Can I sell my (new) book via FBA?
Straight to the question; can I sell my own (new) published book via Amazon Seller Central using FBA? (I’m in the UK).
I have a book that I’ll be publishing under my own name as well as registering the ISBN myself etc. But print on demand won’t be profitable this time, as this will be a large full-colour hardback. The only viable way seems to be if I get a print run done in China/Asia (~1000 pieces). But then obviously it’s down to me to handle order fulfilment and restocking etc.
Has anyone got experience of this? Any advice, tips or experience would be greatly appreciated.
p.s.
Normally I use print on demand (IngramSpark) and sell via Amazon (Amazon fulfils and deals with everything in the background), but like I said, this is not financially viable with this particular book.
0 replies
Seller_UUJAfV9h2D90D
I’m no book expert by any means but having 1k pieces of a large hardback book printed out of china and shipped here will probably be quite heavy and cost a small fortune in this day an age! I don’t have any experience with Print on Demand so you’d have to work out the comparison. Is there nowhere in the UK that can do a print run for you? You may pay more per unit than you would in Asia however the aforementioned shipping cost would obviously not be there.
If you went down the route of doing a print run, you could ship all of your units into Amazon using FBA and you’d have a similar experience (in the sense that AMZ will handle the logistics for you).
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
I have absolutely no experience of this, but many sellers shipping from China have mentioned on here that the freight charges have increased significantly, and some of the companies fail to mention some of the import taxes and charges etc., and sellers have been hit with unexpected additional huge bills.
As Lowey says, it could well be cheaper finding a printer here in UK.
You also need to take into consideration the cost of shipping to Amazon FBA and the handling, all the fulfilment and storage fees etc.etc.
Seller_taDBgt7LctucW
There is a well known printer in Malta that does a fine job of large full colour hardbacks. They are usually fairly competitively priced also, given the quality, although it has been a few years since I have been involved with this kind of thing.
The UK is somewhat lacking in quality printers however there are one or two that I could recommend if you were interested. The unit cost would likely be a little on the high side however they are often able to accommodate smaller print runs. Depends how confident you are of shifting 1000 copies.
I’ve never been involved with printing in China so can’t comment on that. Nor do I know a thing about FBA.
