well, no, no, 80, 80 some percent
of my income versus the physical bookstore.
But it is a great way to source.
Most of my inventory I buy on eBay and then sell on eBay.
And one of the unique things that I do
is I do auctions every night.
So every night I have 30 books ending.
I start them all at $0.99 plus shipping and no reserves.
And yeah, that's what I do.
That's pretty unique, $0.99 auctions.
I guess on the idea of eBay, you've
been doing this for 11 years, you got a storefront.
What made you decide to get a storefront?
And do you just see your storefront
as a way to get inventory?
Or do you still see it as a way to possibly grow
your revenue for the next five, 10 years,
however long you plan on doing this?
A little bit of both.
I know, Mike, you know that listing books on eBay
is not exactly fun.
And I would like to do less of it.
So if I could replace some of my online income
with local sales, that'd be great.
At this point, the profit from my bookstore
would just about pay the mortgage and all the bills.
But there are days that I will sell $50 worth of books here
and spend $500 on stuff coming in for people to sell me.
So the math doesn't always add up great.
All right, now I got to ask you a question,
because I'm a cheapo when it comes
to buying other people's books and CDs and DVDs.
I just say I pay a flat $0.15 a pound.
Now, in your line of business, you have more collectible books.
I see you got fancy books that are probably more expensive
that people are not going to part ways with at $0.15 a pound.
Do you comp everything that comes in kind of like a trade
and store, like a half-price books?
Or do you just say, I'm just going
to pay this flat fee based on how many items you bring me?
It really varies.
For modern romance and Westerns and stuff, for the bookstore,
I pay like $5 for a huge box of it.
I pay next to nothing because it takes forever to sell.
And I already have so much of it.
For the older stuff that I can sell on eBay,
I might pay $150 or $200 for a really nice Bible
that I think is going to bring at least $300.
It really varies.
And like saying with East and Press books,
I might pay $10 or $15 a piece and hope
that they're all going to sell for $20 plus.
So I am willing to pay up for the older stuff.
If I can get some really good quality stuff,
I will pay up for it.
Do you only do auctions on eBay, or do you
have normal listings too?
I used to have.
I was working my way up to about 1,000 buy it nows
plus the auctions.
And now I'm mostly auctions.
I think I have about 30 buy it now.
So I am slowly building up my buy it nows just
with really good quality stuff.
It has to be nice condition.
It has to be an interesting topic, all of that stuff.
So it hopefully, I mean, otherwise, it's
normal in the book industry for your stuff
to sit on the shelves or online for years and years
and never sell.
So I'm done with listing stuff that will never sell.
It's a waste of time.
See, I like the turnover with the auction style
because it's seven, 10 days or something, right?
But everybody's initial knee-jerk, shock,
rip-band-aid-off reaction is I don't
want to sell stuff for $1 when I know it's worth $100.
There is that risk that goes involved with auctions.
So what made you decide to take that risk?
Like, no, all auctions all the time.
Roll the dice.
See what happens.
I really don't even know.
I think I must have just dabbled.
I tried a few things that I thought
there was a huge market for, whether it's the Dune books
or Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, first edition, Stephen King,
stuff like that.
You know there's going to be tons of people looking for it,
and it's going to be exciting.
And that's one of the things you have to,
if you're looking for books to auction off on eBay,
you're going to want to look up sold comps.
And if it's sold 10 or 15 times in the last month,
you know there's a lot of interest in it,
similar to what you guys do with Amazon, looking up and seeing
how much time it sold in the last 60 or 90 days
to give you an idea of whether or not
it's a good candidate for an auction.
See, what's also interesting with your model
is I see a lot of people get caught up in exact pricing
with buy it now versus you.
No, it's just going to go $0.99, and it's done.
There's no research there.
Or is there?
Am I wrong in that statement?
No, for the most part.
Sometimes I look up sold comps just to see.
But a lot of times you won't find sold comps.
Even if you go back three years on eBay,
you won't find any sold comps, and maybe you
won't find any listed.
And I know that really drives people crazy
if they can't find any online and there's
no sales history of a book online.
They think that they have something special.
And sometimes that's the case.
But a lot of times it isn't.
So you list the book for $0.99, and it
doesn't sell the first week of the auction.
Does that go into the incinerator pile,
or does that get relisted?
Good question.
So there are decent books that I put up
for auction that just don't get watchers,
and they maybe have one or two watchers and only not
too many views and no bids.
In that case, I go through the next three days of auctions
ending, and if there's some that don't have bids,
if there's a lot of watchers, I'll leave it up.
And hopefully it brings more than $0.99.
But if there's no bids and there's one or two watchers,
I'll end it early and maybe put it in the bookstore.
But I won't re-upload it on eBay for months,
because eBay already knows that title,
and probably that book with that author is a dud.
What got you into books, dude?
I mean, you seem like you're passionate about the books.
You have a ton of knowledge about books.
So you had to have some kind of book bug bite you
many, many moons ago.
So when I was in middle school, I
grew up on a little hobby farm in rural Wisconsin,
and I started collecting farming and veterinary books.
I wanted to be a vet.
That, hence, animalvet52 is my eBay username.
Everyone asks me if I'm a vet, and nope, I'm not.
So I started collecting old farming and vet books,
and I'd go to an auction and buy a box,
keep the ones I wanted, and sell the rest.
And when I was in college, I was an animal science major,
and I just started doing it as a side hustle.
And eventually, I switched to a business major,
and it turned into a full-time thing.
That's a pretty crazy story.
