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 in episode 23 here.
I don't even need his help anymore.
He's doing his own thing.
I'm doing my own thing.
Today's topic, believe it or not, I had I didn't even tell him the topic.
So this is going to be a surprise to him as well.
We're going to talk about bulk inventory, sourcing it, the benefits, the negatives.
So we're going to cover everything related to buying in bulk, selling in bulk.
And it's going to be a fun call because we both kind of dabble in bulk
in our own different ways.
And it's going to be interesting to see, you know, the eBay side of it
versus the Amazon side of it, how he manages the bulk and how I manage it.
It's completely different, but I'm sure he can attest that, you know,
having bulk sources is pivotal to your success as a media seller.
100% and I love this topic and I'm surprised.
Woohoo.
I'm going to let you take it away.
We can run wherever you want to run with bulk.
OK, I guess bulk.
How to let's go with that.
So when you're first starting out, you're probably still
probably going into thrifts, which is fine.
Maybe mom and pop thrifts at this point.
You discovered a few of those.
So for retail or mainstream thrifts, like your goodwill and stuff,
you want to ask for the manager on duty.
This is your first approach to buying bulk after you decide
you want to buy everything they got.
And with that, you ask some probing questions like,
is this all the books you have or are there more in the back just to get an idea?
Because if you have a number in mind and they say we have four times as much
in the back, well, your number just went out the window.
So once you've established the quantity, the true quantity they have, say,
well, would you be interested in selling it all to me at a discount?
And what would that discount number be?
The key to buying bulk is to let them speak first on the number
because then you have the ability to go lower.
Once you speak, you can only go higher than whatever numbers
uttered aloud amongst you too, unless there's multiple managers.
That would be my tip on both thrift and mom and pop type thrift stores,
is ask for the manager or the owner on duty.
I got a question for you.
So you walk in, we'll say, you know, their books are priced at two dollars each.
You want to buy the whole thing, right?
Well, this person, you go, hey, you know, you explain what you do, yada, yada, yada.
You say, I want to buy everything.
And I'm like, well, how much you want to pay on you?
Say, well, how much do you want to sell them for?
And it goes back and forth until you have to throw out the first number.
I have to be the initiator.
They're being a little bit stubborn.
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
Well, you tell them what you normally do if you've not normally done it before.
Say, well, I'm used to buying by the pound.
I have my scale in my car that I'll bring in and tubs to weigh them in or boxes.
Or if you don't have any of that, you could just put the books on the darn scale
and figure it out from there and roll them out in shopping carts at that place.
I shopping carts.
I know Mike and I were both around the 15 cents a pound kind of mark.
I'll go as high as a quarter sometimes, depending on what they have.
The better the stuff, the higher I'll go, the lower end stuff, more like library stuff.
I'm sticking at 15 cents.
15 cents is actually high.
Last time I spoke with some bulk bulk media sellers that buy by the truckload.
Yes, it is 15 cents is well above what they pay.
I'm pretty sure they're going right now for a truckload is around eight,
maybe seven to 10 cents per pound.
So what we're paying is actually more than a lot of the huge sellers are paying.
I guess, you know, what we're paying is the truckload.
We're paying, I guess, you know, with volume, it goes down in price.
But it's a fair it's a fair price to offer somebody when you're paying by the pound.
And it is kind of good to, like you said, explain what you do, explain how you normally do it.
So it doesn't seem like, you know, hey, like this person just throwing this crazy number at me.
Well, you know, with books, it's a little different, right?
If you're going to buy everything by the book, that's a little bit different than weighing everything.
So it really depends on what you're going in there for.
Right. If it's CDs or DVDs, then we're going by piece.
But it is tough.
I think it's tougher than it ever has been to kind of walk into a thrift store and be able to get back room access or even buy things in bulk anymore,
because a lot of thrift stores have gotten a lot smarter.
I think the only the only chance you're going to have with this is if you luck out and a Goodwill has a new manager or something,
or a mom and pop store just has an excess of inventory, that's going to be your ticket in.
