Here’s a blast from the past…

Last month I met Andrea – a long-time subscriber – at one of our live events.

As we were chatting away over a coffee in the lobby of a London hotel, I discovered that she’d had great success with something I published 20 years ago!

It was all about reselling used books on Amazon.

It’s actually 21 years since the original blueprint featured in the pages of What Really Makes Money… back when it was a paper newsletter that was sent through the snail mail!

Inspired by the blueprint, Sharon Fussell, another subscriber, gave it a whirl.

The result? She pocketed around £15,000 in her first year – just from second hand books!

I was so impressed by her success that we published her system as a step-by-step manual called Sold Dispatch Now in 2006.

It proved hugely popular and worked brilliantly for those who followed Sharon’s advice.

In fact, Andrea told me she used Sharon’s method to run a very successful business for many years.

It got to a point where she had over 17,000 books in a shipping container on a local farmer’s land!

And this got me thinking…

Is flipping used books on Amazon still a good way to make an extra income in 2026?

So as soon as I had some time, I did some research into it.

And it looks like this is still a potential moneymaker… with a few minor tweaks.

Yes, a lot has happened since we published Sold Dispatch Now.

Back then, Amazon was primarily an online bookstore with around 65 million customers worldwide.

Today it’s one of the biggest eCommerce companies with over 310 million active customer accounts.

After Amazon Kindle was launched in 2007, there was an explosive rise in eBooks that threatened to kill off the physical book market.

Of course, that didn’t happen…

eBook sales plateaued in 2017, while physical books have held their ground… especially in the second-hand market, where collectors and bargain hunters still seek real books they can hold in their hands.

This is why used-book reselling on Amazon UK generated over £100 million in sales last year.

So, yes, you can still make money from old books.

However, there’s a lot more competition now.

Amazon UK has over 20 million book listings, many at very cheap prices, so the days of picking up any old paperback and flipping it for a fiver profit are long gone.

The key is to target high-margin niches where there is solid demand, and where you can make enough return on each sale to cover fees and make you a decent profit.

Disciplined book flippers who tap into these niches can still average 20–40% net margins.

And if you were to do the same, you could feasibly start an Amazon used book business from scratch with around £50–£100 to invest.

And over the long-term, you could scale this up to £500 or more per month, part time.

No, it’s not going to make you rich…

But if you’re looking for a solid extra income stream worth an extra £6,000 every year, this could be a goer!

Let’s take a look….

The Book Flipping Business Model

The core idea is simple.

You buy used books cheaply (around £1 to £5 each) from charity shops, car boot sales, house clearances and library clear-outs.

Then you scan the ISBN barcode on the back to check what that book actually sells for on Amazon.

If it sells for £15 or more, and there’s decent demand, you list it online and pocket the difference after Amazon’s fees.

You can either ship the books yourself (known as MFN) or you use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) where you send books to their warehouses and let them handle the picking, packing and shipping (for a fee!)

The easiest option is FBA because it means you avoid a lot of time and hassle – and you won’t need to pile your books up in the garage or spare room.

With this approach you’d be looking at maybe just 1 to 3 hours a week sourcing books, scanning and listing.

You’ll find that the UK is flooded with used books – so there is no shortage of raw material to source.

You can look in:

• Charity shops – Oxfam, British Heart Foundation and the like. Try to visit these places midweek when they put out fresh stock.
• Bookshop clearance bins – even regular bookshops have bargain sections worth checking.
• Library sales – keep an eye out for council clear-outs.
• Car boot sales – get there early and don’t be afraid to negotiate on bulk buys.
• Facebook Marketplace — search for ‘house clearance books’ and you’ll find that people are practically giving them away.

However, the trick is knowing WHICH books to buy.

The Most Profitable Books to Flip

Not all books are worth your time.

For example, mass-market fiction is to be avoided unless you can find a rare item in pristine condition. Same goes for celebrity autobiographies and diet books.

Instead, focus on categories where you can realistically make £10 or more net profit per book.

These include:

• Textbooks – for example, medicine, law, education and engineering. These can sell for £20 to £100.
• Professional and reference books – for instance, finance, IT certifications and business guides.
• Niche non-fiction – look for specialist hobbies and academic press titles. The more obscure, the better.
• Collectibles and out-of-print titles – first editions or signed copies are gold if you can spot them.
• Complete sets and series – full encyclopaedia sets, boxed collections. Buyers pay a premium for completeness.

The upshot is, the more specialist and hard-to-find the book, the more money people will pay for it.

Your target buy price should be £1 to £3 per item, maximum. If you’re paying more than that, your margins will get squeezed too tightly.

So the reality is that about 90% of the books you spot WON’T be worth buying.

But with the help of a scanning tool you can easily find the 10% that are.

The 6-Step Scanning Process

All you need is your smartphone and a free app.

The best option is the Amazon Seller App (free) which gives you sold prices and a fees estimate.

You could also use BookScouter (free) which checks prices across multiple eCommerce sites.

For more advanced options, try ScoutIQ (£10 a month for the ‘live only’ option) which gives you detailed sales rank and fee calculations. Or Keepa, which is handy for checking price history and trends.