I mean, the worse comes to worst, you always
can go back and be a vet, and maybe you
are half a veterinarian, half bookstore combo
can, the first of its kind in the universe.
It's so unique when I see bookstores that exist.
And I'm curious, when it comes to overhead,
because a lot of booksellers that are passionate about books,
they would love to have a bookstore.
When it comes to overhead of actually having a bookstore,
maybe some downfalls that maybe people don't think about it
when it comes to actually having a store,
can you shed some light on some things
that people really don't think about when you say, hey,
I want to have a bookstore?
It sounds fun and amazing.
Well, I guess the biggest change for me
was I'm open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 to 6,
closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, but I usually
work those days anyway.
So one of the huge changes was, hey, you either
have to be here every day, or at least four days a week,
or pay someone to be here.
And then I guess, as far as overhead, I live here,
so it's not really anything too crazy.
I've got LED lights, so my light bill isn't crazy.
But if you were going to either rent a space or buy a space
just for your bookstore, it definitely
wouldn't be the most profitable business.
Now, if you're in the city or on the main drag somewhere,
your rent and building costs is going to be a lot more.
You'll sell more, but then your expenses
are going to be a lot more.
So that's why I chose to live a little bit more rural
and keep my bills down.
I don't blame you.
I like the idea of being out in the sticks a little bit,
because if you got good products and good prices, which you do,
I did my research.
I looked them up on Google, Johnny,
and he's got all these five star reviews.
People love the man.
People will come to you, especially in books,
because most people are passionate about books.
So you don't sell on Amazon.
Is that right?
That is correct.
I've joined the Paper Gold group to learn a little bit about it,
and I watch all your videos.
You're wasting time watching all my videos.
Just save your time.
Go do something that's more productive.
I'm learning a lot about selling on Amazon,
but there's just so many issues as far as ungating.
And I know every video say it's easy.
It's this simple.
And if I actually sat down and tried it and started,
I know I'd probably like it and could definitely.
I have access to the books, so it could definitely
make me some profit.
But eBay keeps me busy eight, nine, 10 hours a day.
So you care about the books.
You care about the books, dude.
You don't want other people messing around
with the books in Amazon throwing your stuff around
unlike me.
I'm just like, whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike, I want you to love the books and become an eBay seller.
Ah, I guess.
It's unfortunate that.
All right, that's it.
The podcast is over.
He wants me to come in eBay seller.
I got to go get to work, because you've
got to work 1,000 hours a week and make a little to no money.
That's funny, because you do see success with eBay
with the auctions.
And I do think that's such a huge leg up.
And people don't get excited about it,
but you're actually selling things.
And my big kind of motto for the last half of this year
and in the next year is, you don't make money
until the stuff sells.
Like, you don't get paid until the stuff sells.
You can have a million books, but if none of them ever sell,
well, then cool.
You've just got all your money tied up
sitting around doing nothing for you.
So I do like the $0.99 auction idea,
because it moves inventory.
And you're getting it for next to nothing.
So sure, you're not going to knock everyone out of the park.
But if you're spending $0.10 and you're making $3 repeatedly,
it adds up.
But we can't get that in our mind as resellers.
We only want to find the gold bars.
And I'm here to tell you, no reselling business
lives on gold bars.
You live on the $3 to $10 profit items.
Yeah, the way I look at it is, maybe you have a $200 book,
and maybe you pay $40 or $50 for it.
Are you better off getting that full $200?
Or probably, if it sits for three or four years,
you're going to heavily discount it anyway.
You'd be better off getting $75 to $100 for it next week
instead of that $200 years down the road,
or more likely never selling it.
Right.
I think sell-through rates king, and people
get caught up in a little bit more on the ASP,
especially just starting out.
So how much of your business, well, let me preface this with,
you and I both know it has to be a good book to go on eBay.
And what's good in most people's eyes is usually trash.
So what do you consider a good book to go to your auction?
I mean, it kind of has to be an in-demand topic or authors,
kind of the big thing, whether it's Stephen King, Charles
Dickens, the Dune books, stuff like Dracula and Frankenstein,
or other topics, American history,
stuff on the Civil War, Native Americans, science
and technology, cookbooks.
And I guess I mostly deal in books that are pre-1900.
I haven't really dabbled in the Hemingways and the F. Scott
Fitzgerald and stuff like that.
I wish I knew more about that market,
because that stuff is in high demand and easy to sell.
But that's one of the things that I
don't know much about at all.
So getting all these books, do you just pay flat out,
or do you do a consignment, or do you
get donations for the majority of your inventory
that ends up at your auctions?
A majority of it comes from eBay,
and I pay for it outright.
People bring stuff in, and they always
ask me if I do consignment.
And occasionally, I'll do a consignment deal
where they get a certain percentage of the sale price.
I did a really big consignment deal for a woman out
of Indiana this spring.
She got a bunch of books from a movie production company
and shipped me 10 pallets of stuff,
and that was all on consignment.
And sometimes I would prefer that,
because some people think their stuff is
worth insane amounts of money, and you end up
overpaying for it.
In this case, she gets paid directly based off
what I sell it for, so that was nice.
So how many individual auctions do you have going up
on a weekly basis?
And an auction, for those that aren't aware,
we'll consider a listing, so one book or maybe a lot of books.
Yeah, it's usually individual books,
and every day I have 30 ending, except for Tuesday nights.
So depending where the, I do 10 day auctions,
so that kind of throws it off.
So there's usually anywhere from 220 to 250-ish auctions
running at any time.
OK, so almost 1,000 books a month
are getting cycled through eBay.
