Fact: Amazon restricts many sellers from selling certain books (particularly when you're new to Amazon).

Good news: Amazon will increase the books you're allowed to sell as time goes on.

Here's everything you need to know about textbook restrictions....

1. What they are.
2. What books are affected.
3. How to tell if a book is restricted.
4. How to make them (mostly) go away.

What are textbook restrictions?

When you're a newer seller, Amazon restricts you from selling certain books (mostly textbooks).

Couple facts:

1. Newer sellers face the most restricted books.
2. The restrictions will ease up over time.

Why does Amazon do this?

Amazon is concerned about counterfeit textbooks, and books that have been counterfeited in the past will be restricted until they "trust" that you're an honest seller.

How do you get Amazon to trust you?

Two ways:

1. Sales.
2. Feedback from customers.

So, while Amazon doesn't reveal its secret formula for how it grants permissions for certain books, all the evidence is that if you get sales and good feedback from customers, the restrictions will ease up over time.

Remember: When you're a newer seller, Amazon doesn't "trust" you yet. Once you build trust, Amazon will reward you with increasing your permissions to sell books.

How to tell if a book is restricted

Before you purchase any book to sell, you must always confirm you're allowed to sell it.

Two ways to do that:

1. The "restriction check" link next to every book in Zen Arbitrage.
2. Our Zen Check Chrome extension (view a demo here, and add to your account here).

Using our restriction check link

Next to every book is a link that opens the page on Amazon where you can tell if you're allowed to sell a book or not.

Most sellers actually misread the Amazon page, causing them to pass up books they are allowed to sell, because they thought they weren't. So this is important.

Click that link and follow these steps:

1. Does it say "not available"? If yes, you're not allowed to sell in any condition.
2. Does it have a dropdown menu to select a condition? Congratulations, you can sell that book..
3. When you select New or Used, does a "Sell This Product" button appear? Congratulations, you're allowed to sell in that condition.
4. When you click to the next page, do you see the condition of your book in the dropdown menu that reads "Condition"? Congratulations, you can sell in that exact condition.

Here's a quick video showing each of these screens:

Using Zen Check (paid add-on)

For a small monthly charge, you can skip all the above steps and let Zen Check do the work for you.

See how Zen Check works here.

Is there a way around textbook restrictions?

Amazon does not restrict every textbook, so this will not mean you can't make tons of money with textbooks (not even close).

But it can help to know what books tend to be restricted the most.

1. Textbooks (as we said).
2. High demand textbooks.

Since most books do not fall in these categories, you have a lot of options.

Key takeaways:

1. Restrictions will ease up over time.
2. Fastest way to increase your permissions is to get sales and customer feedback.
3. Learn how to know what you're allowed to sell.  
4. Even if you're restricted at first, you still have lots of options to profit.  

Here's our longer video that goes deeper into textbook restrictions:

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