I first heard about FBA a few months ago. Apparently Amazon decided to create more profit from their distribution centers by opening them up to other sellers. Sellers can pre-package their items and send them to Amazon. When sold, either on Amazon, Ebay, the sellers own website, etc. , Amazon takes care of filling the orders.
I first read about it when a bookseller wrote an Ebook about how to use it to profit from easy to find, inexpensive, books. The big advantage from the seller's perspective is that the books come up higher in the sales listings on Amazon and are eligible for cheap shipping and Amazon Prime rates. This is enough of an advantage to really improve sales.
It still looked like a lot of work to get everything packaged and listed so I never did anything with it. I now have heard about FBAPower.com which is software that automates much of the process. I have not yet pried it, but there are the potential advantages I see.
After you scan in the ISBN the software checks with Amazon and tells you how many of the same item, in the same condition, are currently for sale and shows you the asking prices. It will make it easy to set a price for which the book will sell; neither to high or to low. One of my concerns was selling a valuable book for to little. This software will eliminate that problem.
This system doesn't require any pre-sorting and claims to let you have 100 books ready for shipment to Amazon in an hour. That would allow me to empty shelves quickly and not have to worry about keeping track of where things are stored etc.
There are fees for all this help of course, but I suspect there is no way my own labor can compete with the efficiency of these automated warehouses. At some point, when I have a better feel for how much space I can save, I will compare the cost of "storing books at Amazon where they are ready to sell, and storing them in my garage or rental storage space.
The biggest drawback to getting started I can see if the upfront costs. You need a label printer ($100), a barcode scanner ($125), a Pro Seller account ($39.95/mo.), and the FBA software (!29.95/mo.) You will also need a scale and packaging material plus postage to start shipping boxes to Amazon. In other words, you need to be fairly serious before you committ.
In my case this is a little easier because I don't have to spend money buying books to sell. We have thousands we have purchased over the years and selling them is the main idea. I don't really have an interest in doing this as a business long term.
That said, I think it might make an interesting income idea for a teenager old enough to drive, with an interest in books and online sales. There are lots of used books available at thrift stores and other places so it would not take a lot of money to get this working.
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