The true business of selling books online and offline: With the emergence of technology and internet facilities, the business of selling books is minimal.
Considering that one needs to just surf the internet and get a good read from the millions of online books.
Needless to say that the internet has reduced the number of times people have to get to the library for reading. Many have resort to online reading to meet their needs for romance, politics, technology, and so on.
In a way, many freelances are seen publishing articles online and making cool money to help themselves.
However, not everybody can afford data to surf the internet and download beautiful books online.
The cost of one download can mean a lot to some people. It therefore means that there is hope for people selling hard copy books as a livelihood.
The disadvantage of reading online books is that it affects visibility of readers due to constant rays from the computer, phones and other gadgets.
The more people tend to use the internet for their everyday need, the less they patronize print medias and book stores.
Thus, the business of book selling is very much lucrative. This is because there are plenty of people that want to stock their personal library with seasoned books and collections for their generation to come and for reference purposes.
It is ideal to encourage someone who love books to start selling books as a passion.
Here are tips you need for book store business.
The true business of selling books online and offline
- know your target audience, such as children, adult and retirees. When the target is in place, the issue of the types of books to be in stock is solved.
- Know your customers’ expectation in terms of price and value. For starters, it is advisable not to over shoot profit by making the selling price very high.
This is to enable people buy the books in time and also a wide range of notification due to awareness by customers.
- Kinds of books; it can be old books, children books, Christian or religious books, stationeries.
- The location of the business also matters. Where there are more readers to the specific books you are selling should be where the demand is high.
- Know the source of capital. The source such as personal savings, borrowing from friends and families is checked.
This is in order to know the quantity of the books to purchase for sale at a time. Be mindful of where to borrow money, especially the interest rate so as to gain more profit at the end of a sale.
- Beautify the shelves to attract customers to patronize you. Have a catalogue of collections of books in the store for easy location of books.
Have shelves, show glass, counter, and canter. Arrange books in a given category like children section, or even author for ease.
- Have a store map. This enable customer to navigate the store without any help.
- Have a business plan. When you want to approach an organisation for help or grant, ensure you want a convincing business plan that will make anyone wants to help.
- Get good suppliers both local and international suppliers (Alibaba, Konga, ibooks, smashwords, draft2digital, createspace, kobo, amazon, etc).
Ensure you stick to the terms and conditions of your relationships with your suppliers. It’s very important.
- Create a niche. Don’t compromise on great service delivery and quality (not pirated) books.
And also ensure your particular line of books is unique to you and you enjoy selling those particular books. It could be books for adults only.
- Advertise your books online, schools, offices, worshipping places, and sports centres and events centres.
Finally, there is a great niche in book selling and when done properly, it is very lucrative. Keep to terms, supply quality products at affordable prices. Stick to your words in terms of convincing statement about a book.