A little shy.
I think I figure like 7,000 to 800, yeah.
7,000 to 800, OK.
So yeah, that's got to keep you busy,
because you got a high turnover rate.
And then how many of those end up not selling?
How much are left over of that 800,
do you think, that don't go up for some other new home?
Not too many.
I would say most nights there's maybe anywhere from zero to three,
four, five on a bad night.
If I put up some junkier stuff that isn't interesting,
there'll be a few no sales that'll end early.
But for the most part, almost everything is selling.
OK, and do those end up at the storefront,
or do they go out to some other sales channel,
or as Mike said, hit the incinerator?
If they were interesting enough for me to put on eBay,
they're probably interesting enough for me to put in the store.
But yeah, occasionally they'll go get thrown away.
Fair enough.
So you're buying mainly off eBay.
So I'm assuming sometimes you get stuck with, well, junk.
Usually this stuff comes in large.
So what do you do with the junk?
Again, do you just trash it, or do you
attempt to go in the storefront or some other sales avenue?
Again, anything that I agree with.
That's every reseller's problem is,
what do you do with the junk?
And my bookstore is overflowing.
Most bookstores are overflowing with stuff.
They don't need more stuff.
So it'll either go to the garbage or Goodwill.
If it's not garbage, it'll go to Goodwill.
Have you thought about doing, because you got a storefront,
I think it's a unique opportunity to, I don't know.
I'm just spitballing ideas that came to my head.
If I had a storefront, maybe something I would try,
like Whatnot or even live streaming just every day
that you're at the bookstore, just a 24-7 kind of live stream
of when your bookstore is actually open.
Yep, I did a few Whatnot auctions this spring.
But then I took four months off because I got burned out.
And I started doing Whatnot again.
I'm AnimalVet52 on Whatnot as well.
I did one the last two Tuesdays,
and I'm doing one this Tuesday.
And I'll probably do a couple of them
till I get burned out again,
just because Tuesday's supposed to be my night off.
But the last two weeks, I was live
for about two hours on Whatnot, sold like 60 to 70 books,
and ended up with about $500 after the fees.
Fees are only 10%, so that's kind of nice.
So yeah, I mean, if I could sell $500 worth of stuff,
make a couple hundred bucks profit in the night,
it's definitely worth it.
You do, I mean, one of the misconceptions with Whatnot
is you can't just put up your junk.
You can put up some junk, but you also have to filter it in
with some good stuff if you wanna make some money.
Employees, do you have any?
Do you wanna have any?
I know like some people, they wanna build a business
and kind of step back.
Like what's your take on your employee situation
and what the future you might be considering?
I have an employee work at the bookstore.
Like I went to a wedding this summer,
so they worked a couple days.
Otherwise no employees.
I think I'm too neurotic to hire someone to do my listings
or take pictures or even the shipping.
If I could get over that, it'd be nice to pay someone
to come work for an hour or two and do my shipping every day.
But for now, it's just me.
And my workflow is usually I get up right away
in the morning, do my shipping that can take anywhere
from half hour to an hour or two.
If there's a lot of stuff and a lot of boxes,
then I will work on taking pictures of the books.
I take 12 pictures of every book times 30 is 360.
And then, or is it 360?
I should know this, I do it every day.
Taking pictures takes a couple hours.
Then I type up descriptions for a couple hours.
Then I list for a couple hours.
Then I usually have a break before my auctions end
every night from 6.01, 6.02 all the way to 6.30.
And then got to do a little shipping as people pay.
And then I'm done for the day.
Started all over in the morning.
All right, I'm gonna throw something crazy out there.
And I don't even care about what you damn eBay sellers
think of me.
Do you think 12 photos for a 99 cent star auction
is a little bit high?
I feel like if I was doing that,
I'd probably maybe do like four photos, right?
Because everybody's getting a deal on the stuff
they're buying regardless, because none of it,
I mean, sure, there are occasions where you might,
but that's like a small percentage get more than what
it would actually sell for normally at a buy it now price
on eBay.
I feel like 12 photos, man, you are an overachiever.
You deserve gold stars.
But if that was me, I'm thinking like four photos
if I'm running 99 cent auctions.
This is why you're an unseller, Mike.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, at a minimum, okay, you are right.
At a minimum, you want front cover spy.
That could be one photo.
You want title page, maybe copyright page.
But then I like to show off the contents,
show any interesting illustrations, any damage.
In 12 used to be the eBay maximum number of photos.
Now it's 24.
So I still do 12 just to give people a little extra idea
of, okay, this is what you can expect in this book
and more condition photos.
And occasionally, if I have a huge leather Bible,
I will go up to the maximum 24.
But yes, as a buyer on eBay, there's some people
that just put a picture of the front cover
and that drives me crazy because I'm like, well,
I can't really tell too much about the condition
or anything from that unless you're gonna have
a big description explaining it all.
12 could be excessive.
A minimum, yeah, I think minimum would be four.
I'm just trying to get some of your time back,
trying to get some of your life back.
You're right though, right?
And probably if you take, it's not probably,
it's guaranteed, if you take less photos,
you're gonna have a less sell through rate
because you don't have as much photos.
So I rest my case, go ahead, Johnny.
So for your storefront, I see a lot of bookstores
do a couple oddities, but it's considered normal now
is they'll have a coffee shop inside their bookstore
and they'll try to sell disc media,
which is CDs and DVDs and records
and any other knickknack thing they can get in there.
Or they do an abundance of community events.
Do you go down any of these avenues for your own bookstore?
