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• Monthly fee for selling 1-500 books: $25 After you become a bookseller, you are able to close your account at any time. They are unable to pro-rate subscription fees. However, so long as you let them know about the closure before the 8th day of any given month, they can refund you the fees for that month.

• I set up an account with Abebooks.com and I sell a lot of our books there.  I do not know how economical it is, they seem to have a lot of fees, so much so that I won't list anything under $5, as it is not worth it.  I keep some books for an annual book sale in the library

• I can't speak for my institution, but I have had wonderful personal experiences selling textbooks [using the Book Buyback feature: http://buyback.abebooks.com/] to AbeBooks. They offered really good prices. No fee, and they paid shipping costs for me. I don't know if they would charge shipping for larger buybacks.

• We sell the more valuable books through ABE books. I usually put things there that I think will go for at least $50. Otherwise, it's not worth it.  I have generated over $40,000 in this way. We also give many to Better World Books. This doesn't generate a lot of income.

• We sell these kinds of things on Amazon. We've had what I think is reasonable success because some of the titles are pretty esoteric as you can imagine. We always sell the cheap stuff in the library.  We started in January I think and have sold about 10 plus books. Not bad for a small library.
  

• We sell on Amazon.com (it does not cost anything other than their percentage). We only sell ones that are worth all the work of wrapping and sending etc.- which generally means higher value ($70 or so) but if it's small and can slip in an envelope for very little postage and $$ we'll do $35 or so). We have some volunteers. One searches Amazon to get a sense of the prices for a book; the other posts the ones we decide to sell on Amazon--and, when she can, takes care of coming in and wrapping them and taking to the post office (we don't have a "mail room" staff here, and we need to put "Delivery Confirmation" on each package.)Once your account is set up with Amazon it's a breeze.  For using their service without a monthly fee, one can only list books which are already listed.  If you're willing to pay a monthly fee (we are not) you can list any book. They need your institution's bank account info and an institutional credit card to set it all up; therefore our accounting dept. got involved. The ones which do not qualify go into our "Ongoing Book Sale" (a book truck near the entrance of the library).  We made $1,500 last month, thanks to Amazon & a couple of dealers who came in.  We're doing major weeding, so we have lots (too many) books!

• I sell stuff on Ebay and Amazon for myself - and I can make several suggestions -- first, look up some of the titles you are considering to sell.  Using Amazon, you can see what other copies are being sold and for how much.   The same thing for Ebay, which also allows you to do a sold search and see if other copies have been sold.  Ebay also owns half.com.   If you sell on Ebay, you will need a Paypal account.   You will pay an insertion fee for listing the book (and it depends on what your starting bid will be).  You will also pay a final value fee if the book sells.  Starting in July, Ebay's final value fee will include the postage cost.  (YUCK). Here in the USA, one can send a book using media mail.  If you sell the book outside the US, the postage will be higher as there is no separate rate for books.  First class international and heavy books will cost a lot.
  

• Amazon does not charge you to list, and they have a certain rate for postage, but sometimes the book's postage costs more than what Amazon has allowed for, and you pay the difference.  Amazon does take a percentage of the sale price.    You can link your bank account or checking account to Amazon, and get paid directly by Amazon.  They pay after you notify the shipper that the book has been shipped. Ebay owns Paypal.   You set up a paypal account (linked to your own financial account), and Paypal also takes a cut of the sale!
  

• We are not allowed to sell donated books, even if they were never part of our collection. As I understand our state law, once we accept them as donations they are considered University property, even if they aren't accessioned. We aren't allowed to have book sales of our withdrawn titles OR donated books. At this point our only option is to send them off to university surplus (I think that's where they go...). At some point they presumably get auctioned off as a lot, not sold individually, and the proceeds don't come back to the library. I think this state law is meant to discourage people from selling off university property. It also prevents us from generating a bit of extra cash to build our library collections. Oh well! I am always careful to explain this to donors BEFORE they make a donation. Anyway, I wonder if other states / provinces have this restriction as well?

-- 
Margaret English


Librarian
Department of Art Library
University of Toronto
100 St. George St. - 6th floor
Toronto, ON.
M5S 3G3

(416) 978-5006

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