Q&A: Can I sell books on Amazon.com from Canada?

QUESTION: I live in suburban Toronto and I'm wondering if it's possible to run an online bookstore from here. I looked at Amazon.ca and the book selection is much less, and the sellers are still in the States.

Would I have equal access to the U.S. market? How different would shipping costs be? Would there be duty on used books sold outside of Canada?

ANSWER: I think your best bet would be to list books on both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, especially your higher-priced books. Of course that would require you to delete listings manually on the other site when you have a sale.

You need to have a U.S. bank account to sell on Amazon.com but perhaps you can arrange that with a visit to a bank in the northern U.S. to open an account.

Being outside the U.S. Postal System would be a handicap for you (when selling on Amazon.com) but not an insurmountable one. For example, there are sellers on Amazon.com who live outside the continental U.S., in Hawaii and Alaska. To be competitive, these sellers often pay for airmail delivery for all their orders sent to the mainland, to ensure prompt delivery -- even when the customer pays only for ground shipping. These sellers seem to do OK, even though it's certainly a drain on their profits. You'd be operating with a similar handicap, but you're accessing a big market.

Another thing you might consider: Amazon has a new program called "Fulfillment by Amazon." Participating booksellers send their inventory to Amazon, and Amazon does all the shipping and customer service, and sends the bookseller the proceeds minus some storage and service fees.

Personally I wouldn't use Fulfillment by Amazon because I like to have total control of my business. But you might consider it if it allowed you to dramatically reduce your costs -- you could bulk-ship your inventory to an Amazon warehouse. Using a truck freight company you could probably get your per-book cost down very low.

If you fill the orders yourself, I'm not sure about the duties of books being shipped from Canada to the U.S., so I'm hoping we'll get some helpful comments. Anyone?