Question: I went to three local thrift stores -- a Goodwill and two Salvation Army stores. Of thousands of books, I found only two that were reliably profitable, both worth under $20. It didn't seem very productive, it would have taken many hours of work to make $35.
Answer: First, I would say that trying to find good books for resale in a Goodwill/Salvation Army type of store is going to be difficult for a couple of reasons:
Number one, most of the books donated to these shops are usually are very popular (and therefore commonly available) titles. For example, you'll see lots of romance books, and lots of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books at these shops, a lot of popular fiction. Nothing is wrong with these books, but they are so plentiful in the used market that the prices for them are very low because there isn't enough demand after the book has been on the market a few years. So, for example, when an Amazon seller ends up with one of these books you see in abundant supply at thrift shops, and find that the book is selling for only 90 cents on Amazon, the seller prices theirs at 89 cents. Then the next person prices theirs at 88 cents, and so on. If there is not enough demand from the book buyers on Amazon to soak up these used copies being listed online, the price can go all the way down to 1 cent!
The other main reason it's so hard to find valuable books in a thrift shop is that lots of used booksellers regularly go there to find books for resale. So the stock gets picked over very quickly. If there is not much turnover at the shop, with new inventory coming in from people donating books, pretty soon all the books that were worth decent money will end up in the hands of booksellers, and most of the stuff left on the shelves is junk.
Also, some of these types of thrift stores are beginning to sell some of the valuable donated books online themselves. They check the online price as soon as they get the books, and the valuable ones they sell themselves and keep all the proceeds, instead of allowing booksellers or collectors to snap them up at bargain prices. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, except that it makes it really hard for book buyers and collectors to find decent books in these types of stores.
Library sales are probably the best source of profitable books for online sellers. And that is precisely because the books available at a library sale haven't been picked over before you see them. So you have a much better chance of finding some valuable books at a bargain price at a library sale.
See a real-time list of the most highly sought after used and collectible books.
Read more free articles on selling used books profitably online: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm
Steve Weber is author of "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site" (ISBN 0977240606). Got a question for Steve? Send to: steve_weber@yahoo.com