Selling second-hand books

SME66

Does anyone have any recent experience of selling books through apps such as ziffit, webuybooks, etc.? I have tried to do it but those sites won't accept enough books to reach the minimum needed to complete a trade. Whatever sequence I input the books, the first few are accepted,  then it starts rejecting them. Just wondered if anyone has had any success, and if so, on which site. Thanks.

soolin

SME66 said:

Does anyone have any recent experience of selling books through apps such as ziffit, webuybooks, etc.? I have tried to do it but those sites won't accept enough books to reach the minimum needed to complete a trade. Whatever sequence I input the books, the first few are accepted,  then it starts rejecting them. Just wondered if anyone has had any success, and if so, on which site. Thanks.

Books are very difficult to shift, it took me years to get rid of my stock of around 5000 I had from when I used to sell them as a small business - even charity shops started refusing them. If those sites aren't interested then it might just be worth trying to find a charity shop that will still accept them.

Brie

It may also depend on what you are trying to sell. 

MiL kept phoning up dealers when she was about to move and they would happily trot over to hers to see the "old and valuable" collection she claimed to have.  What they were met with were a load of scruffy paperbacks and a couple of ancient cookbooks with the pages falling out. 

If you are offering similar, albeit through an online site, you might just not be ticking the computer boxes that algorithms need to see a profitable trade.

No experience but you could try offering things as job lots through ebay.

discat11

I can only concur with Soolin. About a year back I had about 500 books to shift (we are both bibliophiles and we're emigrating in a few years so it was one thing to sort out early), I managed to sell about 200 via webuybooks and got £100ish (for books that probably cost £1,500+. The rest went in the bin. What a waste -but charity shops weren't interested.  Same with DVDs and VHS tapes.

soolin

Brie said:

It may also depend on what you are trying to sell. 

MiL kept phoning up dealers when she was about to move and they would happily trot over to hers to see the "old and valuable" collection she claimed to have.  What they were met with were a load of scruffy paperbacks and a couple of ancient cookbooks with the pages falling out. 

If you are offering similar, albeit through an online site, you might just not be ticking the computer boxes that algorithms need to see a profitable trade.

No experience but you could try offering things as job lots through ebay.

The problem with job lots is postage costs, sell half a dozen for £2 and have to charge £6 postage puts people off.

I know what you mean though about people's expectation of their books, I often used to travel to see a collection, and yes admittedly I often found someone with old pre 1920s books- but old didn't necessarily mean worth anything. I stopped offering to view collections after a while as the expectation of what people wanted and what I wanted to pay were on some occasions wildly different. At the time I was buying direct via private contract from various charity shops at 2p per book- old, new, hardback, leather backed signed- 2p for anything. They were the good old days.

Oh and one thing that a lot of people had were subscriptions type ones, pay £9.99 a month and get a book a month from a series - usually from adverts on the back of Sunday magazines (remember them!) or Readers Digest etc. people would spend hundreds on these books and I wouldn't even buy them at 5p a book.

Flugelhorn

I can remember similar when we ran a bookshop - people wanting far more for their books than they were worth "but they are really big books" or "I paid much more for them" - when I was getting rid of a lot I found that they had to be dropped off at charity shops a few bags at a time

lincroft1710

I was thinking of suggesting car boot sales, but petrol costs and entry fee plus your time loading/unloading car, setting up stall, being there, loading  unsold stock to take back home then unloading, could actually see you making a "paper" loss. E.g. petrol costs £5 minimum , entry £12, your time @ £9 ph say 7 hrs, so £80 min , you would have to have sold well over £80 worth of books to show a "profit". 

adamp87

lincroft1710 said:

I was thinking of suggesting car boot sales, but petrol costs and entry fee plus your time loading/unloading car, setting up stall, being there, loading  unsold stock to take back home then unloading, could actually see you making a "paper" loss. E.g. petrol costs £5 minimum , entry £12, your time @ £9 ph say 7 hrs, so £80 min , you would have to have sold well over £80 worth of books to show a "profit". 

If I was heading to put a stall at a car boot sale on a day off I don't think I'd look at it as pragmatic as you and associate the time there as if I was getting a wage.. it's part and parcel of going and its a bit of fun. Really if I can get rid of some old things make some money back that eclipses just tossing them out then it's a win. That said I'd probably take more than books mind..

I look at books similar to a car purchase in a rather melodramatic way, as soon as you've taken it off the shelf/purchased it new it's lost nearly half if not more its value on resale. I've tons of the things, some I'll not part with but others I can't see the effort or sale price being worth it.

Even charity shops are flooded with books, I guess a big problem is there's so many, and so much crap too that its hard to shift them, particularly older books.

I sat through on website with about 100 books via their barcodes and was offered about £16 and there was no guarantee they'd take them if they judged the condition to be poor so I left it. 

I purchased a book that's selling for £18 in Waterstones for £1.99 second hand on world of books, with free delivery and the condition was great for me. Can't understand how even World of Books makes any profit with their delivery model.

Unless you have a very recent release and resell it in its initial release period it seems most books are worthless after purchase, unless they are academic or very rare.

MalMonroe

Sometimes we've used Music Magpie because all you have to do is find a sturdy box, do a check with their website (via phone scan) to see if you have books they will buy and then they pay for them to be collected and delivered to them. Sometimes prices are very low but they do add up. So no outlay.

It's a fairly easy process and if you have DVDs and CDs you can send them all in the same box, too.

You do get paid but it's not much. Better than nothing though.

Unfortunately, nobody really wants books any more - if they do they want either brand new, or e-reader versions.

Where I live, no charity shops want them either.

If you put old books in the recycling bin at least they are going to be used to make other things, so that's not wasteful. We've had to do that a couple of times. 

lincroft1710

adamp87 said:

lincroft1710 said:

I was thinking of suggesting car boot sales, but petrol costs and entry fee plus your time loading/unloading car, setting up stall, being there, loading  unsold stock to take back home then unloading, could actually see you making a "paper" loss. E.g. petrol costs £5 minimum , entry £12, your time @ £9 ph say 7 hrs, so £80 min , you would have to have sold well over £80 worth of books to show a "profit". 

If I was heading to put a stall at a car boot sale on a day off I don't think I'd look at it as pragmatic as you and associate the time there as if I was getting a wage.. it's part and parcel of going and its a bit of fun. Really if I can get rid of some old things make some money back that eclipses just tossing them out then it's a win. That said I'd probably take more than books mind..

I look at it pragmatically because if I am trying to make money I look at all costs involved and to me time is a cost. Having sold at car boot sales on several occasions, to me it was not a profitable use of my time, doing something which was not wholly enjoyable and required a lot of physical effort.

Scorpioangel

I have looked at several of these sites/apps in the past and concluded that they are all a total waste of time. I think the best take up was about 1 in 40 books and they offer a pittance, i'd rather give them away than let these people have them for the prices they offer..
Take a look on various selling sites like ebay, gumtree, facebook etc and you will see listings that are there for long periods with no interest.
Overall, my experience is that second hand books are not a very saleable commodity these days unless they are specialist subjects or hard to find/out of print. 
The place I work at has a book exchange scheme, few shelves where people can leave their books and take whatever others they fancy reading, I recently left about 30 there.