Marketplace sales, fees, cash and stock
Where cash stands today, what is due in from the marketplaces, and what is scheduled out over the next 90 days.
The line is the projected balance. Money in is dated from how long marketplaces actually take to pay — currently 13 days from sale to payout. Money out is each payee's usual amount on the day of the month it usually lands.
What the projection assumes. Money in beyond the first few weeks assumes selling continues at the recent average of $3,115 a day. Money out covers regular payments only — buying more stock is not scheduled here, so a large purchase would pull the line down.
$65,938 falls due between now and 20 October — every regular payee comes round once in a 30-day window, so this matches the monthly figure above.
Payments toward the personal card are treated as money drawn by the owner rather than business borrowing, so the card figure is not purely business debt. The full payee list lives in the payments register.
Much the largest channel. Figures are for September, to 20 September 2026.
| Where It Went | Amount | Share Of Collected |
|---|---|---|
| Collected From Buyers | $78,277 | 100% |
| Marketplace Fees | -$20,458 | 26.1% |
| Outbound Postage | -$5,370 | 6.9% |
| Consignor Share | -$1,238 | 1.6% |
| Margin Before Book Cost | $51,210 | 65.4% |
Margin before book cost is what is left after every charge we can see. It becomes the full profit figure once we know what the books cost to buy, which needs the price paid per pallet and a count of the stock. Postage is charged here at $1.09 a book, the average actually paid in August. Sales tax is collected and passed straight to the marketplace, so it never appears in any of these figures.
The settlement statements are the only place this marketplace itemises its fee, and they close a couple of weeks behind the sale. So the $17,038 itemised below is the selling fee on sales that SETTLED this month — largely sales made earlier — not a breakdown of the $20,458 charged on this month's sales. It covers the selling-fee charges only: sales tax passed on, return postage and subscription charges on the same settlements are not in it. Shares are of the itemised amount.
| Fee | Amount | Share Of Itemised Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Referral Commission | -$9,862 | 57.9% |
| Per-Item Closing Fee | -$7,040 | 41.3% |
| Shipping Holdback | -$120 | 0.7% |
| Faster-Payment Fee | -$17 | 0.1% |
eBay and AbeBooks together, for September to 20 September 2026. Both channels opened in mid-August, so they have only weeks of history behind them. Neither is large enough to warrant its own view, so they are shown combined, with each channel's detail underneath.
| Where It Went | Amount | Share Of Collected |
|---|---|---|
| Collected From Buyers | $8,633 | 100% |
| Final Value Fee (Variable) | -$659 | 7.6% |
| Outbound Postage | -$368 | 4.3% |
| Commission | -$365 | 4.2% |
| Below-Standard Performance Penalty | -$304 | 3.5% |
| Processing Fee | -$251 | 2.9% |
| Final Value Fee (Fixed) | -$76 | 0.9% |
| International Fee | -$2 | 0.0% |
| Margin Before Book Cost | $6,607 | 76.5% |
Margin before book cost is what is left after every charge we can see. It becomes the full profit figure once we know what the books cost to buy, which needs the price paid per pallet and a count of the stock. Postage is charged here at $1.09 a book, the average actually paid in August. Sales tax is collected and passed straight to the marketplace, so it never appears in any of these figures.
Taken from this marketplace's own fee columns, so these are the actual charges rather than an estimate. They account for the whole of the fee. The shares are of the fee itself, not of sales.
| Fee | Amount | Share Of Itemised Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Final Value Fee (Variable) | -$659 | 39.8% |
| Commission | -$365 | 22.0% |
| Below-Standard Performance Penalty | -$304 | 18.4% |
| Processing Fee | -$251 | 15.2% |
| Final Value Fee (Fixed) | -$76 | 4.6% |
| International Fee | -$2 | 0.1% |
| Channel | Product Sales | Share Of All Sales | Postage Collected | Fees | Marketplace Take | Books | Avg Order | After Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| eBay | $4,066 | 4.7% | $0 | -$1,041 | 25.6% | 199 | $20.54 | $3,026 |
| AbeBooks | $3,957 | 4.6% | $610 | -$617 | 15.6% | 139 | $28.68 | $3,950 |
| Amazon, for comparison | $77,852 | 90.7% | $425 | -$20,458 | 26.3% | 4,927 | $15.89 | $57,819 |
Both channels opened in the middle of August, so their figures cover a few weeks rather than the full period.
Every other view is about flow. This one is about stock: how long books take to sell after they are bought, and which buying months are still working through. Sell-through is the number this view is really building toward.
Sell-through is being tracked from here on. What counts as a healthy rate isn't set yet — that call needs a few periods of history to compare against, so it comes once there's a benchmark to judge it by, not before.
Days from buying a book to selling it, for every book sold since 1 July that carries a purchase reference.
The midpoint rather than the average, so a handful of very old books cannot drag a month upward. Recent months read low because their slow sellers have not had time to sell yet — a month only settles once it is well behind us.
| Source | Books Sold | Within 14 Days | Over 90 Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bulk (pallet purchases) | 14,386 | 47% | 10% |
| Brody (books held on consignment) | 2,221 | 1% | 61% |
| McKays | 538 | 35% | 14% |
| Blake (bought by the owner) | 53 | 38% | 0% |
| Thrift shops | 32 | 0% | 62% |
4,394 books across 4,679 listings, by the month the stock was bought.
| Bought In | Still Listed On eBay |
|---|---|
| August 2026 | 3,291 |
| September 2026 | 1,103 |
This is the eBay channel only. Almost all stock is listed on Amazon, and we cannot yet see what is unsold there — so this is not the whole shelf. How long these books have been sitting is also not shown yet: eBay only opened in mid-August, so the figure would measure the age of the channel rather than the age of the stock.
