In fact, most books purchased by students don’t look like textbooks at all.
Let's first define "textbook":
"Books that are purchased by students that we can command much higher prices for as FBA sellers."
This defies subject matter. This defies format. The majority of books purchased by students don't look like textbooks at all.
I call textbooks that don't look like textbooks "the hidden iceberg of textbook profits."
Here are a few tricks to spot "textbooks in disguise":
Clue #1: Niche nonfiction that doesn’t have any real world application. If you seee a book and ask, “Why the heck would somebody want a book about this?!” and it feels academic (such as on a university press).
A rule of thumb is that if it’s on a subject that nobody won’t care about if they weren’t forced to care by a professor, that’s probably a “textbook in disguise.”
Clue #2: Supplemental content for students, such as access codes, added "critical analysis," etc.
This also includes books that are normally for a general audience, that are repacked for college students. An example is an annotated edition of a standard novel. That’s a clue that it is a book that’s going to be purchased by students in a literature department.
Clue #3: Nonfiction books that generally just appears scholarly and academic, and seem to have an extremely niche appeal.
Bonus clue: If you really want to get deep, you can look up a book’s sales rank history and see how much it spikes during August or January (textbook season) and that will even give you a better clue.
Bottom line: If you understand that textbooks most of the time don’t look like textbooks, and know how to spot them, this is truly the "hidden iceberg of textbook profits."
- Peter Valley