How do you feel about like going into the same thrift store multiple times?
Like I go to the you know, I go to this Goodwill once a month.
And every time I'm in there, I'm asking for the manager to have the same conversation.
Like if you're just hassling them down, seeing the down eventually.
I mean, you kind of just building a relationship, right?
You know, you're kind of just like, hey, what's up, man?
Anything changed since I last was here?
Like, you feel like that's too much or you feel like, you know, it's kind of like stepping stones.
No, I feel like it's stepping stones because the more comfortable they are with you, the more likely they are to come down over time,
especially if they'll be thinking about through the weeks and through the months, man, that stuff hasn't moved.
I want to get rid of it. I want to turn my inventory because that's what they're running a business more or less themselves,
even if they're not the owner, the manager of the store, right?
They care about the day to day operations.
They care. They usually care about clearing their inventory.
There are some stubborn weirdos out there.
Don't get me wrong. Just don't care.
But no, I do think that's very much a stepping stone approach.
I think you can kind of tell, too, like when you have conversations with people,
if you if you feel like there's a chance down the road that you might be able to get in the back room or buy things,
you know, buy everything at a discount, you kind of can tell from the conversations you have.
So you should should have a feel for what's going on, right?
I mean, I know it's tough when you walk into a place and you talk to somebody for the first time alive.
You know, media sellers kind of like sticking to themselves,
just scanning the media and going on their way.
But the importance of having a bulk source or a few bulk sources or even just bulk buys from other people,
it's going to change your business overnight.
And you'll be amazed that, you know, the stress free life,
you don't have to go around chasing books at thrift stores, never know what you're walking into.
It can change everything.
So you kind of hit on like the store approach.
Yeah, I'm going to take it over to like the the person that you're talking to.
Like the person to person approach.
So I'm a firm believer in Craigslist, have ads out there.
They're free. We're not paying for no ads.
You just post them in the, you know, for sale and you put that you're buying books, free book pickup.
You don't even got to pay for it.
I could argue that somebody could start a media business today, book CDs and DVDs and have free pickup ads
and probably have a whole business with never paying for a single piece of inventory.
100 percent. It may take a little longer, but it's totally doable.
It'll take a little longer. But I mean, what are you spending?
You're not spending nothing. It's just it's just happening.
That's it. That's it.
I mean, it's crazy to think about.
So if you don't have like a used book guy in your area saying he's paying for books and 100 percent,
he should be saying, hey, I'm saving books from the landfill.
Don't even pay for the books. Just provide the service.
Because even even us that are paying for it,
it's not so much they want to make money on the books.
They just want the books gone.
It's not like, hey, I want to make money off this.
It's like, hey, I have three thousand pounds of books and they got to go. Right.
I mean, you ran into it with somebody that had a storage locker that needed all the stuff gone.
And it's not like they wanted to make money.
I mean, you could have told him 20 bucks and they would have been like,
as long as you get them out of the storage unit, I don't care how much you give me.
That's pretty much how that roll. They were wanting a dollar and fifty cents each.
I ended up offering them. I spoke first. It broke my own rule because I just wanted it.
I was like, I'll give you 100 bucks for it all right here right now.
And I'll bring back my tubs and I'll haul it all away. And like done. Sold.
And I could tell they'd been waiting.
They've been waiting to get that stuff back out or clear it out because they had stuff lined out on the outside of the unit.
Had books on the inside of the unit.
They knew the books were heavy because they're the ones that had to take them outside the unit.
I guarantee you, they did not want to put any of those books back.
So the guy came up offering, I'll take it all. They're like, hell yeah.
And I believe that like it's no matter what people price their books, right?
If I walk into a small mom and pop and their books are five dollars each,
if I have a conversation with a manager, I don't care what their price is.
Because I know and everybody listening to this, that's a media seller, knows that stuff is never going to sell.
Like you said earlier, it's not going to sell. It'll sit there.
And after you walk out the door and you don't show back up for a few weeks and the person that told you to beat it
is looking at the same stuff sitting on the same shelf that weighs the same amount of weight.