Here’s how it works…

• Step 1: Open your scanning app, point your phone camera at the ISBN barcode on the back cover. It works on about 95% of books. If there’s no ISBN, put the book down and move on.
• Step 2: Check the sales rank. You want it under 500,000 in the Books category. Under 100,000 is ideal. The lower the number, the faster it sells.
• Step 3: Look at SOLD prices (not asking prices). You need the sold price to be at least 3 times what you’re paying. So if you’re buying at £2, you need to see sold prices of £15 or more.
• Step 4: Check the fees. Amazon takes a 15% referral fee plus around £3 to £5 for FBA fulfilment. After all fees and your buy price, you want at least £8 net profit. If the numbers don’t work, put it back.
• Step 5: Check the condition. Your copy needs to be “Very Good” or better. That means no torn pages and no heavy wearing.
• Step 6: If you’re using the Keepa app, have a quick look at the price trend. If the price has been dropping steadily, then leave it alone.

A simple way to make your decision is to use the BTW principle:

• BUY if the rank is under 200,000, you’re looking at £10+ net profit, there have been 5 or more recent sales, and the price has been stable.
• THINK TWICE if the rank is between 200,000 and 500,000, or there have only been 1 or 2 sales a month. Yes, it might sell, but it could take a while.
• WALK AWAY if the rank is over 1,000,000, there are no recent sales, or the listing is full of penny-priced copies from other sellers.

A good rule of thumb is that you should expect to scan about 50 books for every 5 you actually buy.

If you’d like to test it out, try this..

The ‘Double Your Money in 1 Hour’ Challenge

Take a £10 note and a phone scanning app, then head to your nearest charity shop (or perhaps a few if they’re close together).

Give yourself just ONE hour to find books that could make you £20 or more on Amazon.

See if you can double your money (at least!) in that 60 minutes.

I’m not going to promise you’ll pull it off on your first try.

But if you follow the scanning process I’ve laid out above, it’s doable, and it’ll give you a good taste of what this business is like to run.

Listing on Amazon UK

You have two Amazon account options…

• The Individual account is free but charges you 40p per listing.
• The Professional account costs £25 a month but gives you unlimited listings. (If you’re serious about this, the Professional account pays for itself quickly.)

Once you decide, the listing process is fairly straightforward…

Scan the ISBN…

Select the condition…

Add photos if the book is unique or collectible….

Then set your price at about 5% below the average competition.

WARNING: Be honest about the condition. If you describe a book as ‘Very Good’ and it arrives with coffee stains, you’ll get returns which will eat into your profits fast.

Once a book is listed on FBA, Amazon typically ships within 24 to 48 hours of a sale.

How Much You Could Earn

Let’s say you buy a book for £2 and it sells for £25. Here’s roughly what Amazon takes…

• A referral fee of about 15% (that’s £3.83)
• A closing fee of 50p
• An FBA fulfilment fee of around £1.80 to £2.50 depending on the size and weight of the book. (Storage is usually just a few pence per month for a single book.)

So on a £25 sale, you’re looking at around £5.50 to £6.50 in Amazon fees, plus your £2 buy price.

That leaves you with roughly £16 to £17.

However, that’s not pure profit.

You also need to factor in the cost of posting your books to Amazon’s warehouse, any packaging or prep costs, and the odd return (which will happen from time to time).

If you’re VAT registered, that takes a slice too.

Realistically, you’re probably looking at somewhere around £12 to £14 net profit on that book..

That’s a healthy return on a £2 investment.

As a general rule, don’t bother listing anything where your net profit would be under £7, as it’s probably not worth the effort.

Obviously, your overall income depends on how much time and effort you put in.

But here’s a rough idea of what to expect:

Starting out, you’re looking at building up a stock of 100 to 200 books.

At that level, you’d typically sell 5 to 10 a week, bringing in around £25 to £100 a week in profit.

Once you’ve got the hang of it and scaled up to 500 to 800 books listed, you could be selling 15 to 30 a week. That puts you in the range of £300 to £800 a month.

Not bad for a few hours’ work each week!

However, before you dive in…

Pitfalls to Watch Out For

There are a few downsides…

• Scanning fatigue – sourcing the books might start out as fun, but it can get tedious. Set yourself a time limit of about an hour per sourcing trip, otherwise you’ll burn out.
• Edition mismatches – International editions often have different ISBNs, and the wrong edition won’t match the listing. Always double-check this to avoid disappointment.
• Hoarding – avoid piling up too many “maybe” books. If you’re not confident it’ll sell, don’t buy it. And if you’ve had stock sitting for months, donate it and move on. Dead stock ties up your money and your storage space.

Those pitfalls aside, this could be a great little side income for you if…

• You like books and don’t mind doing a bit of browsing
• You don’t want a business that needs a lot of copywriting, marketing and content creation
• You don’t have a lot of space at home for stock
• You don’t have a lot of money to invest in a business (you can start for as little as £50)

So is this something that might interest you?

If so, and you’d like me to create a more in-depth blueprint for the new What Really Makes Money Substack, then please email me ASAP.

And if you take my ‘double your money in 1 hour’ challenge, let me know how you get on!