How To Sell Used Books on the Internet

I have written this guide on selling secondhand books on the internet to do my little bit for the web community.  This guide is written from an Australian perspective, similar guides on selling used books  mainly cover overseas markets, the second-hand book market is a little different in Australia. This document is a work in progress that I will update from time to time. Last updated 3 April 2011.

You are welcome to link to this page from your site but please do not copy it. Many hours of work have gone into this document plus it will be continually updated as the used bookselling business evolves and the content is improved.

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. How much money can I earn in selling second-hand books on the web?

3. Is the iPad \ Kindle Going to Kill The Secondhand Book Market? 

4. The British Are Coming Here... 

5. Is selling used books on the net for me?

6. What kind of second-hand books should I look for?

7. Where to find used books to sell on the internet 

8. Which websites should I used to sell my books on?

9. Selling Used Books on Ebay 

10. Selling Used Books Specialist Used Book Websites such as Abebooks & Alibris

11. Selling Second-hand Books on other Auction sites such as Quicksales

12. Selling used books on booksandcollectibles.com.au

13. Selling second-hand books on classified ad websites

14. Selling used books on your own website

15. Splitting your inventory across multiple websites

16. Listing the same books on multiple websites

17. Average selling price per book

18. Setting prices on secondhand books

19. Managing your inventory of secondhand books

20. Dealing with Customers

21. Postage charges on second-hand books

22. Packing your books

23. Will customers lie about receiving their books?

Introduction

A veteran secondhand bookseller said to me he had been in the business for thirty-five years and hence considered himself a beginner. It is that kind of business. No bookdealer knows everything, everybody does it a little differently. I have been selling secondhand books on eBay and elsewhere for just a few years so I am by no means and expert, but I do make a living off it, so here's my two cents. I hope my two cents makes you a few dollars. At least.

How much money can I earn selling second-hand books on the internet?

There's a bunch of trashy ebooks around promising untold riches in the online second-hand book business, but I am yet to meet a rich book-dealer. I quote my old mate Ross who has been selling books basically forever: “if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.” 

With a few months experience and plenty of work you can easily make an extra $100 so per week selling used books on the internet as a hobby. It's a lot tougher to pull a full time wage, it's a lot of work for not a lot of money, but it is doable.

For example, it is easy to trawl a few garage sales and find a handful of books on a Saturday morning and make a nice little profit. But as a full-time gig you need to find at least 100 saleable books per week, every week, week in week out, this is more of a challenge. Plus as turnover increases and your hobby becomes a business, you will need to start paying income tax, and once you hit $75k in turnover (including postage) then welcome to the world of GST and BAS forms. Yech!

Most bookdealers I know do it because they love books and they love the business. And they are slightly mad (myself included).

I sell second-hand books on the net full-time. I make enough to have a nice, quiet, comfortable life, though certainly not enough to support a family. I've been in the corporate world and made decent money but hated it, I would rather earn less and work from home. It's a lifestyle decision.

In my experience, internet book-selling works best as a secondary income or hobby. The best money I have made was while working full time and doing eBay at night, but man, it can be a drag listing and packing your books after a hard day's work (my day job was selling on eBay for someone else too!) My brother-in-law has it sweet: he has some well paid consulting work that he mostly does from home a couple of days a week, mixed with a couple of days of eBay at home he is well sorted and gets to pick the kids up from school everyday. That's when it works best.

Is The iPad \ Kindle or e-Reader Going to Kill The Book Market?

IThere will always be a market for printed books, but just how big or small that market will be is anybody's guess. We are confident that there will be enough demand to make money on used books, but will the supply of secondhand books dry up? If most folks are buying ebooks then where will the used books come from? Will it become like the vinyl record market? There is plenty of demand for vinyl lps but they are getting harder and harder to find. It's rare to see a crate of unmolested lp records at a garage sale these days. Of course rare and antique books will always be worth money, if you can find them, see this Bob Gould interview for inspiration.

But don't worry about the eBook just yet, there's more immediate threats: the rising Australian dollar and the bloody poms.

The British Are Coming Here...

For a long time the Australian online bookseller was sheltered by a low Australian dollar and high overseas postage costs. This meant that buying books from overseas was prohibitively expensive for the Australian consumer. But now the dollar is high (down Fido!), overseas sellers can compete on the Australian market. And that's only half the problem. The UK Postal Service slashed international postage charges to bulk sellers, so now a bookseller in the UK can post a book to an Australian customer for the same price or cheaper than we can. Meanwhile Australia Post keeps upping postal charges year in year out. So now we compete with overseas mega-businesses with massive inventories, with such economies of scale they can get by on very slim margins. The online used book businesses is getting tougher and tougher. But then again, no business ever gets easier.

While we may be getting squeezed on cost, Australian booksellers can at least compete on service. Let your buyers know you they don't have to wait for slower overseas shipping, and that your books are on hand and ready to post straight away. And by crikey make sure you post those books straight away. Many of the overseas mega-booksellers back-order their books and often run out of stock. It's not all bad :-)

Is selling used books on the net for me?

