A Book Review

INTERNET BOOKSELLING MADE EASY!: How to Earn a Living Selling Used Books Online by Joe Waynick (Small Business Press, 2011).

Reviewed by Claude Whitmyer.

INTERNET BOOKSELLING - The Website

At first glance, when visiting Joe Waynick’s InternetBookselling.Com site it looks somewhat like all those “get rich quick on the Internet” scams that are so prevalent these days. Don’t let that first impression put you off. Click on the links and you’ll find out just how good Joe is at delivering a detailed how-to manual for the American dream of meaningful, successful self-employment–this time as an Internet Bookseller.

The website promises “A FREE step-by-step guide for making money online selling used books part-time or full-time from the ground up.” I strongly recommend also buying Internet Bookselling Made Easy! How to Earn a Living Selling Used Books Online, Waynick’s print book. This is among the best “start and run your own business” guides I’ve ever seen.

INTERNET BOOKSELLING - The Book

Internet Bookselling Made Easy! is a slap-up, gravid, cracking, neat, capital, swell, keen, nifty, bang-up, smashing, groovy, dandy, and peachy-keen contribution to the genre of the small and really small business start-up and operation manual.

It is so heavy with detailed “how-to” advice, it is equal to the documentation and management systems provided with a top brand franchise deal–minus the brand but also minus the franchise fee.

Internet Bookselling Made Easy! generates the level of excitement of an Internet “get rich quick” scheme but provides the real, tangible, actionable step-by-step guidance those schemes always lack.

It could be used as a manual for starting a wide variety of one-person, micro, or small businesses. Yes. It has all the specifics needed for selling books online, including:

  • How to find your inventory

  • How much to pay for it

  • How to figure your pricing

  • Where to sell

  • How to do order fulfillment

  • How to add other media to your inventory

At the same time, it covers the management procedures and operational considerations any start-up or growth oriented entrepreneur should be looking at, including:

  • Bookkeeping and accounting

  • Raising capital and calculating prices

  • Marketing, promotions and networking

  • Choosing strategies to overtake the competition

  • Projecting sales

  • Organizing information and work flow

The only important issues missing are building a personal community of support and planning for vacation and regular time off. But you can always visit InternetBookselling.Com to chat with Joe and the rest of the online community for ideas about those. (Or check out what I have to say in my book Running a One-Person Business.)

If you are . . .

  • Thinking about starting your own one-person, micro or small business
  • Have a business already but want to grow it
  • Love books and would like to make a living related to that love

. . . don’t let anything stop you from getting Internet Bookselling Made Easy! Whether you are in the bookselling business or not, this is a must have volume for any business library.

CLAUDE WHITMYER is a consultant to organizations, big and small, about meeting, learning, and teaming online. He also provides career guidance to executives and managers who want to master the new workplace requirements or employees and entrepreneurs who want to find more meaningful work.

Mr. Whitmyer is also coordinator of the Briarpatch, a world-wide network of businesses that practice right livelihood and simple living. He is co-author of the best-selling book of its kind Running A One-Person Business (Ten Speed Press, 1994, 2nd edition) and editor of and contributor to the anthologies In the Company of Others: Making Community in the Modern World (Tarcher, 1993) and Mindfulness and Meaningful Work: Explorations in Right Livelihood (Parallax Press, 1994).

Copyright © 1994 by Claude Whitmyer. All rights reserved.