Book business-First off, I've been selling on ebay for about four years under a different name. I've sold women's clothes, baby clothes, my WHOLE maternity wardrobe, used books, toys, memoribilia. I've gone to Ebay University a few times (actually went out of town and on a plane for one of them), read a vast amount of books, researched the net and other ebayers.

Now, I've always wanted to open a book store. With eight children, homeschooling six of them, there is NO WAY I can do that away from my home, nor would I want to. Ebay is a wonderful option. So, since my husband's family has run a successful plumbing business I approached him with the idea. He was game!

First he went to the bank to open an acct but they wouldn't open one unless we had a FictitiousName filed with the county. I went and did that, it was painless but did cost $25. I want you to know that I take my children with me when I do these appts. so you can imagine five-seven of us in front of a business lady. Once you have a name and it's registered, you have to publish it in a paper. Several papers sent us the info so we chose the cheapest.
Then, we had to apply for a Reseller's permit with the State so that we are legal, thus we have to charge and pay State Taxes.

We also opened up a Business Account at a local bank.

My husband does have a Financial Advisor/Tax Consultant through his work so he makes sure with her on a monthly basis or so what advice she has for us or what we need. (We'll pay our first taxes soon and she told us what records we needed.)

With a Name and a Reseller's Permit you can now contact book suppliers and ask if they will sell wholesale. They all wanted a credit application. You will need money upfront to get the deepest discounts, (we use a credit card and then pay it off when the bill comes), if you use their credit then your discounts are lower.

So, my husband does the ordering, inventory intake, finances and records. We just got a 8-box ordered delivered today so he'll go through that to make sure everything is in order. I do the listing, communications and packaging. My children run the packages into the post office or as in the case today, since my son is now driving, he took a package to work with him and will drop it off when he gets off work.

I'm trying to teach different ones in my family how to do it so we can expand and they learn some job skills in the process. We just got permission to sell at our ISP Parent Meetings so that will be new for us! I've been selling individually to moms that I see but not on a larger scale. We're also finding out the info on selling at our local home school fair in April/May.

I probably told you more than you wanted to know but if you still have a question please ask