Okay, now it s time to talk about Book Condition. This is a really important part of the method and being able to profit the most, okay? And a lot of

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Bethany Chase
5 years ago
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2 Okay, now it s time to talk about Book Condition. This is a really important part of the method and being able to profit the most, okay? And a lot of people we have seen are not utilizing this kind of- we ll call it grading system properly. So let s talk about this. First, I want to let you guys know you can download the Condition Guide book that s going to be available on this page or in another menu. Make sure you get that downloaded, there s going to be specific information in there from Amazon and bullet points that you can quickly reference, so if you want to print it out and have it handy as you re going through books, it s just a nice thing to have. So feel free to download that, but the bottom line is condition is important because when you re searching for deals on Amazon, to trade in, the book has to meet minimum condition requirements before Amazon will accept it as a trade-in. So if you buy a book and you send in a hunk of junk to them that s absolutely terrible and it s missing covers and pages and it s burned in a fire and there s water damage, they re not going to give you trade-in value for that. So it s important to understand, okay, what s acceptable, what s not acceptable and how does this work, okay? So probably the easiest thing- there are, of course, two groups of conditions, right? There s the conditions that are acceptable and we will show you those and you can see that in the Condition Guide, but then there are also conditions that are unacceptable. So let s just focus on the ones that are going to rule out a book for us because these are really the important ones when you re scrolling down, looking at book conditions on the listings page to determine, Okay, am I going to buy this book or not? Really what s going to determine that is do we see anything that s going to cause Amazon to reject this? [00:02:00] So let s focus on that for now. So Book Condition Rejected items, it would be like this. So one thing to look at, some of these textbooks are what they call loose-leaf or loosepaper, some will refer to them as. What that means is they ve just taken- basically it s pieces of paper. Sometimes they will put them in a three-ring binder, but that is not a bound book, okay? Amazon is giving you trade-in value on bound books, not a stack of copy paper, okay? So if the book says loose-leaf or three-ring binder bound or anything of that nature that would indicate, This is not an actual bound book then you want to remove that item from your list. You want to mark that book off, okay? So no loose-leaf books. 2 P a g e

3 If it s a library copy or an instructor edition, which could be a custom edition book, so library copies are typically marked library copy, not for resale, so if it s got something on it that says library copy no good. Custom edition books can be instructor editions, so if it s an instructor edition, that s also no good. Those are also typically marked not for resale, okay? So no loose-leaf, no library copies, no instructor editions, no custom edition books. Sometimes a custom edition will have a specific- will be made for a specific school, so if it s made for a specific school, that, of course, is no good either, okay? So those are important things to take note of that pop up often when looking at textbooks. Also water damage. If it s got water damage, they re not going to accept it, all right? Broken spine or binding, so if it s torn apart and broken, they re not going to accept it. A little side note here, we have [00:04:00] sent in books that I would say are questionable on spine quality and binding, like it s, It s kind of ripped, but and Amazon has accepted it, so you can be kind of aggressive with this stuff, all right? But broken or binding, you want to mostly avoid. If they have torn or taped covers, so Amazon is big on the covers, all right? You need to make sure that the covers are intact because they are going to check that for sure. If the cover front or back is bad, it s not going to work, they re going to reject it, so be careful with that. If there s tape on it or if it s torn or missing a cover, it s not going to work. The next one is again, one of those things where you can be a little more aggressive with it. If it s got missing, torn or loose pages. Okay, we have sent in books that had small tares on a couple of individual pages and it was still accepted. A lot of times they don t go through every single page making sure the book is not missing an individual page or it doesn t have one page that s torn, so these are things you can kind of be a little aggressive on, but if it s bad, Amazon s not going to accept it. If it s got burns, fire, smoke damage, so water damage, smoke or fire damage is a nogo. And odor, no-go. A lot of times odor comes from- it s going to be water damage or burns or fire typically, so it s going to have a really bad musty smell which if it s got water damage or it s going to have smoke damage, it s going to smell like smoke, so that s a no-go either. Or if it s just generically marked Not for Resale, no good, all right? Now again, remember these sort of things are up for interpretation, they re subjective. We like to err on the side of being too aggressive because a lot of times we ll go, Man, this book has a couple of individually torn pages they ll still accept it, [00:06:00] okay? But this is just a general guideline. But for sure, no loose-leaf, they will never accept that. Never accept library copies, they will never accept instructor editions and they will 3 P a g e