Well, I was renting space for years at antique store.
So I had some jars and buttons and knickknacky stuff.
So I still have a couple shelves of that in the back.
Trying to think what else?
I don't have, I don't sell coffee.
I would maybe get a coffee maker and give away coffee
for free because people tell me all the time,
hey, you should get a coffee in here.
They tell me I need to-
Coffee and books seem to go together these days.
Thanks Barnes and Noble.
And they tell me I need to get a cat or two,
a bookstore cat.
I haven't got to that yet, but maybe eventually.
You know what would be better than wandering cats,
wandering iguanas, jumping from shelf to shelf.
I don't know how they'd like it here in Wisconsin.
Well, it's true, cold, baby.
It's too cold, man, that the iguanas won't survive.
But cats, yes, I agree with.
Coffee, Johnny's there.
I mean, you better have a lot of supply
for the amount of coffee Johnny drinks on a daily basis.
You need like that XXL curing.
The rest is for all the other customers throughout the day.
The cake cups are like this big
because Johnny's there for the day.
So do you do any events, store-wide events?
No, I've been asked about authors coming to doing readings
and signings and stuff.
And I don't have a ton of space.
My bookstore is kind of, it's only 1200 square feet.
And then I asked, someone asked,
they're hosting a book club here in town.
Actually, it sounds pretty interesting.
It's a James Bond book club.
They're gonna go through all the Ian Fleming books.
So I might host them at some point.
I think that'd be kind of a cool thing to do.
Yeah, there's so much opportunity
that we don't think about as resellers.
And especially when it comes to having the storefront,
you gotta think a little bit outside the box
and do different things to kind of get people in the store.
And I'm curious when you first started, right?
Like how long, you probably remember this.
Like how long did it take for you
to actually sell your first item
from like in the actual physical store?
I mean, actually, so I opened in May
and there was people stopping in here
because I have a huge sign out by the highway.
So I mean, I was selling stuff right away.
I put an ad in the paper.
Otherwise I don't invest anything into marketing.
It's probably a bad idea,
but I have a huge sign by a highway
that 20,000 cars drive by every day.
And most months are pretty consistent here,
selling three to 4,000.
I had no idea what to expect.
A bookstore kind of in the middle of nowhere,
what to expect out of it.
But I'm happy right now.
And I do have tons of customers
that come every month or two or three months and buy stuff.
So I would like to think that my sales
will steadily grow over the years.
For sure, for sure.
It's a slow process,
kind of like building this podcast up.
You start with two people listening
and then you get 10 people listening.
But I think, I guess I got to know,
is this the lifelong plan for you, Ken,
is to be in this bookstore and be the main guy in there?
Or do you have plans to kind of maybe move
to a bigger location or maybe get the employee
and take a step back and kind of just be the face
that does maybe the whatnot shows
or more active on the YouTube channel?
What's the future look like for you
and what do you want it to kind of look like?
I mean, I would really love to just have
the physical bookstore and make a living off of that
and do a little bit online to supplement that.
I don't know if that's realistic at all.
A lot of the booksellers that have been in the business
for decades at this point,
I ask and they tell me that online versus local
is about 50-50.
Now mine's way skewed towards online
since I've more experience online.
I mean, I love my location here.
I'm considering putting on an addition,
but I don't wanna jump too headlong into that.
Okay, you can keep that one.
Would you add an additional one?
An additional bookstore, maybe with bigger store frontage?
No, I'm gonna do two buildings.
I wanna put an addition on here for more retail space,
so I don't know what it's gonna translate to
as far as higher sale.
Yeah.
I think we're having some audio issues.
Yeah, you're breaking up a little bit here.
There you are.
Okay, good now, okay.
So I would love to put an addition on this building.
I wouldn't wanna maintain two buildings
and have two locations that I gotta be running.
I already love waking up and I'm at work.
I love that aspect of this.
So I would love to put an addition on this building
and have more retail space and more storage,
though I don't know what that will translate to
as far as higher sales here.
The sales would go up, I would love to have
more retail space and more storage.
I would love to have more retail space
and more storage, but I don't know if it's gonna bring,
I don't know if more people are gonna come in
because my store's bigger.
Do your friends and family think you're crazy
for having a bookstore?
No, I think they know I've made money online with it
and I saved up some money to put some equity
from my previous house into this building,
so it wasn't really a financial risk.
I mean, it's not a business you're gonna get into
to get rich, that's for sure.
I guess you got like a tangible storefront
versus somebody like me.
I just tell them I ship them off to some fairy land
and the stuff sells, so I guess you can be like,
hey, I got a storefront, you wanna come down?
Me, I'm just like, I don't know where the stuff goes.
I just get paid every once in a while.
It would be cool to have a bookstore though.
So, all right, so you wanna keep the bookstore,
you wanna grow the bookstore sales
more than the online sales.
Now back to the eBay, do you promote your auctions?
Can you even promote auctions on eBay?
This is how antiquated I am.
Yes, you can and you used to be able to pay a flat $2.50
to promote your auction.
Now they switched it to a percentage
and in the past, I would promote one or two a month
if there was a really good book
that maybe was an obscure title,
but I'm like, hey, this should bring $100 plus.
I would pay the 250 to promote it,
but now it's a percentage and eBay would like you to promote
at like the nine, 10%, that's the standard for the category
and I'm not willing to do that.
Actually, I just got an email from someone at eBay,
some customer service rep that wanted to talk to me
about promoting my auctions
and they mentioned that you actually don't have to promote
at like the 9.2% for the category.
