I was dumb during my undergraduate days. When I did buy textbooks for my classes, I just returned them back to the bookstore to get back cash that was 75% less than the original retail price that I paid. Boy was I a moron. While I refuse to purchase any books for my graduate program that I am currently in, I still do have quite a library of books that I have barely used, all sitting in my lovely cube at work.
Last month I decided to dabble with Amazon.com and post up some of the books. I listed four books to sell and then forgot about them. A week later, I got an email for me to ship the book out immediately! I actually sold something! I surprised myself, so then I immediately listed a bunch of other textbooks I had collecting dust.
The first book I sold for $55, then last weekend I got a notice for another one of my technical books that was sold for $28. One more sale of a book and I believe they call that a winning streak! I mentioned it to a co-worker of mine and he gave me a bunch of books from his cube to list and he said we could split profits 50/50.
There is a little bit of strategy involved when listing your books on Amazon. Make sure you check the prices that other people list your book at because you want to offer something less than the norm. A brand new version of your book at a lesser price than the other listings is more attractive for a user to select. All about supply and demand right?
My recommendation to you is to take the 10 minutes to gather all of your books together and enter in their ISBN numbers into your seller's account. Once you do that, your work is done. Just set it and forget it! Especially with school season coming up around the corner, many people will be looking for cheaper alternatives when it comes to textbooks! Boycott your school's bookstore and surf the web for the best price. Just make sure you do it ahead of time so you are not sitting in class without the required materials. If you did that, you would be acting like me and that is something I definitely do not recommend!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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3 comments:
I usually list at the lowest price. Then I check in the day after to see if I have gotten underbid (some of the pros monitor continuously). If so, I will lower again. However, be careful about getting dragged into a bidding war. If you look at the used list, you have a bidding war if there are 2 or 3 really low offers compared to the rest. Of course if you're buying then that's exactly the time to buy,
I sold some of my books on Half.com recently. More of the recent financial books I have already read. But, I went to list some of my like brand new hardbound fiction books and they were only going for 0.75 cents. I was crushed. Needless to say, I am hanging on to that collection!
@money funk - I have a ton of those books at home. My mom has a collection of like 300 fiction novels (the ones with those hunky couples on the front!) and none of them will go for more than a dollar online.
@Early Retirement Extreme - There def is a competitive market on these selling websites, just in the same way people compete to sell the same products on eBay. You def need to think like a buyer sometimes to figure out what people really want.
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