Selling Books

misskaty

I have loads of books in amazing condition and was just wondering if anyone knew of a good place to sell them maybe online ? I want to get as much money as I can for them and they are in amazing condition. I have tried selling some on eBay but if they go, they only go for 99p. Any help would be very much appreciated

Jinks

Sadly the value of used books is usually quite low. You are right about eBay, with very few exceptions books either don't sell there or only sell for 99p. However, if you haven't already, it may be worth your time doing an eBay search set to "by lowest price" for some of the books you have to see what prices they are going for (make sure you are looking at completed auctions or buy it nows for an accurate price), because if you happen to have any rarer or in demand books then, paradoxically, eBay is probably the place you will get the best price for them. I had a few art instruction books which are always in demand and retail for around £15 new and I got about £10 each for them on eBay. Generally though, don't bother with fiction novels, as unless they are collectible in some way, unfortunately they aren't usually worth anything.

There are websites which will buy books - a couple of examples are webuybooks.co.uk and the Amazon exchange service too, though Amazon pay in vouchers and not cash. However, I have to say I was disappointed with my attempts to use both of these. I had a huge stack of books - about 60 of them - most in great condition, and I went through the process of entering all the ISBNs for all the books, but they would accept only about three of them! They don't buy books for which there is lack of demand, apparently - which appears to be almost all books! One of the MSE articles stated that webuybooks.co.uk was a popular choice with people on this site, but how anyone manages to get to the £15 minimum total they require in order to exchange the books I have no idea. The three of my 60 books they would accept got me to about 75p. :rotfl:

What I ended up doing with mine was taking them to a local second hand bookshop which accepts books as part exchange. I didn't get cash for them, but I got some free new books that I'll actually use in exchange for old ones I don't need. This might be a good option for you if you have somewhere in your area which does this and you like the idea of free books.

Sorry if that was a bit doom and gloom!

Deep_In_Debt

I've sold quite a few books in the past at car boot sales. Ok, not massive amounts of money made on them but I've usually sold them all at the time.

alexcarter

Using we buy books is not good for popular fiction but neither is anywhere else! I sold 6 of my uni books to them and made £45 and i had a code that added an extra 10% to my offerr which i found on their Facebook page.

ssmith123

I have heard that we buy books is good too for non fiction, are there any other sites people have used?

John_Ashtone

Why will people buy your books when they can get them cheap from the Charity shops.

Charity shops get them for free?

Charity shops are the main reason for 2nd hand book shops no longer existing.

Also you need to understand the book market, and printing costs.

Let's say you are a new writer and a publisher decides you are worth backing, the first print run will be about 7,000 to 10,000, this will probably be in hard back, and it will be 1 of a couple of thousand that month? 3 things might happen, 1 it doesn't sell out, that is the majority, out of 2,000 authors that is 1,900 gone already, 2 it sells out and gets reprinted, that is the other 100.

3. is Dan Brown or J. K. Rowling, but we will leave them aside.

Those 100 are the ones you probably have (if they are fiction books) the Publisher knows they can sell 10 times the number of paperbacks (at least) of each title, and economies of scale come into play, and in Publishing this is economies of scale big time.

The major cost of printing is in setting up, and publishing the rest is on fixed overheads like offices, lunch at Claridges etc which is spread out over a number of books. Once the cost of printing is covered, all the other is profit.

So lets say you are a Publisher, and your next big push is for ~Murdered for selling Books~, you have sold 10,000 hardback books, so you order 100,000 paperbacks, 10 times h/back sales right, wrong, you order 250,000? The cost of setting up being the highest cost, 100,000 would be something like £120,000, so £1.20 each however 250,000 will be around £150,000 so 60p each.

But it gets better, you sell the first 100,000 at £1.80 each (Amazon will say what they will pay and take it or leave it) so the Publisher has already made £30k profit, and they sell at £5.99.

But then the Publisher still has 150,000 copies, if the book keeps selling in the supermarkets and on Amazon then they keep making £1.80 per book, if sales drop then they can sell at 1p and still make a profit.

I went to a book fair for remaindered books, and a chap was buying by the pallet load, and he was talking 13, 15, 18, and he meant pence per book, it made my jaw drop.

So that is why remainder bookshops sell so cheap and why Publishing is so popular.

Now is it Claridges or do you prefer the Savoy Grill lol.

droopsnoot

My local charity shops all seem to charge what I would think is quite a lot for books - recent paperback fiction all seems to be £2.49 or more. Call me tight if you want, but that's a bit excessive.

That book fair selling remaindered books sounds interesting - any pointers on where I could find one? I shouldn't be buying more books until I've got rid of some, but I can't pass up a bargain.

lincroft1710

I would think in about 10 years Kindle and its competitors will decimate the fiction hardcopy book market, possibly some non fiction titles as well.

soolin

lincroft1710 wrote: »

I would think in about 10 years Kindle and its competitors will decimate the fiction hardcopy book market, possibly some non fiction titles as well.

I think that is what killed my book selling business on Amazon. I went from being a pro seller with several sales a day to selling one book a week, almost overnight. It was just like someone clicked a switch and my books became mere bonfire fodder.

I gave up in Autumn 2010 and have slowly started disposing of my book stock ever since, I am down to less than 500 books in storage now that are listed on Amazon- and sell virtually none of them.