You could promote at two or 3%,
but no, I don't have any interest in paying eBay more fees
to get my items out there.
I promote my stuff at 2%
and just because it's like now the going, right?
So the argument is well,
if the three of us all promote at 2%,
then you're really not getting no promotion
because it's just eBay getting more money.
Same thing, exactly.
Yeah, eBay, instead of eBay tracking down more sellers
and more buyers for the platform,
they wanna get more money from the same,
actually probably from a shrinking number of sellers.
So I'm gonna talk about probably the least considered thing
for future bookstore owners.
Talk to me about parking, Kent.
How many parking spaces can your store facilitate?
I got a pretty big parking lot.
I could fit 20 cars out there,
though it's busy if there's three, four, five cars out there.
Right, exactly, exactly.
But you got room for the trailer guy.
He wants to sell you his trailers worth of books.
If so, if the time ever were to arise.
People have suggested I do like a flea market weekend
to get people here, do a flea market,
have people come set up with their cars
and trailers and stuff, but I don't know.
I know people love the community aspect of bookstores
and bringing people together for poetry readings
and book signings and stuff, or music,
but that's just not my personality.
So how many lesser bookstore owners are around your area?
How many competitors do you have?
Well, I wouldn't say lesser, but other bookstores,
there is one on Main Street here in Marshfield.
Marshfield's a city of 20-some thousand people.
They've been around for 20 years.
And I think already, I'm sure they're not listening.
I hope they're not listening.
Already, I think my sales have probably surpassed theirs
and they've been in the business for 20 years,
though they mostly deal in modern romance,
mysteries, Western, stuff like that.
Gotcha.
So here's an oddball question.
When I started looking into bookstores,
I noticed this in abundance.
People were offering stationary classes
and or selling stationary stuff.
I looked at them like I'm not doing this,
but it seems to be like a nationwide thing
for bookstore owners to do now.
Why do you think this is?
It blew my mind when I was reading about this.
Well, I would say a lot of people buying at bookstores
are slightly more female, more 20s, 30s, 40s,
and they probably also like that stuff.
I sell earrings for my friend Becky here.
I have them sitting right at the front table
and there'll be people that will come.
A lady just came in and bought earrings
and not a single book.
And I also sell records.
Oh, I forgot I sell records.
What else?
I sell tin signs.
I have little tin decorative signs for 10 bucks a piece.
And I mean, there's some days
that I sell more signs than books.
Nice.
Now, I mean, yeah, I've noticed that too.
It's probably about 70% female
as far as my bookstore shoppers and 30% male that walked in
and negative percent for children.
I don't count children at all.
If I lived in the area,
would you rent me out like a corner of your bookstore
where I could try to sell my duds?
If I had more space, I would,
but I have negative space right now.
You're up on the roof with the snow bag.
I would pay you for the space though, man.
Like, it's not like I'm just, I don't want it for free.
I would maybe rent you out a shelf, see what happens.
Say, yeah, because my antique shops around me,
they want like $90 for three foot bookshelf of space.
It's absolutely ridiculous how expensive it is
to get into some of these antique shops
and I don't have a lot around me.
So, I mean, it could be another option, maybe,
another book seller in your area.
I got a bunch of crazy, don't listen to me, Ken.
I'm probably gonna sink your business, right?
Then we got like live bands playing on Friday nights
and I'm in there signing Nora Roberts books
and I'm not even Nora Roberts.
Nora Roberts book signing and they show up and it's me
and they're like, what the hell is going on?
My bookstore would not last.
It's so interesting to see.
I mean, I guess I'm just gonna be blown with you
and you're not gonna offend me.
It's impossible to offend me.
So you can shoot straight with me here.
And how do you feel about people like me
who don't care about books and just come in and scan books
and take the profitable ones and send them off to Amazon
and make money doing that?
I mean, I don't have a problem.
I had a guy last summer that wanted to come in
and scan my books and actually,
if I do a big buyout of an estate or something,
I would let him go through the books and scan
and take what he wanted.
And we have very different interests.
You're selling the barcode books.
I prefer the older stuff,
though I sell modern stuff in my store.
I would gladly sell you anything you thought
you could make money on.
Though I will say you could just as well be selling
crock pots or coffee makers or whatever you,
and you can, if you see a crock pot,
you can make money on Amazon.
You may as well buy it and try to sell it.
That's so true.
And it's tough.
And I know, like, we probably just look at the people
that follow me on social media versus you,
the books are owner.
You got the people that are passionate about the books
and I got the people that are more like,
I just want to make a few bucks on the side.
And I don't think there's a right or wrong to it.
What do you think of the term book dealer?
Because all the libraries I work with, I don't know me.
And the term book dealer, growing up in the city,
like dealers are people that sell drugs, right?
So like, when you're like, oh, are you a book dealer?
I'm always like, no, I don't like the term book dealer
just like I don't like the term reseller.
I think they're both like antiquated and in my eyes,
like I wouldn't say derogatory.
It's just an antiquated term.
They're like, oh, you're a book dealer.
I'm like, no, I sell these online to support my family
and my kids, AKA my cats.
So what term would you use to describe?
I would consider, okay, at this point,
I'd consider myself a bookstore owner,
though online is more of my income
and what I spend most of my time doing.
So I guess I'm an online book seller.
Entrepreneur, small business owner,
anything besides those two terms of reseller or book dealer.
I mean, where did, I wonder where the term book dealer even
like-
No, it's an actual thing.
Like people deal in books to,
you used to go to them, get a buy list
or add your name to a buy list
and they circle the United States to find you a book.