A closed month, all channels together. These figures are final — the month is complete and will not move.
| Channel | Product Sales | Share Of All Sales | Postage Collected | Fees | Marketplace Take | Books | Avg Order | After Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $104,746 | 95.7% | $1,229 | -$26,885 | 25.7% | 6,171 | $17.12 | $79,090 |
| eBay | $2,429 | 2.2% | $0 | -$635 | 26.1% | 165 | $15.00 | $1,794 |
| AbeBooks | $2,252 | 2.1% | $327 | -$348 | 15.4% | 68 | $33.12 | $2,232 |
| All channels | $109,428 | 100% | $1,556 | -$27,867 | 25.5% | 6,404 | $17.23 | $83,116 |
| Whose Stock | Product Sales | Books | After Fees | Consignor Share | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Our own stock | $97,037 | 5,625 | $73,786 | — | Pending — book cost unknown |
| Sold for the consignor | $12,390 | 779 | $9,330 | $3,498 | $3,498 |
Margin on the consignor's books is complete, because there is no purchase cost to account for. Margin on our own books waits on what the stock cost to buy — the two are never averaged together, because they behave differently.
The words below mean something particular here. Most misreadings come from a term meaning one thing to you and another to us, so this is the short version of each.
What buyers paid for the books themselves. It leaves out what they paid for postage, and it leaves out sales tax, which the marketplaces collect and hand over directly.
The share of each sale the marketplace keeps — its commission, the per-item fee, and smaller charges alongside them. It tells you what selling on that channel costs. It is not a hint to move books elsewhere: buyers are where they are.
Product sales plus the postage buyers paid, less everything the marketplace kept. This is what actually lands, before any of our own costs.
What it costs to post a book to the buyer. Charged here at $1.09 a book — the real average paid to the post office in August, not an estimate.
What is left after the marketplace's fees, postage and the consignor's share. It is not the final profit on a book, because what the book cost to buy is not in it yet.
What a book leaves behind once every direct cost is counted, including what it cost to buy. It needs the price paid per pallet and a count of the stock, so it is shown as pending rather than guessed.
Around one book in seven is sold on behalf of someone else rather than owned. On those, they are paid half of what is left after fees and a $3 postage deduction — the same sum used to settle up with them.
They cost nothing to buy and tie up no cash in advance, so they behave quite differently. Blending them with our own books would produce one margin figure that is wrong for both, and it would look perfectly reasonable.
Collected from the buyer and passed straight to the marketplace, which sends it on. It never counts as income and never counts as a cost, so it stays out of every figure here.
On the day it is made. The accounts count it a little later, when the marketplace settles up. The amount still awaiting settlement is shown on the Amazon page, and that gap is the whole of the difference.
The closing balance on the operating account, taken straight from the bank. It holds true no matter how far the bookkeeping has been brought up to date.
How long a book sat between being bought and being sold. Shown as the midpoint rather than the average, so a few very old books cannot distort it.
Where a figure is not yet known it says so, and is left blank. A zero would be a claim that there is nothing there; pending is the honest answer.
| Missing | What It Would Let Us Show | What It Needs |
|---|---|---|
| What the stock cost to buy | Cost of goods, true profit per book, and what the stock on the shelf is worth | The price paid per pallet, and a count of the books |
| What is still for sale on Amazon | How much of each purchase has sold, and how long unsold books have been sitting | Access to the listing system, or a stock list kept up to date |
| Figure | Source | Current To |
|---|---|---|
| Sales, books, fees, orders | Marketplace sales reports | 20 September 2026 |
| Breakdown of marketplace fees | Marketplace settlement statements | 20 September 2026 |
| Cash on hand and payments out | Operating bank account | 20 September 2026 |
| Money held by the marketplace | Marketplace payments statement | 21 September 2026 |
| Owed to the consignor | The consignment settlement sheet | 4 September 2026 |
| Postage per book | Postage actually paid | August 2026 |
| Books still for sale | eBay listings | 20 September 2026 |
The two places everything else lives.
Statements, reports and working files, shared between us. New exports land here.
Where the month-end close is tracked and any open questions are answered.
What this covers. Sales through Amazon, eBay and AbeBooks for September to date, to 20 September 2026, together with the cash position on the operating account. Stock and settlement balances are running totals rather than this month's trading, and each says so where it appears. Every figure traces to a marketplace report, a bank statement or the consignment settlement sheet.
Rounding. Figures are shown to the nearest dollar, so a column of them can add up a dollar away from the total beside it. The totals are the accurate ones.
When it updates. Figures are cut each Sunday and the refreshed page goes live the Tuesday after. The next one covers the week ending 27 September 2026 and goes live on Tuesday 29 September 2026.
When a sale counts. On the day it is made. The accounts count it when the marketplace settles, a median of 13 days later, so this page runs slightly ahead. The amount awaiting settlement is shown on the Amazon page and is the whole of the difference.
Postage. Charged at $1.09 a book, the average actually paid in August. It moves month to month because postage is bought in advance, so a single month is not a settled rate.
The consignor's books. Payout is half of what remains after fees and a $3 postage deduction, and is treated as a reduction of sales rather than a cost — the same way the accounts record it, so the two agree.
Still missing. What the stock cost to buy, and what is still for sale on Amazon. Together they would give true profit per book, how much of each purchase has sold, and the value of stock on the shelf. Both are marked pending rather than estimated.