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How to build a global book business in under 2 minutes

If you’re an FBA bookseller, you can make your products available to a global audience with a few simple mouse clicks.  By signing up for the FBA Export program, international customers will now be able to order your items.  Here are three reasons why this is a great decision for your book business:

  1. Amazon will handle the export paperwork and deal with returns, if applicable.
  2. The customer will pay for the increased shipping expenses.
  3. All you have to do is sign up for the program, then sit back and watch the extra sales roll in!

The best part?  It’s free to sign up and you won’t pay any additional fees to participate in the program. You will only pay the typical fulfillment fees that you would have incurred to ship your books within the good ‘ol US of A.

Is it worth it?  The two minutes it’ll take you to sign up for the FBA Export program could very well be THE most profitable minutes of your entire life.  Don’t believe me?  Check out my own results:

  • Time spent signing up for the FBA Export program: 2 minutes
  • International sales over the past 12 months: $2,981
  • Estimated hourly wage based on the above stats: $89,430 an hour!

I challenge you to find an activity with a better return on your time investment!

How to sign up for the FBA Export program:  You can find out more about the program on Amazon’s website.  To skip straight to the sign-up page, simply navigate to your Fulfillment By Amazon Settings within Seller Central and follow these steps:

  • Scroll to the bottom of the page where it says “Export Settings”.
  • Click on the “Edit” button.
  • Select “FBA Export” and then follow the prompts.

Congrats – you’re now the proud owner of an international book flipping operation!

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Where in the world will your books end up?  Forget about finding Waldo… you can now track your sales all around the world!  Check out the interactive map below to see every location where I’ve sold a book within the past 12 months:

(If the map doesn’t work in your browser, you can visit the Google Map here.)

More fun facts:

  • I’ve shipped books to all 50 states – which means there’s at least one literate individual in each and every state!
  • Top states (by units sold) – 1. California  2. Texas  3. New York  4. Florida  5. Ohio
  • Bottom states – 46. Hawaii  47. N. Dakota  48. Alaska  49. Delaware  50. Wyoming

An announcement:  FBA book sellers enjoy a lot of advantages compared to their Merchant Fulfilled counterparts.  Perhaps the greatest perk is the ability to charge more for their books.  Way more.  In fact, this price disparity between FBA and MF offers can sometimes be so large that you can earn a profit by doing the following:

  • purchase the lowest priced Merchant Fulfilled books
  • wait for those books to show up on your front porch
  • flip them back around via FBA
  • pocket the difference

I refer to this practice as “FBA Arbitrage”, and I’ve been developing a software which will make it easier to find these profitable books.  This software will also include an option to search for textbooks that are currently being used in universities.  This will allow you to stockpile textbooks in the offseason that have a high probability of experiencing crazy high demand at least once or twice a year.

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