Well, that's why Sears went out of business
with their damn catalogs.
It's the same thing here with the book dealer.
I don't know, it's just a weird term.
And when I work with libraries, like all the ladies like,
are you a book dealer?
And I'm like, no, I immediately shoot it down.
I don't even entertain them.
I'm like, no, I'm not a book dealer.
You go to a book fair and ask what they call those people.
Would you do, I guess you'd call yourself
an Amazon seller then?
I'm an entrepreneur, small business owner.
I don't even got to give them the details of where I sell.
I just try to keep it vague, but in the term, I guess,
I just feel like book dealer.
I feel like, I've called myself a book dealer.
I immediately feel like I'm 95 years old.
You're in e-commerce.
It's just your e-commerce is books and just media.
Yeah, I just feel like, I don't know, it's a dated term.
I think there's a new wave of book sellers coming,
Kent and Johnny.
We can't make you go to a book fair, Mike?
We don't wanna be called book dealers.
We want something that's more hip, cool, I don't know.
Book dealers like a door-to-door salesman idea.
I'll be curious.
I'm gonna ask people on our next call,
what do we think of the term book dealer?
Would you consider yourself a book dealer?
No, because I don't deal with a clientele list.
Kent, probably out of the three S's,
is the closest to an actual book dealer.
Yeah, I guess I used to call myself an antique book dealer,
but now I sell everything.
So, sell everything.
What's your, do you have a collection of books?
Now, that's a good one.
I always like to get people jammed up
because people like you are passionate about books.
You're like, man, I really, I love this author.
I love these books.
Do you have like a secret room in the back somewhere
where it's like you pull a book out,
the door spins around,
and it's like your amazing collection of books?
Yeah, I do have a book collection.
And actually, that's probably one of my biggest hindrance
in my business is I tend to keep the better stuff,
the more expensive stuff that I could get lots of money for
if I sold it.
So, that kind of takes a cut to my business,
not selling that stuff.
And I do have shelves of books,
and I actually have three safes,
they're big gun safes, but I put books in them
to keep the really expensive stuff safe.
And I collect, obviously the farming and vet stuff,
I have old medical books, American history stuff.
I really like collecting early American printed books.
So, books printed in America from the kind of 17,
early 1700s to late 1700s.
I really like that stuff.
And they're mostly religious books,
but I just like that they're printed from that era.
Now, do you collect them or do you read
and then put them in the safe kind of collect them?
There are people that just put them on a shelf
to like, I own this, they never read it.
Maybe this is crazy,
but I haven't read like any of the books in my collection.
Okay, so you're just a collector,
you're not a collector.
Yeah, they look nice and they're interesting topics,
and that's why I have them.
Fair enough.
Are the books always better than the movies?
Yes, not always, I'd say mostly, mostly better.
Gladiators, probably exception,
horrible book, fantastic movie.
Oh, they just came out with the Gladiator 2, didn't they?
They did, yeah, there's a new one with Denzel in there.
Okay, I've had a different experience
with reading books of my favorite movies.
The books for me, they just, they suck.
I don't know what it is, right?
Like I read the Jaws book,
I thought the book sucked compared to the movie.
I didn't really like the book at all.
I've read like the original Halloween
horror trade paperbacks.
It doesn't do it for me.
I mean, I guess there are some exceptions to the rules,
but for me, I don't know,
it's just one of those things where the books,
and I'm not a big reader.
I do, I prefer to read like financial books,
I'm the Dave Ramsey guy, retirement books.
So on the topic of retirement
and the future of your bookstore,
so you wanna get this business to a point
where you're making 50-50 split.
Do you think once you get there,
you're gonna have to have the store open seven days a week?
And that's when maybe when you get the revenue
closer to 50-50, you bring on an employee
so you can be open an extra day a week,
because right now this is it, right?
You live, sleep, eat, read the bookstore,
the online business, and I always challenge everybody.
Me and Johnny always like to challenge everybody is,
well, is this Kent for the next 60 years?
Like that can't be, this can't be the solution, Kent.
I know you enjoy doing it now, but 50 years from now,
there's something a little bit different
that's gotta be going on.
Yeah, interesting question.
Well, right now the store's only open four days a week.
It's closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday,
but I'm almost always here Sunday, Monday, Tuesday working.
I turn the open sign on
and it can usually catch a couple of customers.
Yeah, at some point, I guess it would be smart for me.
I've just never hired an employee
except for the one that works five days a year
when I have to be away.
But yeah, I definitely need to think more
and put more effort into hiring someone that could.
I mean, especially- Just get a shipper.
Let's start small.
Just get the shipper.
They just gotta put book in box, label, mail.
That's all they gotta do.
Especially, you know, there's no fun aspects
of being an eBay seller, taking pictures, listing, shipping.
There's nothing fun about it.
It pays the bills.
So if I could outsource that, I would,
I mean, I'd like being a book seller more.
Getting the shipper is the first part of letting go.
Yeah, it's like a 12-step process.
But I'm just thinking to myself,
like, dude, what happens if you get sick, man?
Like, what happens if you come down with a cold
or like you fall off the roof or something?
Like you're just in there in like the hospital bed
still checking people out or what?
Yeah, that's the tough thing about being a one-man band is,
yeah, if you're not working, if I don't work for a day,
I'm not making any money.
Yeah, it's tough.
It's like everything falls on your shoulders,
but there's fruits, right?
You put in the time today.
So down the road, you can reap the rewards, right?
