QUESTION: I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m working for someone who has about 1,000 textbooks she purchased at workshops. The books are like new, on various topics like family, children, organization and health. We’re not a large enough organization to try and sell these on Amazon or eBay. How can I find out how much the books are worth? Are there companies or bookstores that would purchase them all? It would probably be lucrative to sell them on Amazon if we had the time and resources to do all the shipping and tracking that is needed.
ANSWER: My sense is you want to get the best price for the books but don’t want to commit lots of time to selling them. Let’s go over your options, and the advantages and drawbacks of each:
If the financial return is important, selling your books on Amazon is my first recommendation. This would produce the most cash, by far — you would earn two to three times as much money as any other option. Of course the drawback is the time involved in shipping the books and dealing with customers, as you’ve mentioned.
– Trading your books in at a local store.
The easiest option may be to trade your books in at a used bookshop for different books as store credit. Stores may give you 25 percent to 50 percent credit toward something else in the store, but usually won’t pay cash for your books.
– Donating your books to a charity or “Friends of the Library” group. If the financial return is not important, consider donating the books to a local library or charity, who may be willing to pick them up. You can get a tax deduction for donating books. Books donated in this way are often resold to the public, providing much-needed cash for libraries and charities to fund their operations.
– Selling the whole collection on eBay.
Another option is for you to sell the whole collection as a bulk lot in the “wholesale” section of eBay. This could be a quick way for your to unload your books. You could ship the whole collection to the winning bidder via Postal Service Media Mail (book rate), which is fairly cheap. However, if you don’t already have a track record as an eBay seller, you might have trouble attracting bids on the auction.
I would not recommend selling the books individually on eBay for a variety of reasons. The prices would be lower, on average, than you would get at the fixed price on Amazon, and eBay customers are notoriously high-maintenance — meaning constant e-mails, questions, etc. In the past, eBay’s Half.com subsidiary was a viable alternative to Amazon Marketplace, but isn’t being actively promoted.
– Textbooks buyback brokers.
One other option for selling used academic books has become popular recently — online book resellers who offer cash for your books. A number of these companies are targeting college students who want a convenient way to dispose of their old textbooks. The students want some money for their books, but don’t want the hassle of selling them. If you do a Google search on “sell my textbooks” or something similar, you’ll see their advertisements on the right-hand side of Google’s regular search results.
These companies ask you to type in the ISBNs of your books. If your book is on their “buy” list, they’ll quote the price they’re willing to pay you. If you accept the offer, they’ll send you a postage-paid mailer. My hunch has always been that these book-buyback services must pay far below a book’s true value, and I recently confirmed it with a little experiment.
I tested one of the most popular textbook-buying services to see exactly how much they’d pay for a list of current texts. I got quotes for five recent social-sciences college texts, and compared them to the price on Amazon Marketplace. The textbook-buyback service offered to pay $152.20 for the five books — but the price for used copies of those books on Marketplace totalled $344.40.
So my point is, for a bit more trouble than selling your books to an online buyback service, you can sell them yourself for twice as much. I’m not arguing that these textbook resellers are doing anything unethical, they’re providing a service some people want. But their advertising and profit must come from somewhere, and it’s coming from their markup on your books.
Before you make a final decision, you might consider listing a few of the books on Amazon Marketplace, just to test the waters. Selling your books this way may less of a hassle than you expect. It’s a pretty simple process to set up a seller account on Amazon. They’ll charge you a 15 percent commission plus a 99-cent fee on each sale. If you don’t have any sales, you won’t pay anything. The other major online venue, eBay, has a lower commission structure, but you must pay some fees before you begin selling.
To sell a book on Amazon, you just type in the ISBN (the 10 digit number near the barcode on the back of the book) to reach the book’s product page. Then look on the right for the “sell yours here” button. The process is self-evident from there. Compared to eBay, Amazon is very low maintenance. You rarely ever hear from a customer unless you forget to send the book or make a mistake filling an order.
Q&A: How can I sell textbooks online for the best price?
