Making extra from selling books

leon103

Hello All

My partner is looking into different options to make a few extra pennies. One idea was buying and selling books in car boot sales and via amazon and other sites.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of this. I know of people selling books at bulk ie. 1000 books for £300. So 30p a book. If we managed to sell at £1 a book it potential can make a lot of money. I have noticed on Amazon that there are a lot of books selling for 1p plus £2.75 p&p. Its been a long time since I sold on Amazon so can anyone tell me what fees are taken by amazon for selling?

Anyone with any advice. We aren't after making 1000's just a little extra to put towards the future.

Comments welcome.

thanks

Maysie

I dont' know from the proffesional book sellers side but by a private seller i know i have to work out if i can even post a book for the money amazon give you on a 1p sale. Quite often not! 2nd class book if it won't go large letter can quite easily be about £1.81 or 86 ish. Large letter and its still around £1.40ish. Find a book you have and pretend to sell just dont' confirm and you can see what amazon will give you for it before hand. You might find its other people who have already checked amazon etc selling on all the 1p books then cannot shift themselves taht are selling in bulk. If you are a proper seller fees are less per sale so you can post of cost amazon give you.

leon103

I just checked and selling at 1p you get £1.41 from amazon. so looking at approx 60p profit after postage at 2nd class

Lethal

As mentioned, you get 1.41 per book sold at 1p. This would only be worth it if the book is a light paperback that can be posted of for 76p using Second Class Large letter if its under 250g. Otherwise its not worth it. Therefore i recommend you don't buy lots of random books as they may not be worth it. Plus many books which are being sold at 1p, are being sold for a simple reason: theres many copies. At the moment i have about 7 paper backs listed at 1p, all 7 of them have atleast 50+ other copies, if not 100+, being sold. Therefore unless condition is like new, unlikely you will sell.

Therefore it is best if you go for recent books or there are just some books that naturally sell well.

Have a look here, you might find something useful: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1505085&highlight=amazon+sells+well

Maysie

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1505085 more about selling on amazon.

leon103

Thanks for the link. Has anyone had much success at carboot sales

Lethal

20-50p for paper backs, £1 is the max and thats a rare occasion. Have a look at the carboot sub-forum for more info. Plus theres like £12 entry free so that would mean you would have to sell 24 books at 50p each just to break even.

miss_angie1

You can also try Greenmetropolis. www.greenmetropolis.com

Books don't sell as quickly as on Amazon but you get £3.00 per book (minus your postage cost from this) so may make a little profit.

Worth a try as I have sold quite a few on here.

milkybars

Selling via Amazon and Green Metropolis is very slow. About two months ago I listed over 100 books across these two sites... these were books I couldn't shift at a car boot but they were ones that I found during a huge clear out of my house.

I've been keeping a spreadsheet of books sold, money credited (after fees), postage price (I've been reusing a box of envelopes I'd collected for free) and therefore have my net profit... 8 books sold, net profit of just £1.79 per book with one book making a 54p loss due to Amazon not charging enough postage for the weight of the book. I've also been experiencing bidding wars where I am continually lowering the price of my books on Amazon to match other sellers to the point where I have to remove the book from sale or leave it at a price where I'd break even but it probably won't sell if others are cheaper.

I think on the whole it's ok for shifting spare books you have but hardly worth the hassle and low/non-existant profits if you're thinking about buying the books to sell.

cally6008

just to mention ebay are making books have free p+p from 19 oct 2009

leon103

cally6008 wrote: »

just to mention ebay are making books have free p+p from 19 oct 2009

Whats the reason behind this? Can they do that?