Recently Amazon has started sending me a weekly email listing many of the top-selling books that are currently out of stock. In case you’re new to this blog, I sell products, mostly books, on Amazon.com and have done so for about five years. The email has 50 titles that tell me, as a bookseller, what my customers have been snapping up off of the e-bookshelves. These are the hot products of the week and this list gives me a good indication of what buyers are looking for.
Some titles are no surprise:
Have you seen the movie “Julie & Julia” yet? I loved it. Not only have I always loved Julia Child and remember watching her cooking show when I was, ummm, a ‘child’, but the movie also told the story of a young woman who cooked her way through Julia’s cookbook (the one above) and blogged about her experience with each and every recipe. I knew immediately that this book (in print since 1971) would fly off the shelf. Boy, do I wish I had 1000 copies of this one sitting in my inventory. Look at the price that this once-common title is commanding today. I could hire my own personal chef with that kind of money.
Lots of textbook titles are out of stock. Makes sense. It’s back to school time right?
- Handbook of Anesthesiology 2008
- Physics: Principles with Applications (6th Edition) (Updated)
- Financial Accounting
As a grandparent to an 18 year old starting his second year in college, I can relate to the pain that these kinds of prices inflict. Ouch!
Maybe someone could explain to me why this book is in demand:
From the description, “The chronology of how Medeco security was cracked is a good story, especially if you enjoy technically-based intellectual challenges that have serious security implications in the real world.” Hmmm, a how-to book on bypassing high security locks. I wonder who (or what radical terrorist group) snapped these up. By the way, there are now two of these listed if you’re interested in lock-picking in government secret clearance areas.
On the plus side, it’s always nice to see that the Bible is still a hot-selling item. I’m pretty certain that it’s been a top seller for a few years now, and I’m also certain that there are probably a few thousand other editions available for sale on Amazon.com. This is the edition that made the Out of Stock list:
Is it just me or is the following book the most far out fascinating thing that you’ve ever seen in print?
Seriously. LEGO weapons that actually work. Who knew? G.I. Joe maybe, or PMS Barbie? “ The THRILLER AUTOMATIC and the THRILLER COMPACT are slide action crossbow pistols with highly engineered cocking & chambering mechanisms.“ Awesome.
No book on the list was even close to being as disturbing as this sold out title:
From the book description,”…The book details the methods psychopathic men use to lure and seduce women. It gives an inside look at what it is like to experience intimacy with a psychopath. Most importantly, the book shows the inevitable harm that result from involvement with psychopaths.” Really? That’s a shocker. What disturbs me most about this book is that it’s out of stock. Are there that many women who needed this advice?
If you’re lucky enough to have any of these books on hand, you can sell them right now on Amazon for a whole lot more than you probably paid for them. Don’t wait, though. Things change real fast.
How long do you think that this one will be in demand?
“This is the revised edition of the original 1999 publication Me and My Likker, the true story of a mountain moonshiner.” Is there a resurgence of moonshining? Maybe it’s the economy…
Do you know of any other weird trends in the online selling world? Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you!
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Thanks Lynn! The psychopath book kind of took me by surprise too. There’s a lot going on out in the world that I hadn’t a clue.
The psychopath book description had me rolling! Still, hard to imagine such a demand that it would be out of stock!
I like your blog!