Sunday, March 24, 2013

An idea on how to make some money and help U.S. students!


Text books are expensive in the United States.

Source: National Association of College Stores
According to The Economist, Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai student studying in the United States, realized that the same text books he was assigned in the USA were often available at much lower prices in Thailand. It seems that the U.S. publisher licensed its foreign branch to print copies abroad and sell them for prices that the Thai students could afford.

Kirtsaeng asked friends and family to ship him cheap textbooks from Thailand, which he sold for a handsome profit in America. He made as much as $1.2 million.

Not surprisingly, he was sued for copyright infringement. Now, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that what he did was perfectly legal. If you buy a book legally printed abroad, under U.S. copyright law as first buyer you can legally resell it in the United States.

So if you live in South Asia, East Africa or West Africa and text books are available in your country at low prices that are also used in classes in the USA, then you have a business opportunity. The potential market is significant. There are 4,800 U.S. colleges and universities and many million U.S. students of higher education.

Buy the books locally, ship them in bulk to the United States, sell them on the Internet at a profit, and ship using the U.S. book rate to your customers.

Need some start up funding to get your business off the ground? Try crowdfunding.

Source: The U.S. Census Bureau

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