I recently attempted to sell some of my myriad books at the local swap meet, but met with little success. I was even told by someone that I was charging too much, that she could get the same books at the Goodwill for only $1. I felt like telling her to go buy them there, then!! At the swap meet I actually had more people ask if the bookcase was for sale than check out the books on it ...
I also tried to sell some of the books at a garage sale, where I had a bit more luck. At the garage sale (because it was windy) I left the books on the ground in a bin with their spines facing up. Don't know if this was the reason I had more success or not. Sorry for the bad pic, that was a crazy windy day and I think I couldn't focus because I was going to blow over!!
I have tried to sell books on eBay, with limited success. The best way to sell on eBay is to have a "lot" of similar books so that the shipping seems lower to the bidder. I got rid of most my decorating and crafts books this way several years ago. But, I still had some left that I ended up donating to Goodwill (perhaps that lady from the swap meet found them!!) I have several random books up for sale on a free online storefront (BluJay.com), but they have sat there for 2 years now. I will try some of the better books from my group on eBay this week again to see how they sell.
So, when I heard about an online site (Cash4Books.net) where I could enter my ISBN numbers and they would tell me if they would buy my book, I was excited. Surely with all my books there would be several that they would buy!! NOT!! I searched over 30 ISBNs, including a couple of audio books, and only TWO books came up indicating that they would buy them. Of course they offered me more than I would probably get at a garage sale, so I went through the motions. They offer free shipping (Media Mail), that is a great thing because I wouldn't have been able to afford to ship the books to them for the amount they were offering me.
The two books they purchased were newer books with the ISBN-13 only, so I figured that was why they were interested in these two. However, I tried some others with ISBN-13s and they didn't want those either. So, I was able to get $4.58 for two books (one SciFi reprint and a book about Egyptology). I will mail off the box tomorrow (with their paid shipping label), and they will send me some money via PayPal (they offered the option of a check or PayPal). I hope all will go smoothly, but they could always reject the books once they have them, or pay less for them than quoted. I will let you know when I have my $4.58 in my PayPal account!!
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