You started with, you know, your social media,
your Facebook page, your bookstore.
You started with zero, it was just you.
You didn't know if anybody was gonna come in the store.
So you put the time and effort in to build it where it is.
And now you're just at that point
where you're thinking about,
all right, what's the next step look like?
And Vringi, can I basically photocopy myself
and have Kent 2.0 in here working with me
to kind of, you know, do different things
and get a little bit of your time back?
So here's probably my final question for you.
Can you give me three tips
for running a good online auction business
and three tips for running a great bookstore?
Okay, online quality inventory,
that's number one.
You have to have interesting stuff at decent prices.
I think with me, the auctions,
when I did have more buy it nows,
it helped, it was basically free advertising
because people would come click on my cheap Stephen King book
and go and see my buy it now Stephen King books
and they would self promote instead of paying
for promoted listings to get views.
All of my online stuff kind of crashed.
My online stuff kind of cross promotes it.
What else for online?
I'll have to come back for number three.
As far as having a good bookstore prices,
I mean, you gotta have decent prices.
I know the other bookstore in town gets $8 for a hardcover,
I get four, everything else.
The good stuff, you know, I make crazy profit
on the modern romance mystery stuff like that,
but then I'll cut my profit really small on
the more interesting stuff.
I just bought a bunch of stuff wholesale,
some new books, Jane Austen
and just really great titles, occult books.
And I cut my profits really slim on that really good stuff
in hopes that people will buy one of those
that I don't make much on
and then also buy some junk that I make 90 some percent
profit on.
Prices,
I mean, just having interesting stuff,
that's the biggest thing.
Yeah, I think, I mean, your review is kind of summing up.
You gotta treat people how you wanna be treated.
You take care of the customers, they come back,
they take care of you in the form of buying books.
And as long as we're at good prices,
you can even argue, you could raise prices
if you have good service.
But I'm all for the brain you have
when it comes to selling items.
Even if that means we take a little bit less money,
you're still getting money coming back in.
And as booksellers,
and the years in my experience of dealing with booksellers,
some of us can't disconnect or accept the fact
that sometimes you gotta take a little bit of the money today
instead of trying to hold out
and get all the money 35 years from now.
And it just doesn't work out that way.
I'm in the mindset of let's sell this stuff, right?
As fast as we possibly can,
because we're not getting paid.
And we don't even, the people I'm talking about
don't have the overhead of an actual bookstore, right?
So these are people that are just,
well, I can just let it sit in my garage for two years.
And I think to myself, don't you get tired
of looking at this stuff for two years?
Do you have, I'm curious,
do you have a certain section of books
or a book that you see every day in the store
that's been there since you opened the store
and you're just ready to just throw the thing out
because you're tired of looking at it?
Yeah, the romance section, there's piles on the floors,
and I just trucked it all to goodwill,
everything on the floor,
because that stuff is sitting there forever.
And with bookstores, stuff could sit for decades
and never sell.
And it's like, well, why have it here
if it's never gonna sell?
And that's one thing I love about the auctions on eBay
is I'm making a profit on almost every book I sell.
Occasionally, I'll take a loss.
There's probably a few losses every month.
But you're better off,
if you're gonna put in the time and effort to list the book,
you're better off making that small profit today
versus never selling it
or making a bigger profit years from now.
The math, I mean, most online sellers,
you guys see all the YouTube videos about eBay sellers,
their sales down, down, down.
They're putting in the effort,
they're working hard and sales are just going down, down.
Even with eBay clothing sellers,
if you buy clothes at the right price, auctioned off,
get 10 or 15 bucks for something, you price at 30,
and have it gone, not taking up space.
Because my eBay business is just,
those four shelves behind me, it circulates.
So like tonight's auctions are right there,
then tomorrow night, and as they empty out,
I just refill them.
So this is all the space I need to sell.
Most nights I'm selling in averages over $700 a night,
and this is all I need for that income.
You're crushing it, man.
I mean, you got everything working
and you're still working on building up
the storefront revenue.
So, I mean, the future is bright for this young man here.
I try to, I mean, I know auctions don't work for everyone,
but if you have the right stuff,
I mean, I follow just, because I'm buying on eBay,
I really kind of have my ear to the ground
knowing what's going on.
And there's people that will have only one item,
it'll be a really good antique Bible,
they have three feedbacks,
and they'll get $300 for it on auction.
Anyone can do it if they have the right stuff.
Yeah, I think that's one of the big benefits you have too,
about being passionate about books,
and like somebody like myself, who I say it all the time,
I don't even know, who is, wait,
is Alice in Wonderland a book, right?
It's a book, it was originally a book.
I don't even know who wrote Alice in Wonderland.
I don't even know, I think Wizard of Oz was Frank Baum,
right, I'm getting smarter here.
Well, you know books, Mike, I'm so proud of you.
Watch out, Wizard of Oz, Dr. Seuss,
Dr. Seuss wrote Dr. Seuss, I mean, come on now.
Mike, I would love to mail you a box of books
and have you auction them off on eBay
and just see what happens.
Ah, I got, I'm gonna break your little heart, Ken.
When I do bulk pickups, I, and now,
to the point where if it doesn't got a barcode,
it gets donated.
I don't even look at them, Ken, I don't even look at them.
I don't know what they are.
It doesn't upset me, I realize your time is money
and it's not worth looking up every one
because 98% of them are gonna be trash anyway.
I've looked at so many non-barcode books
and very little of them are worth money.
I just don't have the knowledge base
and I guess it's, I'm gonna say ignorance is bliss, I guess,
but I just don't wanna sit down and spend the time
looking up what's profitable.