They're probably going to be like, well, maybe we should have done this.
So I think you have a lot more leverage than we give ourselves when we go in and buy both from like, you know, thrift stores or, you know, just anywhere when we're buying a whole bunch of everything.
I think I think we almost feel like we're kind of ripping somebody off because we're paying so little.
But in actuality, nobody else is ever going to buy that stuff.
Right. I used to think that way that maybe maybe I should have given them a little more.
I do not feel that way anymore.
Simple for the fact of they were happy with the number.
They could they always have the ability to say no.
So those kind of feelings went away in the same mentality.
I play at garage sales, too. I was at one.
Three, two, three weeks ago, and I walked up there.
Fun parts of haggling, negotiating, right?
So I look at the box, my how much for all of it.
And one of the ladies had it's been a rainy day.
They moved everything inside, obviously, and one of the ladies started to chime in.
But the other lady, like, cut her completely off.
Two dollars. Take it all, please.
I'm like, yes, ma'am, let me get my wallet.
I think that's because that lady probably carried the box of books down and put it out for sale.
It was not a light box of books.
I had a little bit of a struggle.
I should have brought my cart, but I just hauled it out to my truck and it was not light.
And I was a little bit stronger than this lady who spoke up.
Yeah, I think you kind of hit on the head, right?
Everybody has a chance to negotiate if they're not comfortable with something.
But I can even tell you when I did the yard sale to try to get rid of duds for the last hour and a half of the yard sale,
I changed it on Craigslist.
I put it out there that it was all free.
And I'll tell you what, you can't give away books anymore.
I think I would sit here. I experienced I sat out there for an hour on a nice day for with free books.
And I maybe had 10 people come by and grab a book or two or three.
You can't give you can't give this stuff away no more.
It's crazy to me. So the fact that you're willing to give somebody something, you know,
maybe that 20, 40, 50, 100 bucks you give somebody, you know, maybe that's making a big difference in their life.
Maybe they need money to hold themselves over.
You know, everybody's in different situations.
So don't feel bad or just feel like you're ripping somebody off.
I mean, I pay 10 cents a DVD.
I mean, that's the cheapest I'm the cheapest person there is.
People can sit here and say, oh, the clutter doesn't buy DVDs.
This this company. Well, guess what?
The used book guy does. And he's paying a whole lot less than anybody else.
But people still reach out and say, hey, I got a thousand DVDs, ten cents a piece.
Here's one hundred dollars. I take a thousand DVDs.
And everybody's happy. Right.
It's not one of those things where I don't think I've ever left a bulk buy where like there was tension.
Right. Like that person felt like they were getting kind of taken.
No, absolutely. I mean, even even the storage unit place for 100 bucks, it's a large family there.
They actually helped me load up the truck.
I could tell it's been a while since that family's seen one hundred dollars.
They were they did not look that well off, but they were very friendly, very nice people.
Like I said, they helped me load the truck.
It was about, I don't know, over 1500 books, probably closer to the 1600 side.
A lot of good stuff. They were happy. I was happy. Everybody was happy.
It was a happy day. Yeah. I mean, 100 bucks is 100 bucks, dude.
I mean, I remember when I was not doing so well financially, 100 bucks would, you know,
that had me as a world of a difference. Right.
You walk and find a hundred dollar bill on the street. You're like, you know, forget about it.
It's a good day. Yeah.
So I kind of want to get the stigma out of there that, you know, you're not ripping people off.
You're you're providing a service and you're paying them for you to do the service.
It's not like I mean, people just want their stuff going, especially books, because they're heavy.
And you got to lift them. You got to process them.
So not only are you getting rid of the stuff for them, you got to deal with it.
And you're giving them money for it. So I think that kind of nips that in the bud.
Don't feel type of way just because you're given a little bit of money.
And like I said, people can't give stuff away. I was in a pawn shop the other day.
Dude had six thousand DVDs. It was twenty for ten dollars.
You can offer him anything you want.
