Reader Question: Is it worth it to sell books and videos on eBay?

Jenny {who happens to have a brilliant blog writes.}

In the midst of the grand clear out which is happening in our house at the moment (and which isn’t so grand!), I’m wondering about selling some stuff on eBay. But I’m also wondering if it’s worth it when we’re mostly talking about old books and videos. What do you reckon?

Hi Jenny-

With a little research it could well be worth the effort to sell books and videos. Once I bought a book for twenty-five cents at a local thrift store and turned around and sold it for $249.00 on eBay (that’s an extreme example, but you never know what gems you might have at home).

So how does one go about researching their books? I generally just run the titles of books that I might sell on eBay through AddALL dot com - which is a book pricing search engine for online sellers. It will give you a run down on how many copies of your book are out there and the going rates on several online book selling sites. When you go to the AddALL home page click on the second link- for used and out of print books to do most of your research. I usually sell very few current titles and mainly just use the used book and oop search engine.

Now that you have the prices of online sellers in hand for a certain title and it looks like a book may be worth selling, there are some special considerations you need to think through.

These include;

Condition: Is your book in good enough condition to sell? I tend to never sell torn or written in books, no matter how rare. I can’t stand returns from picky buyers.

Edition: It might seem easy to figure out which edition you have, but sometimes it’s a bit tricky and it does matter to buyers. If I am having a really hard time figuring out which edition or print run I have, I sometimes opt to post a picture of the page with the publishing information in my eBay listing. This helps the buyer who knows exactly what they are looking for make up their mind about purchasing the book in question.

(To take a good picture of a book page- turn off the flash and set your digital camera to close up.)

Fees: Will you make enough on the book to cover eBay fees? Peruse their charts before selling. eBay has recently lowered the price of selling Media on their auction site.

Auction or Buy It Now: I assume you don’t have a store and therefore can’t place a book in your inventory. However, sometimes you don’t want to let a book’s price be settled in an auction. You might not want to get $10 for a book that’s worth $60 and most auctions start low to attract bidders. Instead of putting a reserve price on your auction, which tends to scare off bidders- run your book for a week in a Buy It Now style listing for the price you would like to see it sell at. You never know- some collector might desire your book so much that they may take you up on your requested price right away.

Last but not least, check your book title on eBay. It doesn’t do any good to list a book on eBay that you found out has a going rate of fifty bucks on AddALL only to find out some novice seller is selling 3 copies of the book at one time and starting them all out for one dollar. The best thing to do in that case is wait until the excess copies of the book you plan to sell get sold on eBay or drop off in the listings.

As far as the videos goes, that’s another, much shorter post. Hope this helps and I have some catchup reading on your blog to do.

~Michelle