I came across a company that seemed pretty reputable in the online bookselling business. They are heavy in the book remainder business (I'll explain what a remainder is in a bit) and have a program where they will ship the books directly to Amazon for your account from their warehouse. They offer what they term a sample lot of 100 books so you can check out the program. The other part of this is that this company runs on a membership basis (a la Costco, Sams) so in order to purchase their sample lot you had to be a member. Membership is $100, but they were having a sale, so the membership fee was then $77.35. It all sounded pretty reasonable to me, so I placed an order.
To give them credit they were very quick in shipping out the books and had great instructions on how to go through the process of listing the books on Amazon, etc. But it has been 2 weeks now, and I have had no sales...none...zip....zilch.....Some of the books are selling so low price wise that I would either break even, have a $.25 profit, or lose money. When I emailed them about my disappointment with the lot, I was told that I would have to reprice in order to generate sales, an that they have sold many of the sample lots and I was their first complaint. They said that they were there to help and to answer questions and even offered to ship out an additional books for free. I was tempted to take them up on that offer, and a friend of mine said I should since they are offering it for free, but I'm reluctant to do it. Amazon charges storage fees on inventory and I'm not thrilled with the idea of paying storage on 100 books, much less 200 books. Although the actual amount would probably be very low (I read that one seller has over 8,000 books in inventory and his fees are $75 a month), just the idea of putting out more money, no matter how little just makes me sad.
Hindsight being 20/20, if I had it to do over again, I would have saved the $177.35 that I paid and not have bothered.
I had another job opportunity that was part time with extremely flexible hours that would have fit my schedule perfectly, but that is still in limbo, as the rep who currently holds the position is on medical leave, and they are not sure if she will be coming back (retiring) or whether she will be asking for an extension. I hope to hear something next week.
The only other possibility is to make the rounds at the mall and look for something seasonal part-time. I would need to have some flexibility in picking up the kids from school, but other than that, with my mother being close by, I can work around my husband's work schedule without too much difficulty.
Anyway, that's where I stand at the moment. Prayers are always appreciated! :)
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