You probably could. I probably could have found a nickel on the floor and said, here, I'm taking a DVD.
And, you know, he would have. And when I checked out at the end, he's like, you want anything else?
Take whatever you want. I'm like, now I'm good.
Get out, Mike. Get out. You'll end up with it all.
There's so much of it out there with media.
And that's kind of the benefit of being in this niche in this market is that it's everywhere you look.
But you're going to find it really expensive overpriced and you can come back there three years later
and the same book or DVD is still be sitting on the shelf or you're going to find it really cheap.
So you got to just kind of sift your way through it when it comes to buying in bulk and just, you know,
be aware of what you're providing for people.
It's not just you, you know, trying to make a buck.
It's you. Maybe I've had it where, you know, elderly couple was moving out of the state.
They had all these books in their houses and, hey, I need these books going so we can move and sell the house.
So think about it, you know, maybe it's something along those lines where somebody's trying to move.
They have a whole bunch of bookcases full of books.
And this is one of those things where I had to go into the actual house flights of steps
because they had books on each floor and you're providing a service for them right now.
They can move. They can list their house. Nice photos.
They don't have all these bookcases full of books all over the place.
So it's more than just buying books and trying to make a buck, at least in my opinion,
I think it's a service I'm providing for somebody versus me trying to make a buck.
Cool. No, I agree. And let me let me shift it over to the two private home versions.
I'm not talking about garage sales.
I'm talking about somebody's personal collection they're wanting to get rid of and estate sales,
which, again, is somebody's personal collection.
They're either getting rid of because somebody died in that family or
there's other reasons for having a state sales in there foreclosing or they went bankrupt or various other factors.
I think the estate sales very much covered in what we talked previously, just how much do you want it for all?
Now, the private home collector, that's a little different.
They're going to want more than what you're used to paying for bulk usually.
And that is fair because it's their collection. They are emotionally attached to it.
That's the difference. So you got to pay up for their emotional attachment.
And usually they have really better stuff, usually it's sets of things and series of things and
something, niches of things like history, silver war, 200 books on the Civil War, that kind of stuff.
So that's more appealing to me than whatever is on the shelf at Goodwill because it's themed usually.
So on that, I have gone as high as twenty two dollars a book, and that was for an Easton Press collection.
Those books were most all of them were signed by the author, came with the COA certificate of authenticity.
And I looked them up beforehand and most of them were well over one hundred dollars each on eBay.
Some are three hundred, four hundred dollar books.
But we settled on twenty two dollars a book. Well worth it. It paid for itself.
So you kind of knew what you were walking into, though, before you showed up, right?
I did. Yes, I did my investigation. I asked for a list of titles.
They emailed me a list of titles and several, several photographs of what was inside.
The certificates, the signatures, all that kind of stuff.
How do you feel about if you show up there and that's what they have and they're like, you know,
I know these are worth decent money.
Like what's your play there if you're right on the spot like you're going to have to act?
I mean, for me, I would look I would look them up if I'm going to pay that much.
How many do you remember how many books it was?
It was about 90 books. I ended up paying close to two grand.
So one hundred percent, I'm going to be looking up books if they want me to pay twenty two dollars a book.
I don't care if I'm sitting right there in their living room.
I'm not going to be like you were talking about two thousand dollars.
It's not a everyday kind of pickup.
Yeah. So you got to if you get yourself in a situation, like you said, it's it's still a very lucrative situation.
And I know, like I kind of hit on it a lot, like I don't have any credit card debt, anything like that.
I do have cash reserves for said situation, right?
If if somebody calls me today and says, hey, I got ten thousand pounds of books for you,
like I have the money to go pick those up.
So like, do you like did you have like a cash reserve?
Do you have a cash reserve for like opportunities that can arise?
Yeah, I have a cash box. I keep cash on hand up to five grand for anything like that.
Do I carry around five grand all the time? No, I live in the cash box and cash box goes in a safe.
But when I'm going out to every now and then I'll get a get a I want to go sourcing a day.
