QUESTION: My boss has about 1,000 textbooks she purchased at workshops. These are new books in various topics. How can I find out how much the books are worth? Are there companies or bookstores that would purchase them all? It seems like it would be a lot of work to sell them ourselves on Amazon.
ANSWER: My sense is you want to get the best price for the books but don't want to commit lots of time to selling them. Let's go over your options, and the advantages and drawbacks of each:
-- Selling the books on Amazon Marketplace.
If the financial return is important, selling your books on Amazon is my first recommendation. This would produce the most cash, by far -- you would earn two to three times as much money as any other option. Of course the drawback is the time involved in shipping the books and dealing with customers, as you've mentioned.
-- Trading your books in at a local store.
The easiest option may be to trade your books in at a used bookshop for different books as store credit. Stores may give you 25 percent to 50 percent credit toward something else in the store, but usually won't pay cash for your books.
-- Donating your books to a charity or "Friends of the Library" group. If the financial return is not important, consider donating the books to a local library or charity, who may be willing to pick them up. You can get a tax deduction for donating books. Books donated in this way are often resold to the public, providing much-needed cash for libraries and charities to fund their operations.
-- Selling the whole collection on eBay.
Another option is for you to sell the whole collection as a bulk lot in the "wholesale" section of eBay. This could be a quick way for your to unload your books. You could ship the whole collection to the winning bidder via Postal Service Media Mail (book rate), which is fairly cheap. However, if you don't already have a track record as an eBay seller, you might have trouble attracting bids on the auction.
I would not recommend selling the books individually on eBay for a variety of reasons. The prices would be lower, on average, than you would get at the fixed price on Amazon, and eBay customers are notoriously high-maintenance -- meaning constant e-mails, questions, etc.
-- Textbooks buyback brokers.
One other option for selling used academic books has become popular recently -- online book resellers who offer cash for your books. A number of these companies are targeting college students who want a convenient way to dispose of their old textbooks.
These companies ask you to type in the ISBNs of your books. If your book is on their "buy" list, they'll quote the price they're willing to pay you. If you accept the offer, they'll send you a postage-paid mailer. These services are not a great deal because the price you'll get for the books isn't very good, and you'll still have the burden of cataloging the books and shipping them.
Before you make a final decision, you might consider listing a few of the books on Amazon Marketplace, just to test the waters. Selling your books this way may less of a hassle than you expect. It's a pretty simple process to set up a seller account on Amazon. They'll charge you a 15 percent commission plus a 99-cent fee on each sale. If you don't have any sales, you won't pay anything. The other major online venue, eBay, has a lower commission structure, but you must pay some fees before you begin selling.
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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