Stealing Books-A Bookscout's Guide To Book Collecting

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Sections
  Introduction
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Appendix 1
  Appendix 2
  Appendix 3
  Appendix 4

Chapter 7 - Selling Your Books

Selling Your Books

After experimenting with different methods of packing, padded mailers seem to be the easiest and most cost effective. They can be bought in bulk for 15 cents to 25 cents each. I have seen many sellers cutting old boxes down, and shipping in these, but when you take into account the amount of effort involved, it just makes more sense to spend 20 cents for a mailer. The mailers I use are lined with bubble wrap, and the sizes I use most are size 0 for pocketsize paperback, size 1 for larger pocket size paperbacks, and smaller size trade paperbacks, size 2 for most other soft covers and many hardbacks, and size 4 for most anything else that won’t fit in the others.

After buying lots of books at the library bags sale, or elsewhere, you are bound to end up with a lot of common books that are listed at Amazon by the hundreds starting at the price of a penny. Something you can do with these, is sort them by genre, and box them up. For example, you might have a box of mysteries, a box of science fiction, and maybe a box of general literature. Make sure the box is less than seventy pounds which is the limit for USPS media mail. You can list these as box-lots on eBay. The title for the auction might be something like “Huge box lot of mystery books 25lbs”. If some of the books are old, be sure to include the word vintage. Within in the description of the auction, you can mention something like all books are in good condition except where noted. And then list the authors and titles similar to this:

John Grisham-The Firm
John Grisham-The Pelican Brief
Tom Clancy-The Hunt For Red October (ex-lib)
Martha Grimes- The Old Contemptibles
…

Weigh the box, and then go to www.usps.com to find out how much shipping would be for the box. Generally when I have filled a paper box with paperbacks, the average weight has been about 25-27 pounds. When I find the shipping amount, I will usually pad the cost by a couple bucks to give me room for error due to weighing a box of books on a bathroom scale. Then when I list it on Amazon, I have generally put a starting bid of $4.99 or $9.99. Lot of science fiction books consistently sell the best, with mystery, horror, and literature also doing well. Book for book, my best lots have been when I boxed up a bunch of John D. McDonald paperbacks together. I have also done well with a box of James Bond paperbacks.
I have also boxed up lots of science fiction book club editions, and those did very well also.

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