I want to go source and I'll I'll put that money in my pockets or I actually have a backpack that'll go in.
And I just carry around the backpack is eight, even five grand in the car.
So it's all my person at all times.
And if I come across something like that in my outings, I'll pull it out and let's make a deal.
All right, now we're going to jump into I think this is more important than buying the inventory is dealing with the inventory.
That is that's what people don't realize about bulk.
How to deal with it, you have to deal with the inventory you buy.
You have to keep the books moving one way or another in your process along the way.
So I'm going to let you kind of take it away. You get you know, we're just we'll just say you got one tub of books you buy from somebody today, drops them off.
Here goes, you know, five bucks. You take the tub of books, run me down exactly what those books go through, how you handle it, start to finish.
Sure. So I get the tub inside the shop.
I roll out my processing table or tables, whichever the case may be, depending on the quantity.
We're saying a tub of books here, so it's probably a table's worth.
I then start taking them out. And as I'm taking them out, I have some trash cans nearby for the things that will fall apart in my hand or that are water damaged or that the books are kind of curvy and bent.
I sell those. Those get trashed right away.
Sorry, landfill. You're going there.
I know. Sad face.
The rest I sort into two piles hardback and paperback.
And then on the hardbacks, I sub sort those between hardback with dust jacket, hardback without dust jacket.
And then all of them get sub processed by publisher if I'm noticing a larger quantity of publishers.
And then I go through the scanning process of ones with barcodes and one without barcodes and those various little sub piles.
Then what's left is just for eBay. Then I look at them again.
eBay later pile eBay now pile, essentially.
And then my eBay now pile, there is a queue. So they go to the back of the queue.
That's that's pretty extensive.
I mean, but yet again, you are sitting in your warehouse right now and you deal with many, many, many, many books.
So you need a process, especially with eBay, to kind of put the stuff that's going to sell faster, has a little bit more value in the front of the line.
And then the not so valuable stuff at the back of the line for me.
I get my tub. I give them a handshake, an autograph, tell them, hey, thanks for coming to visit me.
I'm not giving you no money because I'm famous and this was an opportunity for you to meet some.
Now I give them their five bucks and send them on their way.
But I'm kind of in the same boat. I just don't separate it as much as you.
I have to because of how I do eBay.
Yeah, you got it.
Every field I don't have to change during a listing is time saved.
I don't think people realize that you don't do eBay every day in a large quantity of eBay every day.
Any seconds you could save. Oh, my gosh.
It's it's even it saves you time for the photography even because usually the same contents on the same page.
So even if you're taking photos like I do, I take about 12 to 15 photos per book.
If it's on the same page, I don't have to think and play treasure hunting.
Where the heck is the copyright page? Where's the title page?
Is there any illustrations in this?
Because once you get to know certain publishers, they use illustrations or they don't.
But I can't speak to how much time it actually saves.
We're talking hours, people, hours.
Oh, one hundred percent. It's like me trying to list books versus you trying to list books.
Right. It's just the front load work you do and understanding how eBay works versus me being naive.
Don't understand how eBay works.
I'm looking for the same exact book to sell similar where you're just busting out your own listings
because you have item descriptions already ready to go.
So that's kind of like it's a whole different beast.
Right. The eBay to Amazon when it comes to, you know, listing things, having things work efficiently.
And that's why a lot of people get burned out on eBay, because if you don't do it the correct way and have a process,
it'll take you all day to list, you know, 30 books versus you, where you probably can knock it out, you know, in an hour and be done with it.
It's it's pretty crazy to think about.
So eBay is more of a refined, like operating procedure versus Amazon is just you scan, see if it's worth it,
list it, throw it on the shelf and forget about it.
So it's it's it's a lot different. And for me, it's got a barcode. I scan it.
If not, if it's an older book, I put it in eBay pile.
I look up those books one by one.
I don't separate them by hardback, softback, because I don't have the volume he has.
Right. There's one bookshelf sitting there behind him.
He's got, you know, probably three times the amount of books I have listed on eBay.