Like if I could just have your brain,
I'd be A-okay with it, right?
But I'm just a scanner guy.
I just wanna scan as many things as I can.
So if I do have to stop, and I used to have piles of stuff
to look up on eBay and it just never,
the math never math for me,
but I don't even waste time looking at them more.
And I know for a fact, I'm just donating money.
So you have the leg up over somebody like me
who's just in it for the money, a greedy little bugger,
because you understand if somebody brings in a box
of non-barcode books, you probably already
have an idea of, okay, this is probably
what I'm gonna be able to get for it.
This is what I can pay for it versus me.
I gotta sit there with every book
and open the copyright page and look it up on eBay.
And it's brutal if you don't have the knowledge
trying to sell antique books.
Yeah, and I'm the same way on Amazon.
I'm missing out on barcode books
that I could be making crazy money on,
but the thought of learning the different programs,
learning the apps is overwhelming for me.
Yeah, there is a lot of software
when we're talking Amazon, to be fair.
There's a lot.
It'd be easier to learn the software
than it would be to learn all the knowledge
you have in your head, though.
Yes, but see, he likes the knowledge he learns in there.
I'm not sure we like the software knowledge
outside of the money aspect.
This is true, this is true.
But I mean, there are benefits to being a brainiac
about books and it's a passion project.
And if you can make money on it, right,
that's the whole reason we do this.
Ideally, you could team up one eBay seller
and an Amazon seller and work together
and go through an estate of books and each pick through,
but that doesn't always work.
Nah, man, what's your take on,
do you go to any library sales?
No, mostly because they're on days and times
that I have to be at the bookstore.
The last couple months here,
I've got a few opportunities to buy big collections.
One was a state sale company
that wanted me to take all the books before the sale.
There was like 6,000 books.
We couldn't agree on a price.
The next was a lady that inherited
over 100 boxes of books.
And then there was a church that was getting rid
of about 100 boxes of books.
So those definitely keep me busy for a while.
You do store credit at your store?
Like say if somebody brings boxes,
like do you just pay everybody in cash or do you say,
oh, I can give you more if you do store credit?
Yep, most people want cash.
So I just pay them cash and I'm one of the few stores
in central Wisconsin that are actively paying cash.
Most will only do store credit
and they're really picky about what they take.
I will take all your books.
If you got 50 boxes, I'll take them all.
That's how you do it right there.
Cash is money and you take it all, absolutely.
You don't get the Stephen King books
if you're only doing store credit
because they aren't giving away their Stephen King
unless you're paying for it.
So outside of the online sourcing,
what is probably your next go-to and physical,
you gotta go there kind of places?
Is it a state sale, libraries,
I don't know, antique booth malls?
I do go to antique stores and bookstores.
There's maybe three bookstores
that I like to go to several times a year,
but one's four hours north, one's in the Twin Cities,
that's two and a half hours, one's two hours south of here.
So it's a hike to any of the bookstores
that I like shopping at.
I do occasionally go to state sales,
but again, there are always that times that I have to work,
so it's really inconvenient.
And then I would say, since I opened the store,
my favorite thing is people bringing stuff in.
Every week people are bringing in stuff
and occasionally really, really good stuff too.
Do you do library sales or that's just not
on the list of things you need to source from?
No, I don't.
And again, there aren't too many in central Wisconsin
and they're usually pretty small.
I know there's one in Madison,
which is three hours south here, that's massive,
but I've never been there.
I hate the competition of a line of dealers, 20 deep,
and you gotta get there two hours ahead of time,
then you gotta run.
I know Mike has his tips for getting in early and stuff,
and that works.
But no, I don't have any relationships
like with thrift stores or anything at this point.
You need to leverage the fact
you got a little bookstore in the middle of nowhere.
People will be throwing their books at you,
these libraries and these thrift stores.
But hey, you're the one man marching band
for the time being, so you can't do it quite yet.
But I could see that definitely being a huge source
of inventory in the future,
because they're willing to give me a carload of books
and fill up my 2008 Ultima, and I don't have a bookstore,
and I don't have the knowledge,
or you can go in and have a conversation
about somebody with books.
And they ask me anything about books,
and I'm like, I never read Mr. Hemingway.
He sounds like a nice gentleman, but yeah,
you have that huge leg up over somebody like me.
So I know the possibilities are there for you to make a,
I know you kind of said,
you're not gonna get rich off books, but I disagree.
I think we can get very rich off books and media in general.
Now he's right, because all the librarians I've dealt with,
when I had the brick and mortar store open,
they got really excited once I told them,
yeah, I got a physical location.
It's here.
You wanna see a photo?
I don't know, they just lit up like, you're one of us.
You're one of us.
It's cool to have a bookstore,
and I could maybe in a different lifetime,
I would have a bookstore, but not this lifetime for me.
I enjoyed the convenience of just sending them away.
So I guess I'm gonna wrap it up here.
Kent, we appreciate you coming on the podcast
and sharing your bookstore.
We'll have all of your links down below in the description
and the comment section and the YouTube channel.
Make sure you go support fellow bookselling YouTubers.
It's hard out here for us, all right?
Not many people are in the book,
so it's a slow grind of growing our channels.
But we appreciate you coming on.
And yeah, we look forward to seeing,
maybe we'll have you back next year
and see kind of how it's progressed.
I'm sure it will be.
You'll probably have an employee by then.
You'll be doing all kinds of other stuff.
So yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast today.
All right, thanks guys.
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