best place to sell books on line
 

I need to get rid of a bunch of books - some are advance readers editions, a couple are signed. Most are hardback novels. I havea crapload of paperbacks too.

So what's the best way to go? Amazon? Ebay? What?

Id say Ebay, i didnt know amazon was an auction site too.

I've been selling off my old college textbooks on half.com ( a subsidiary of eBay but uses a consignment format rather than auction). The prices I'm getting aren't stellar but it's worth more this way than colllectind dust in my basement.

One of my buddies roomates sells a lot of books thru half.com I don't know anything about them, but might be a place to look...

Anything rare or signed should go to ebay. Anything that doesn't have much collector value should just go in a big box to your local used book store. Don't expect much money for those.

Amazon. Set your price, don't pay a listing fee (they take out a commission from the amount you are paid, and they overcompensate you for shipping.

I've sold a lot of books on Amazon- especially a lot of advance reader edition books - I am probably the only person in the world not on the ebay bandwagon, but I think Amazon is much safer - they collect the money for you -- you set your price - give them a percentage -- you can desribe the condition and all that... the only disadvantage to amazon -- is they reimburse you for shipping but it's not always what it costs to ship the book (sometimes it's hard to get the post office to send book rate - which takes weeks to ship -- an dif you go over the shipping rate, you have to suck it up)

In the past year, I've sold about 50 or so books on Amazon, and have been very happy with the service

Clavus, you're in San Francisco, where craigslist is huge. I don't say list only on Craigslist -- you should do one of the others as well -- but craigslist for sale ads are free, and you might be able to hook up face to face with good buyers. The SF Bay Area has a huge book collectors community.

Many years ago, pre-Internet, I and a friend sold our large collection of vintage sci-fi paperbacks and hardcovers through a catalog (we had Heinlein first-edition hardcovers in jacket, a signed first of Bradbury's "Golden Apples of the Sun" signed in '54, ancient pulp magazines with lurid covers of dwarfs torturing people, sci-fi porn by name authors, good stuff like that). Anyway, I advertised in sci-fi magazines and also borrowed a mailing list from a local science fiction bookstore. By far, the greater amount of my sales were local. So what I'm saying is, a good local source like craigslist could do a good job for you in a bookloving community like the bay area. And they have an anonymous email forwarding service, too, if you want to maintain privacy until you're sure of the buyer. You will meet some _interesting_ people face to face (Anton LaVey came over!), and you won't get screwed. Used book people and collectors don't write bad checks. If they do, the word gets around.

The above applies mainly to the hardcovers. Paperbacks probably aren't going to be worth selling via eBay unless they're collectible or fairly high-priced. Again, for less-than-premium books something like Craiglist may be preferable, where the buyer is nearby and a bulk deal at a reasonable price can be consummated face to face, without shipping. On the otherhand, if they're good paperbacks and you like to read, I'd just turn them in for trade slips at a superior local used bookstore and feed your habit that way.

ebay or half.com

Thanks all. Rodney, I hadn't thought about craigslist. Good call. However, I should point out that while I am in NorCal, I'm not in San Francisco. One can start in SF and drive north for hours on end, and still be in California.

I seel books on Amazon and it works pretty well for me, they collect the money for you, you just have to be careful that what they allow you for postage is enough, and if not you budget for it in the price you set.

I'd sell the paperbacks on there, and maybe anything you have that might be valuable sell on ebay.

One question: how do yall ship the things? I need to sell some textbooks I have on either half.com or Amazon, but Im not quite sure how the whole shipping deal works. Id assume you just send it media mail, but Ive never sent anything that way: do you just stick the stamps on the box/envelope and ship it out with the mail?

For Amazon, they have shipping "guidelines" stuff has to be well packed - -that means, I get bubble envelopes pretty cheaply (there's a store near me that has them 4 / $1.00 usually - And the book gets sent media mail (or book rate)- -but I usually have to remind the post office of that rate - -they usually try to go first class.(Media mail, as far as I can tell, is books only)

OK, so the media mail you just take to the post office? I think theres one here on campus... (shows you how much I mail stuff...)

gotta go to the post office (you can't drop mail over 12 oz I think is the limit) in a mail box. And the stamps that you buy, are first class stamps-- so it really has to be metered mail. (I am not sure if you can buy other classes of postage online)

Half.com has been good for me.

SInce they're the same company, how does half.com differ from ebay? Are people bidding on books? Do you pay an unfront fee? or not until your books are sold?

Ebay is good because it's relatively cheap and very popular. You can also search for old items to find out your market value.

Amazon is good because it's extremely popular. However, they take out lots of money from the final price that you sell for, something like 20%.

Depending on how quick I want to sell things and how much time I have to invest, I'll list them on both half.com and amazon. You have to pay close attention, so that the book doesn't sell twice. If I'm only listing on one site, I usually go with Half.com You won't get nearly as much money off Ebay. It's such a limited time frame that many people won't see it before the auction ends.

You don't have to go to the post office to send items media mail. I just take a big permanent marker and write "MEDIA MAIL" on the envelope, stick on $1.84 on it and then stuff it in the mailbox. Yeah yeah, techically you're supposed to take anything over 16 oz to the P.O. but I don't and USPS still ships my books.

Unless you really need the money, why not give them away?

I'm sure the local library or charity would be happy to take them?


Mr Mephisto

I tried giving away about 4 -5 large boxes of paperbacks to my town library, that were all in good condition, the library declined them because it's too labor intensive to catalog them all and make sure they are library-able, I had even suggested keeping them for their annual book sale and just sell them and keep the profits -- they also declined that....

It was pretty hard giving away books actually, and I refuse to throw them out, ended up listing them on "free site" that gives crap away and a woman who works for some charity ended up taking them for a rummage sale they were having.

Well, I'm a certified blbliophile and spend hundreds of dollars a month on books. Literally. My wife keeps giving me hassle about how many books we have in the house.

I can't help it. I absolutely love books. 90% of what I buy are non-fiction (mixed about 75% history, 25% science) and I could never bear to part with them.

The only books I have ever EVER given away were some crappy pulp fiction paperbacks that I inherited (rather than bought). Even then I felt guilty.

I always remember when, as a young innocent child, I asked my mother why she read so much. "Knowledge is its own reward dear" was her response. God bless her! The best gift she ever gave me was a love of books and knowledge.

Mr Mephisto