I’m a huge book nerd and try to read at least one non fiction book a month. Very few great business books out there are tailored specifically to the e-commerce crowd, but there are a few gems that gave me a million ideas after reading them specifically for this industry. Here is my list of the top 7 best books to read if you’re in e-commerce. Why 7? Because I tried to find 10 but I couldn’t find 10 good enough ones to include, and I didn’t want to add any fluff. I also couldn’t narrow it down to 5 because these books are all so important to me. Happy reading!
7. Amazon Top Seller Secrets: Insider Tips from Amazon’s Most Successful Sellers
If there’s a book that has the name “Amazon” in the title, I’ve read it, even if it was a book intended for investors. Of all the books this is the only one worth reading as a seller. Much of it is common sense and if you’ve sold for even just a few months you’d know about 60% of this. There are still plenty of tips and tricks in here though to make this book worth a read. It’s also a good idea to review all the basics every once and awhile to make sure you’re not missing anything.
6. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
This is an entertaining and inspiring book about how Tony Hsieh grew Zappos into the juggernaut that it is. It’s filled with personal details and thus makes it fun to read, but I was coming up with ideas left and right while I was reading this, so it’s a great book to get your mind churning on e-commerce and how to make the experience better. I even ended up touring Zappos after reading this book and it was an amazing place to visit to put it lightly.
This is an amazing book to jolt you out of the era of marketing before social media. Gary Vee explains why it’s so important that you get into these new methods and why the old methods are no longer working. If you’re still a skeptic about social media and it’s value, do yourself a favor a read this book so you can understand the point.
4. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
I wrote a post on this book here. It’s an excellent book on how too many products in a selection can actually reduce sales. This is important information if you’re in e-commerce!! This book might convince you to shrink your store and change the entire layout, so be ready to have your common sense challenged.
3. EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches
This book is just a great overall small business book. It covers all aspects of a small business that you need to think about, I refer to my copy on a regular basis and it helps me avoid many pitfalls I would otherwise stumble over. This is a particularly helpful book when it comes to managing people.
2. How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors : Winning Every Sale at Full Price, Rate, or Fee
This is a seriously dry book, and the title isn’t exactly catchy, but holy crap is this book useful. In today’s e-commerce environment we think everything is about price, and of course in many segments this is true, but this book shows you that the race to the bottom is suicidal and not worth it. It will open your eyes to who you are attracting as a customer when you are discounting everything, and how it will eventually cause the failure of your business. There are literally equations in here to demonstrate how silly it is to use some of the pricing strategies we all consider the norm. This book blew my mind and changed forever how I handled pricing, and it’s worked well for me for years now.
1. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
I remember reading this book several years ago at my neighborhood pool. It changed everything about how I thought about business. If I wasn’t already excited enough to grow businesses back then, I was completely renewed after reading this book. If you are a business owner and you haven’t read this book YOU NEED TO BUY IT RIGHT NOW. This book will change your life. It’s all about creating systems through which you run your business. This in turn takes the pressure off of you and gives you your life back, while simultaneously allowing you to scale without going out of business. I can’t tell you enough how important this book is. Maybe if you get an MBA you already know this stuff, but even i you think you do I wouldn’t risk it. This book is honestly the key in so many ways.
So those are my top picks. What am I missing? I’m always looking for recommendations. Tell me your top books in the comments!
