Often be able to list it and sell it for more than acim and if you buy it for 50 cents or less at a garage sale, you’ll make deliciously good margins this way without getting stuck with stinkers!
But mistakes happen. If you do come home with books that you want to get rid of that you can’t use in your home bookstore, take them to a local used bookstore and ask the owner if they’ll trade for books you can add to your inventory. Sometimes if you’re lucky the owner will buy your unwanted books by offering store credit for books he or she doesn’t want to carry any longer.
Another goal: Show up for work! Get out your calendar. Write in daily goals. Set aside time early each morning or late at night when you get home from your job, log into your account to check orders and e-mail messages, and go to work listing or revising your listings.
Books quickly. One trick that seems to work well is to make one of the books a high-value book and surround it with lesser-value books. Of course, all books should relate to one type or theme that an individual is looking for. For example, a group of woodworking books, or a group of dog training books, or a group of fitness books.
Half.com – This website is part of the eBay Empire. You list books by ISBN and it’s pretty simple to use and get paid. They send you the order of where to ship the book and give you your cut. Their user interface for sellers has a neat multiple item listing form, allowing you to list 10 items at a time before you hit the submit button.
Abebooks.com – High-traffic website for discerning book buyers. Often you can sell collectible and rare books and reach the right audience. Lots of used bookstores have gravitated to this site. You might forge some good face-to-face meetings with store owners willing to buy books from you. Typically, though, they will offer wholesale pricing since they need to turn a profit on the books they sell. But it could be a way to move a large number of books at once.
CraigsList.org – Selling locally should be easy. For me, it’s not. I think because each city book selling listings are free, people are willing to ask crazy high prices, and the audience skips even searching for books. I have noticed that quite a few college textbooks do get listed, and probably do sell well at certain times of the year. Having no listing fees, final value fees or even shipping fees make it a cheap option. But, unlike the international audience of the previous four websites, you’ll only be offering to locals.