So it's a little bit different for me.
And it's good to kind of see the contrast with Amazon.
You just scan it if it's worth it. All right.
It goes in the FBA pile. It's worth it. Merchant fulfilled.
It goes in the FBM pile. And then from there, it's that easy.
You know, you just send it in once a week or you list it right there.
Merchant fulfilled. And you're pretty much done with it.
But the problem is, I'm sure you run into it.
So like books that have no value, that aren't destroyed.
I have in the I'll get to it when I run out of the good stuff pile.
Because you say you don't do nothing with books that are, you know,
you kind of hang on to them. You're kind of like you're like collecting cards.
Right. You're hoping they go up in value someday.
No, I'm hoping that they will catch fire, honestly.
No, I just know I even charge a premium on eBay, right, because of all the work I do.
I couldn't even do that with those books.
There's no way because there's like 200 of them listed for four bucks.
Free ship.
All right. This is barely the cost of the stamp.
I can't play the quarter game. I don't got time to play the quarter game.
I could list them for what I price met, but they will sit.
For years at that price and the right buyer at the right time,
impulse who wants really dumb crap will buy it.
But I don't want to list those right now.
No. And for me, I they all go to second and Charles.
There's a local store that buys books, CDs, DVDs, toys, board games, video games,
everything you can imagine they buy.
It's basically, you know, a retail flea market almost, I would say.
So all of my stuff goes there.
I do send a lot of the older stuff to JB.
That's his payment for the podcast is I send them all the old paid books, people,
all the old paperback books that I that I get from, you know, my bulk pickups.
So I always I do not like seeing books sitting around that aren't listed and have no value.
I ran into this with CDs and DVDs.
Second and Charles stopped taking them.
And what I did, I just boxed them up.
I wrote on the box CD or DVD.
I stacked them somewhere in the storage unit, just forgot about them until I started
taking them again. And then I took them.
You you got to have kind of you got to have a process because if you just have all those books
sitting out in front of you, like you don't got to look at them every day.
If you don't want to write, you don't got to look up and see all the books sitting up there.
That, you know, your does. It's.
That I'm actually saving for when I hire new employees.
It's what they get trained on because I don't care if they screw it up
because I know they're going to sit for a while anyway.
Yeah. And you know, down the road, you know, maybe you have some kind of flea market or something.
I think the important part is you you definitely squeeze more money out of all the inventory
that comes through your doors than I do.
I mean, you just you definitely try to get every every penny out of every book.
And for somebody that's new starting this, be a little bit weary of doing what JB does
because it can overwhelm you and just slow you down and you can list 30 Danielle Steel books today.
And like he said, they won't sell.
So you just wasted your whole day listing stuff that's not going to sell.
Well, here's the power of eBay.
And it's not to contradict what he just said. It all sells.
It's just how long until it sells is the question.
Like I could list some Nora Roberts books for, I don't know, 1299.
But I don't know when they're going to sell because she's overprinted.
Everybody has them for sale.
And then the collectors, well, the odds are they already have them, too.
You're looking for somebody to pick back up the collection or just getting into the series,
honestly, because they're usually buying them brand new out when they're at Walmart.
Oh, it's the Nora Roberts Book of the Week.
She just said so they got them for their 499 brand new.
Right. My Nora Roberts books aren't brand new.
They got library stickers on them, too.
They're just going to sit for an eternity.
And I rather churn for the stuff that's going to sell within this year, honestly,
before I get to the Nora Roberts, the Diana Palmer, the Tom Clancy is the John Grisham of the world.
I agree. I think the overall takeaway is you have to keep the inventory moving.
If you're buying in bulk, you don't want the same stale stuff sitting around forever and forever.
It's never going to sell, but you have to have some kind of bulk effort put in with Craig's List,
with local relationships, with thrift stores and libraries and anything along those lines.
And I'm telling you, once you get one, you'll be like, wow, I'm glad I did this because it's going to change your business overnight.
You're going to have a lower buy cost and your profits in turn are just going to be higher.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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