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Step 1
Book Dealer Web sites
Using book dealer websites to sell your books is probably the easiest method of selling books online. They allow you to simply open an account, then post your books by using the ISBN number found on the copyright page of the book you are trying to sell. They usually do not charge you anything to list the books, but only a fee when they sell (the average is about 15% of the sale price).
The two major book dealers of this type are Amazon.com and Half.com. Amazon.com is by far the preferred book dealer because of the higher volume of sales and the fact that you can list any book, even those without an ISBN number. They actually let you create a product page for your book if that title is not yet listed on Amazon, something Half.com has not yet allowed. -
Step 2
Book Buy-Back Sites
There are a number of online book buy-back sites, but the problem with this type of method for selling your books is that they usually only take textbooks and academic or educational titles. They also usually pay much less than you can make selling on Amazon of Half.com. The advantage is that they pay you right away as soon as they get the books. Now, sometimes, you can actually get more for some of the lower priced educational books. For example, I’ve had some books only worth about two or three dollars on Amazon that I was able to sell to these types of sites for four or five dollars (It’s always good to check).
I recommend Barnesandnoble.com if you don’t want to hassle with paying for shipping, since they allow you to print out a label that they pay for (most of the others will not pay for the shipping). Yet, if you prefer to find the site paying the highest, you should use the Bookfinder.com textbook buy-back area to search a number of different sites at the same time to see who pays the most. -
Step 3
Selling Books at Auctions
Auctions are a good place to sell books that you want to move fast, but most of the time, you will not receive as much for the books and they are a lot more work (taking photos, dealing with the buyer’s payment, etc.—something you don’t have to deal with while using the other options of selling books discussed above). Some books will simply not sell at auctions or take a long time to sell.
How you deal with online auctions depends on the auction site itself (whether or not they charge a listing fee). It is recommended that you only list books on auctions that charge listing fees when you are certain that title will sell. You can look up past auctions for your title on most online auction sites to see if they sell or not.
Now, when dealing with online auction sites that do not charge listing fees, there is no harm in listing your books no matter how long they take to sell since you are not charged anything except if they sell. It is actually a good idea to list your slower selling books not only on Amazon.com and Half.com but also on one or more auction sites that don’t charge you a listing fee. It only results in more exposure of your books and will increase your sales. Just make sure you remove auctions when the book sells somewhere else.
For the selling of popular titles, we recommend Ebay.com, but be advised that EBay will charge you a listing fee so it is not the best source for selling slow moving titles. For slow moving titles, our experience has shown that Upperbid.com and Ioffer.com are the two best online auctions for selling our slower moving, not so popular titles.
