Book selling on ebay — worth it?

[WBird]

I won about 100 books at auction for $5, so not a big investment. Most are worth no more than about $2 plus shipping. I have a Premium store and I use all my listings every month. Most are probably not worth listing. I guess the people who sell books on Amazon for one cent plus shipping are doing it on such a wide scale that it’s worth it? If you’ve figured out a way to make that model work on ebay, I’d like to hear about it.

[MyCottage]

Depends on the books. I’ve had some luck lotting similar books together. You’ve got 100 books, even at $2 a piece, that’s $200 for a $5 investment. You can lot by author, genre, subject matter….media mail shipping keeps the shipping cost relatively low.

[antarestar]

People also like books as decor. If they are older with fabric covers, try lotting by color.

[almasty]

Seconding the lot suggestion. Some lots can actually do pretty well, with the right keywords.

[Sigilini]

Here are my examples of my own book sales. Hope this helps.

There are a couple of other threads on this forum about selling books. There is lots of really valuable info there as well that I found very helpful.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/162912611495
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162917657048
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162902483353
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163014288436
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162920238326
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162926784907

Best of luck!

[MyCottage]

Sigilini,
Good examples!

[Sigilini]

Thank you MyCottage!

[WBird]

Thanks, all. I was reluctant to “list it and forget it” and wind up paying 10 cents a month for years on a $2 sale, but your ideas are good and I will see if I can maximize this lot with your suggestions.

[Liz]

There is definitely money to be made in used books. I specifically look for giant boxes of books at auctions. No one wants to deal with them because of the weight, so I can get lots of books for very cheap. Victorian era books sell quickly, and books in foreign languages also do fairly well for me. Also small, vintage, leather-bound bibles sell easily for me. I’m always happy to take home a boxful of Jesus from the auction!

These sales all came from the same $30 tableful of books I bought, (around 200 books).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/232749245410
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332628717528
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232735874034
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332629520272
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232700693844
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332635277942
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332634527401
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232735866114
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232689798412

Books are one of my favorite things to sell. Cheap to source, easy to ship, and a very low return rate. Knock wood, I’ve only ever had one book be returned.

[Sigilini]

JUST SHARING

Just sold a very interesting booklet and wanted to share. I had it on auction for a long time (relisted it several times over) and it just sold for $45.95 (free shipping). I got it for free along with a ton of other books that have been selling over time. The only reason for auction was that I was using my free listings, no other reason.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/163128956879

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Sigilini.

[almasty]

I LOVE finding Kwajalein Atoll / Marshall Islands military books and ephemera. They will always sell quickly, and for good money. Surprised yours took a bit to sell – might have been too expensive off the bat for some people, but that booklet does look fairly scarce.

[MyCottage]

Yep, I love finding stuff like that! The downside for me is, I also love going down the research rabbit hole with stuff like that—-which can take a lot of time. Still, I enjoy it, so…..that’s one of the perks of doing ebay.

[Clarity]

As a bibliophile, I do love selling books! They are a long tail item that’s for sure, but you can find lots of stock for little or no cash investment. With Amazon’s increase in seller fees, I no longer list books that sell for less than $10. There aren’t very many penny sellers left on Amazon. Per J & R’s suggestion, I experimented with FBA. Boy, that was a pain. I have given up on FBA. I can list books so much faster and store them myself versus messing with FBA. I’ve gotten most of my Amazon listings converted over to Ebay. I now have over 18,000 listings on Ebay – mostly books. After reading about six-bit and wonderlister here on the forum, I am thinking about trying one of them out for my lisitngs.

[Nancy]

Clarity what kind of books do you sell? Do you find it hard to compete with the $4.24 plus free shipping sellers or do you only sell books that are harder to come by?

[almasty]

I was thinking of selling on FBA right around the time they started increasing fees heavily a year ago. Even still, I had 4 bags set aside of low-rank (under 1 million), $10+ up (on FBA) textbooks that would have sold well. Since all the new fee increases went into effect, I would have made only $1 or $2 per book. I just donated them instead of dealing with them.

Are you seeing better sales on Ebay for Amazon type books? You do have an advantage with much less 3rd party sellers competing on Ebay, plus no FBA to also compete with. I currently have 22,000 books listed on Amazon, in addition to the nearly 10k books and ephemera I have up on Ebay. It sucks that you can no longer list the books on Half.com and have them come through to Ebay that way. Now it seems you have to directly list each item individually on Ebay yourself? They have made it really difficult to list ISBN on here.

Years ago, I had another website FTP upload the higher value books from my Amazon inventory directly on Ebay, but that would be impossible now with the picture requirements. That, and coming up with an entirely new account that would be able to instantly upload with the restrictions they place on new accounts. I have also thought about uploading these listings to my large Ebay account that can absorb the addition listings and listing “values,” but it would be a hassle to have both accounts merged in such a way.