4 never accept custom edition books. That s never going to happen. Water damage, it would have to be very minimal, broken spine it will have to be very minimal, covers have to be intact and working, so you guys get the idea. This is really going to be the list you re going to focus on when you start to weed out books and say, Okay, well, I m not going to go with that book. Okay? Now, again, I m going to emphasize this because it s important: a lot of people that start this method out aren t aggressive enough, right? They err on the side of, This says it s got damage to pages or it s got pages that have highlighting or something small like that and they won t buy the book. Well then, they re missing out on profit, typically. A lot of times Amazon will accept it. So here s the deal. If the book is rejected by Amazon, they re going to send it back to you at their cost, okay? So this is why you want to be aggressive. You can send it in to Amazon, if they reject it, you can then just turn around and return it to the seller you bought it from, especially if you bought it through Amazon. You know how Amazon is with returns. They re return-happy. So you can send back almost anything and force the seller to give you the funds back and most sellers are very cool with it. It s not a big deal. So these two reasons you want to be very aggressive, it allows you to push the line on what is acceptable and what s not and still have very little risk because if you buy it, you send it in to Amazon. First of all, you send it to Amazon for free, they don t like it, they send it back to you for free. You can then return the book, so you re basically out nothing, okay? So that s why you really want to push the line on this quality thing up to a certain point, all right? Here s another thing that s [00:08:00] important about book condition: many sellers actually used canned condition descriptions. So there ll be certain sellers that really grade their books very low, but they re good books, so they might grade a like new book as just good or a good book as just acceptable. So on top of that, some of the details that they put in the book condition are just generic. So one of the reasons Amazon may reject a book is if it doesn t have the accompanying media. While some of the sellers just use a canned response does not or may not include the extra media. Well, a lot of times a book didn t even include any extra media. It didn t have a CD with it or an extra little booklet or anything, but they say that in their description anyway just to cover their butts, so to speak. So just be aware of that. A lot of times those canned responses actually are not super accurate. So again, another reason why you want to err on the side of being aggressive because you re not really out anything most of the time when that happens. 4 P a g e

5 So again, descriptions can be canned, it doesn t necessarily mean they re 100% accurate, be aggressive, err on the side of trading in more books that too few books, okay? So with that being said, what I want to do now is let s do a little bit of an over the shoulder condition demo. Let s go to Amazon, we ll look for some deals, we ll look at the individual listings pages and see if we can weed out books or say, Yes, this book is good. Okay? So let s hop over to Amazon now and we ll see if we can find some deals and weed out some bad condition books. Okay, we re back here at Amazon, just did a search for textbooks, let s run the extension and analyze the page. So let s just take a look at- I don t know- let s take a look at this one. So let s go to the listings, the used and new listings. [00:10:00] We ll run the extension again, to help us do this quicker. So let s start to weed out some of these. Now, our target is kind of good, right? So let me give you an example, one I spot right away. So this one here, it says, Item may not include associated media. May not- what that tells me- and this is Amazon Warehouse Dealsbut it probably means that this book didn t even have any media, okay? Now, if you really want to get crazy, you can take a look at the book, you can go to the publisher s website a lot of times and see if it had accompanying media, if you want to go through all that trouble. We typically don t, we just get what seems to be acceptable condition and rock it out. Okay, so this one here would be a great example of one of those canned responses I would not trust and it wouldn t even matter to me because it s very likely this book doesn t even have accompanying media anyway, okay? So this one, used, good, so I would grab this one for sure. We re going to make 21 bucks on it. This one has water damage, so I m going to remove it. May not include associated media - that s a canned response, I ll get that one too, so that s another 17 bucks. You could see how quickly and easily we can make a lot of money with this. Good condition. May have some writing in highlighting that s acceptable for Amazon, so we re good there. This one says acceptable. May contain - okay, so, May contain to me, it tells me I m going to go for it, I m going to make another 13 bucks there. This is acceptable, let s see, it doesn t give any details so I m going to grab it. Good binding, clean pages, mild cover and edge wear - I ll take that one, that s another 10 bucks. Acceptable condition. Edges of book are worn. I ll take that one as well. I ll take this one. Light amount of wear, I ll 5 P a g e