QUESTION: I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m working for someone who has about 1,000 textbooks she purchased at workshops. The books are like new, on various topics like family, children, organization and health. We’re not a large enough organization to try and sell these on Amazon or eBay. How can I find out how much the books are worth? Are there companies or bookstores that would purchase them all? It would probably be lucrative to sell them on Amazon if we had the time and resources to do all the shipping and tracking that is needed.
ANSWER: My sense is you want to get the best price for the books but don’t want to commit lots of time to selling them. Let’s go over your options, and the advantages and drawbacks of each:
– Selling the books on Amazon Marketplace.
If the financial return is important, selling your books on Amazon is my first recommendation. This would produce the most cash, by far — you would earn two to three times as much money as any other option. Of course the drawback is the time involved in shipping the books and dealing with customers, as you’ve mentioned.
– Trading your books in at a local store.
The easiest option may be to trade your books in at a used bookshop for different books as store credit. Stores may give you 25 percent to 50 percent credit toward something else in the store, but usually won’t pay cash for your books.
– Donating your books to a charity or “Friends of the Library” group. If the financial return is not important, consider donating the books to a local library or charity, who may be willing to pick them up. You can get a tax deduction for donating books. Books donated in this way are often resold to the public, providing much-needed cash for libraries and charities to fund their operations.
– Selling the whole collection on eBay.
Another option is for you to sell the whole collection as a bulk lot in the “wholesale” section of eBay. This could be a quick way for your to unload your books. You could ship the whole collection to the winning bidder via Postal Service Media Mail (book rate), which is fairly cheap. However, if you don’t already have a track record as an eBay seller, you might have trouble attracting bids on the auction.
I would not recommend selling the books individually on eBay for a variety of reasons. The prices would be lower, on average, than you would get at the fixed price on Amazon, and eBay customers are notoriously high-maintenance — meaning constant e-mails, questions, etc. In the past, eBay’s Half.com subsidiary was a viable alternative to Amazon Marketplace, but isn’t being actively promoted.
– Textbooks buyback brokers.
One other option for selling used academic books has become popular recently — online book resellers who offer cash for your books. A number of these companies are targeting college students who want a convenient way to dispose of their old textbooks. The students want some money for their books, but don’t want the hassle of selling them. If you do a Google search on “sell my textbooks” or something similar, you’ll see their advertisements on the right-hand side of Google’s regular search results.
These companies ask you to type in the ISBNs of your books. If your book is on their “buy” list, they’ll quote the price they’re willing to pay you. If you accept the offer, they’ll send you a postage-paid mailer. My hunch has always been that these book-buyback services must pay far below a book’s true value, and I recently confirmed it with a little experiment.
I tested one of the most popular textbook-buying services to see exactly how much they’d pay for a list of current texts. I got quotes for five recent social-sciences college texts, and compared them to the price on Amazon Marketplace. The textbook-buyback service offered to pay $152.20 for the five books — but the price for used copies of those books on Marketplace totalled $344.40.
So my point is, for a bit more trouble than selling your books to an online buyback service, you can sell them yourself for twice as much. I’m not arguing that these textbook resellers are doing anything unethical, they’re providing a service some people want. But their advertising and profit must come from somewhere, and it’s coming from their markup on your books.
Before you make a final decision, you might consider listing a few of the books on Amazon Marketplace, just to test the waters. Selling your books this way may less of a hassle than you expect. It’s a pretty simple process to set up a seller account on Amazon. They’ll charge you a 15 percent commission plus a 99-cent fee on each sale. If you don’t have any sales, you won’t pay anything. The other major online venue, eBay, has a lower commission structure, but you must pay some fees before you begin selling.
To sell a book on Amazon, you just type in the ISBN (the 10 digit number near the barcode on the back of the book) to reach the book’s product page. Then look on the right for the “sell yours here” button. The process is self-evident from there. Compared to eBay, Amazon is very low maintenance. You rarely ever hear from a customer unless you forget to send the book or make a mistake filling an order.