[ChristineR]

I like to sell popular children and young adult series (complete if I can get them all) as a lot. Good item to look for at yard sales. It’s a deal for the buyer vs. buying them individually. I also stumbled on to this vintage out of print phonics set recently. Crazy prices because some famous home school teacher endorsed.

[Sigilini]

ChristineR: any examples you can link to of what you mentioned (children’s series books)? Would love to see what you think is worth picking up.

SoCalJoe told me to look out for bibles and he was right. I just sold a vintage Torah for $35.00 that I got an estate sale for about 1.00 or less. And I have sold several bibles in the last few months.

Here is the one from today: https://www.ebay.com/itm/163113472767

[ChristineR]

I know about the bibles but just can’t get into them. I usually pick up the ones my kids owned or liked. Here’s a couple of mine (incomplete 70s, 80s series) and some others I have sold in the past. You could google young adult series or go to Amazon, etc. and check out what’s popular. Or reverse it and wait until you find a whole set together and scan it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/332689322016
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232809509320
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Pendragon-Young-Adult-Fantasy-Book-Series-Lot-of-10-Complete-HC-PB-Awesome/273281218649?hash=item3fa0d47859:g:-mIAAOSwxllbHYoy
https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Book-Set-Alex-Rider-Series-1-10-Complete-Young-Adult-Spy-Anthony-Horowitz/202361380128?hash=item2f1dad9d20:g:h78AAOSwQQlbFseE
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Crank-Complete-Collection-Set-1-10-Young-Adult-Fiction-Series-by-Ellen-Hopkins/181935803423?hash=item2a5c380c1f:g:uh8AAOSwLzdWT2XD
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rainbow-Magic-Fairies-HUGE-LOT-of-72-Chapter-Books-by-Daisy-Meadows-Some-NEW/253505271326?hash=item3b0617761e:g:0QAAAOSwSKtadNHV

[Sigilini]

Thank you ChristineR that helps a lot. This give me a starting point of reference and I can go on from here as you suggested. So often I come upon huge lots of books (just this weekend I saw three dumpsters full while looking for shipping boxes — no joke, boxes and boxes of books!) but it can be overwhelming.

[Vintage Lacy]

My brother has made really good money selling kid’s chapter books and other collections of childrens books on Ebay. He finds them at garage sales for 25 cents or less and tries to buy them by the box. He then sells them in lots.

I do quite well on Etsy with books, although I have sold quite a few on Ebay too. I also try to buy books by the box. I used to sell tons of books on Amazon but have mostly moved off there because of the cheap sellers. I don’t see the point of making a profit of fifty cents or a dollar. Amazon has also changed their search engine so when you look for an older title of a book you mostly see reprints or newer versions.

[Clarity]

I sell any and all books. I don’t bother competing with the low ball listers, ie $4.94 plus free shipping. I list directly on to Amazon and only list a book if it is priced at $10 or higher. If my Amazon listings have a photo, I then migrate them over to Ebay.

Ebay definitely has a bigger audience than Amazon. I sell a wider variety of books on Ebay than Amazon. I’ve also noticed an uptick in magazine sales on both sites.

If I find something special, like for example, a true first of Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (I’ve had a few) I’ll list that directly onto Ebay with lots of photos. My big sale this year was a first edition of an old children’s book, I had it listed for $1000 and took an offer of $800.

Full sets of kids series make for good sales on Ebay too. Oh, and those phonic books can get high prices for individual books. I’ve sold some of those for more than $20 a book. Great money for a beginning reader book.

If you list your books at Alibris they will list your inventory on Ebay under their name.

[michael d]

I primarily sell books on amazon and ebay. Defiantly a market for books on ebay. I wouldn’t say a larger audience than amazon. Your main stream, run of the mill type books, will do better on amazon quicker sales for higher dollar amounts. Ebay has a better marketplace for first editions, collectable, pre-isbn books or lots.

I use software to cross list all of my books, 12,000 book listings. Same books and same price on all venues. Sales percentage wise is 80% amazon, 12% ebay, 8% other (alibris, Barnes and nobels ect..)

Almasty, you can still send in books to FBA for a decent profit. Just don’t chase the lowest price, since you win the buy box over non-FBA listers you can raise the price to out-compete the low ball prices. I wouldn’t send in anything higher than 500k rank. Price $3-4 over the lowest price non-FBA seller to make up the difference in fees and it will still sell consistently.

[Nancy]

Michael what software do you use to crosslist?

[almasty]

From those stats, it doesn’t seem worth cross listing on both platforms – unless you have an enormous turnover on Ebay, even with those high Amazon sales. I’ve also found that even with posting on other sites, Amazon still draws in the majority of book buyers.

Fillz is one of the most common sites for online booksellers to post on multiple sites.

[Sigilini]

ChristineR @ #44840 (above) thanks to your good advice and examples I picked up a part of a book series at a rummage sale this weekend. I listed them and they sold immediately! Here is the link https://www.ebay.com/itm/163174957304?ViewItem=&item=163174957304

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