6 take that one. I m getting down to only [00:12:00] $4 profit, but again, guys, you re not doing a whole lot of work for this, so I don t mind getting down to small amounts of profit. Slight wear, pages are all clean, I ll take it. May have notes, I ll take it. Still wrapped, it s brand new, I ll take it. Used-Good, I ll take it. So you can see here, we ve only really weeded out one book, okay? Sometimes, this one, you see a used sticker on back cover, a lot of times we will go ahead and remove the stickers when we get them, so that it s clean. You could use a razor blade, there are, of course, other methods you can use a lot of times to remove those stickers, but So that s one book, so let s go back and we ll run the extension again. Let s look at another book. Let s look at this one. Let s run the extension. Okay, acceptable. Suffered from excessive liquid damage. Okay, so that one s out, no good. Check this out, brand new, $23 profit, we ll take it. Brand new, $23 profit, we ll take it. Brand new, $6 profit, we ll take it. Let s go to page two and see if there are any other deals. We re getting down to tiny amounts of profit but no big deal: $1, $2, $1. Now, I also should say that this number here, this profit, does account for the shipping price, okay? So just be aware of that, so this is actual net profit after you pay for shipping to you. Obviously to Amazon you re not paying for the shipping. So anyway you can see we weeded out a book there, just one though. Let s run it again. Let s check this one, see if we can weed out any bad books. [00:14:00] Do not include supplemental materials, okay, this is just a canned response, I ll go ahead and grab it. Minimal cover wear, I ll grab it. New copy, I ll grab it. Instructors edition so this is no good, so we would remove this from our list. Instructors, remove it, no good. Brand new, that one s good, so again, you ll also notice your potential profits will change as you weed out books. So let s say it s $53.69, we want to weed out this, $1.49, you see we ve got 52 bucks now, so your calculations are always accurate in real time. So it s as simple as that, guys. You re just going to go through, use that list of things Amazon would potentially reject your book for the reasons they might reject your book and remove them, keep the other ones, add them to your cart and you re good to go. It really is as simple as that. Again, don t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Okay, so really quickly let s just do a summary of Book Condition. Generally you re looking for acceptable or a better condition books. The main things you really are going to find most of the time, that s going to weed out a book are going to be: instructor 6 P a g e

7 copies, loose-leaf copies, not for sale copies, books marked not for sale or water damage. That s typically what you re going to find most of the time. Sometimes you will find books that have extensive cover damage and those are no good. So really, instructor editions, loose-leaf, not for sale, water damage and cover damage are really the things you re going to run into. The other things are going to be very few and far between. So that s it, guys. Pay attention to book condition, err on the side of being aggressive, that s going to make you more money and we ll see you guys in the next video. [00:15:56] End of audio. 7 P a g e

[00:00:00] All right, guys, Luke Sample here aka Lambo Luke and this is the first video, really the first training video in the series. Now, in this p

[00:00:00] All right, guys, Luke Sample here aka Lambo Luke and this is the first video, really the first training video in the series. Now, in this particular video, we re going to cover the Method Overview