Selling books

robint_2

Have been using Amazon for selling books for quite some time and just wondering if anybody can recommend a similiar site for selling second hand books including old and rare books.Your help would be appreciated.

soolin

robint wrote: »

Have been using Amazon for selling books for quite some time and just wondering if anybody can recommend a similiar site for selling second hand books including old and rare books.Your help would be appreciated.

Amazon is probably the best place as books are not a strong market at the moment.

I did sell a few of my more interesting ones on ebay, but i am currently now dumping the thousands of books I have in storage and concentrating on other lines.

Crowqueen

At the moment everything has been very quiet - I haven't sold anything in over a month and I suspect people are using money to buy Christmas stuff and new items for gifts. I wonder whether it will pick up again in the new year - I think I may need to go and have a look at my prices.

The beauty with Amazon is you can list for free until it sells; if you can get anything from their trade-in service that is going to be as good as it gets at the moment. eBay is more difficult to sell because books do better at BIN but many big listers have cornered the market in most ordinary items since they can post very cheaply compared to an individual seller.

bartelbe

To be honest selling books is a waste of time, most are pretty much worthless, and will be reduced to 1p value by Amazon's repricing robots. The only ones worth the bother are very rare or collectable books. Those will sell anytime.

porto_bello

The only books that seem to sell well on eBay at the moment are new books (even better if new and sealed), which suggests they are Christmas gifts.

[The cap on p&p on this category also can mean overpricing heavy books a bit to compensate for the loss on postage].

At this time of year, many buyers are buying for presents, rather than themselves. However, this being the case, you can be lucky in picking up a bargain, whilst the usual competition is looking elsewhere to buy things for Xmas.

Crowqueen

The cap on p&p on this category also can mean overpricing heavy books a bit to compensate for the loss on postage

Any book is going to be priced so the seller can post it, whether it's £5 + 99p postage or 99p + £5 postage. Blaming eBay's postage cap is a neat way of foisting the problem onto them, but the reason why heavy books are unattractive to buyers is because the postage element makes what would otherwise be a worthless book into a seriously overpriced worthless book.

It was like that long before eBay introduced postage caps at all.

porto_bello

I think the standard cap on books within the UK is £4 on eBay.

That's any type of book - my point is simply that this is insufficient for many larger hardbacks, which are popular gifts.

So you could sell for £5 + 99p p&p, or £1.99 + £4 p&p, or £5.99 and post free, but not 99p + £5 p&p.

quotememiserable

abebooks is where book dealers list. Take a look.

soolin

quotememiserable wrote: »

abebooks is where book dealers list. Take a look.

Can cost a lot for a casual seller though
http://sellerhelp.abebooks.co.uk/2007/05/how_much_does_i.html

MadelinesMum

I find most books are hardly worth any money. What I do is go through my collection and compare to Amazon. The books that seem worth more than a few pounds I list, the ones that don't go to the school fete or to the hospital shop. I have been lucky enough to get £20 - £30 for some uni books from amazon, but then again you have to watch out for weight, which can cancel out your profit.

Crowqueen

The best uni books are those that are the size of an ordinary book but worth more because they have a short print run - just bought one for much, much more than I'd usually pay for an ordinary novel.

Unfortunately most of mine end up covered in highlighter and notes and so end up worthless...!