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Selling Books for Extra Income
By Jay | March 2, 2008
My regular readers may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much lately. I’ve been busier than usual with my day job. And, as I wrote a few days ago, I’ve been implementing an idea I had for selling books on the internet.
I’ve written about how I occasionally find books on the street that people are getting rid of, and how I’ve been listing these books on Amazon.com to make a bit of extra money. Also, a thrift shop nearby sells used books, and occasionally a recently-published textbook appears on the shelves. I’ve had god luck with these, so will usually buy them if the copyright date is 2005 or later. Every once in a while I’ll get stuck with a worthless book. Since they only cost a dollar, I figure this is part of the risk.
But I work in Technology, and last month started thinking that there must be some way to look up prices of a book on a Blackberry or other PDA. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if I could download database of books and their prices into my PDA and have some sort of miniature scanner that I could use to scan the barcodes on the backs of books at my local thrift shop?
Well, I decided to do some Googling and found out that I’m not the only person to have had this idea. There is a product called A Seller Tool which does exactly what I just described. The problem was cost: the model with a hand held scanner costs about $1,000. So I went back & forth whether to buy one for a couple weeks.
About 2 weeks ago, I found a box of Law Books and, listed them for sale on Amazon.Com for almost a thousand dollars, and sold most of them in two days. This was my cue: take the money and buy the scanner.
So I put the order in for my new book scanner. I even paid extra to have it Fedexed. And I’m glad I did, as I’ve made the price of the scanner back and then some. The day it arrived, I stopped off at the local thrift store, went through some stacks of books and found 50 or so that priced over $20 on Amazon. I paid $2 each, and asked for and received a 10% discount. Then, this past Saturday, there was a book sale at a local church. I showed up 10 minutes before it opened with my trusty scanner. Within an hour I had 3 bags full of books, all of which priced at $20+ on Amazon. I bought about 200 books, and have listed them for about $4,000. And a quarter of these books have sold so far.
So my life for the past two weeks as been this: buy, list, pack, ship. Go to sleep. Wake up. Race to my day job. Work all day. Leave work. Buy, list, pack, ship. Go to sleep. Wake up. And start all over again. There has been no time for anything else. But I have been making money!
If you like books, and you want to make some extra money, I recommend buying one of A Seller Tool’s packages. But there are caveats. First, it’s not easy money. It is hard work standing in a crowded room scanning hundreds of books, schlepping them home and listing them, and then packing and shipping. It’s also very competitive. A lot of people have had the same idea and have these scanners. Other people at book sales don’t have scanners but watch people who do like hawks. I actually had people try to grab books from my bag of scanned books at the church book sale last weekend. Not just once, but several times.
And, while there is some “extra” money to be made, I wouldn’t quit my day job. It is just that: Extra Income. I found some excellent buys at the local thrift shop. But after 5 visits and about 200 books, I’ve pretty much tapped the place out. New York City has a lot of thrift shops and I’ve been making the rounds. But if you live in a place with only 1 or 2 thrift shops within 50 miles, you probably won’t make enough money to pay for the scanner.
Lastly, over the past few months I’ve noticed that prices on Amazon are coming down. The market is getting more competitive and, with the current economic problems, more people are selling their possessions. So I don’t know how much longer there will be money in books. But for now, I’ll keep on buying, listing, packing and shipping, and see where it takes me.
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Topics: Book Selling, Business, Work |
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Hey Jay,
What an ingenuous way to make some extra money! I don’t think I’ll go invest in a $1000 scanner but I’ve got a mountain of books at home that I might just have to start selling on Amazon. This extra money might be a great way to get your emergency fund banked up to where you wanted it to be.
Just don’t forget to blog every now and then.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
what a great idea! i was thinking though that it might be good karma to give some of the church book money to the church. it seems a little bit like taking money from a worthy cause but maybe im reading it wrong.
on another subject, how is your weight loss coming along? i think you should do an update to your sidebar.
love your blog, keep it up. :)
March 8th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Oh, this sale is advertised in book dealer resources and believe me, the dealers were there. I never saw such a free-for-all! But I’d say that the church made a fortune from the sale, too. I know that I spent over $100…
My weight has been flatlining for the past three months. Which is strange because I’ve been eating more and exercising less than usual. But it stays stubbornly at 240lbs. Spring is in the air though, and this is the time of year when I always start getting out and exercising more, and pare down my diet. I’m sure I’ll have a good update next month!