The beauty of the the internet book-selling business is that you can get into it with very little capital investment: assuming you already have a car and a computer. You can probably get your first load of books for free by raiding your own shelves and asking your friends and family to donate any spare books.

Selling second-hand books online gives you a flexible lifestyle and the ability to work from home. I also enjoy getting out and looking for books, it is also interwoven with my passion for finding Sydney's finest 'hole in the wall' Asian eateries (see our food blog if interested), as well as 'urban orienteering'. My partner also enjoys it and it makes for a great life.

The downside is that selling used books online involves a lot of work. If I calculated my wage at an hourly rate I would be far better off packing supermarket shelves. Plus there are many, many, many hours alone in the spare room typing inane details into the computer and packing books for the post. Some folks are fine with this kind of work, others find it unbearable. I'm a hermit, the type of fella who is happy with his own company, but even I get tired of working on my own now and again. But for me it beats the hell out a regular job.

If you are at home looking after the kiddies and have a spare time then it is definitely worth looking into: providing you able to get to the post office at least a couple of times a week, and you are able to get out and hunt for fresh stock regularly.

Further considerations are the amount of space available to you and the effect on your loved ones. Books generally take a while to sell, so to make reasonable money you need to keep at a few hundred books on hand at the very least. Most established booksellers have a few thousand books listed online. A few hundred books fills a few bookshelves and it will take over the spare room. Plus you need space for packing materials, a space to pack your books and preferably a dedicated space for your desk. How will your cohabitants feel about this? And also how will your loved ones feel about you spending your weekends trawling garage sales and markets for books? Having the support of your other half is vital.

What kind of secondhand books should I look for?

Books are everywhere. That's the sweet thing about this business. The catch is that most of them won't sell in a million years. Learning what will sell and what won't is the key.

The books that make the best money are the rare ones. I almost forgot to mention this: it seems so obvious, but to the newcomer it can be easy to overlook. A lot of newbies head straight for bestsellers, which is great if they are currently in the top 10 best seller list and $35 at Dymocks, but most bestsellers have flooded the market by the time they reach the secondhand circut. 

A prime example is 'The Da Vinci Code', yes it is worldwide smash hit but look it up on eBay, there are hundreds of copies not selling, or selling for a dollar at best. At any time there is a bunch of titles in oversupply that are everywhere on the secondhand circuit, learn what they are and avoid them. What you should be looking for is books that are rare, scarce or in high demand. 

I've read many 'how to sell used books on the internet' guides and they all offer conflicting information when it comes to what kind of books to sell. For instance I have read some guides that suggest avoiding romance books at all costs, yet there booksellers who specialise in romance books and do a fine, if not whopping trade.

It is best to start with the type of books you are interested in, doing some research and just giving it a go. At first you may not make much money, you may even lose a little, but within months you will develop an eye for books that will sell, and after months and years of buying and selling you develop a massive book database in your brain. You will know not only what tons of books are worth, but also how long they will take to sell.

Most booksellers develop certain niches or areas of expertise. Personally I just buy books that look interesting to me, chances are someone else will. Every bookseller I know has a different niche, or range of niches, you just gotta get into it and find your bookseller mojo.

Knowing all the different niches inside-out is difficult: for instance there is good money in used textbooks but you really need to be on top of what books are current and in-demand. I certainly don't. There's good money in kid's books but some will fly out the doors while others will never sell. Become an expert in your your field, then branch out. Most of us end up as generalists as it is not easy to specialise in one particular field.

With the high Australian dollar, increased global competition and the god-damned e-reader, antique and collectable books look like the area to specialise in. Ideally we would all love to be able to sell a few rare first editions every week worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, but you don't find these floating around Vinnies by the box. These come from private collections and specialty book auctions. It requires a lot of knowledge and experience to work that game, good luck to you if you have it :-)

Where to find used books to sell on the internet 

Looking for books is the favourite part of the job for most secondhand book-dealers: there is nothing more pleasant than finding a nice haul of great books from cheery folks at a garage sale while getting about on a lovely sunny spring Saturday morning. Though sometimes it is tedious, tiring, and without results.

Personally we find the best sources are garage sales, car boot sales, fetes and trash and treasure markets etc. But we also find that the sources of the best bargains are also the most work: sometimes we may hit a dozen garage sales on a Saturday morning and come back with zilch, nadda, nothing. And now and again you hit the jackpot.

Check your Saturday newspaper, the Trading Post online and the Gumtree website and hit the pavements on Saturday morning with a vengeance. Carry a stack of those green reusable flat bottomed shopping bags with you, they are gems for carrying books. (If you are on foot then get yourself a backpack, I have an old-fashioned top loading hiking pack that I can carry a good forty or so books in).

Op shops are still a viable source for secondhand books but many shops are starting to ask for money than we can sell them for, that's the case in Sydney anyway. Op shops often have a 'book lady' or 'book man' that comes it once a week to price the books and often they buy the best books. Ideally you want to be that 'book man' or 'book lady' – if you can handle the conflict interest (I certainly couldn't). 

General and estate auctions are a great source for both bulk lots and collectable books. I learned the book trade by buying books by the box from general auction houses such as Lawsons and Rafan & Kelaher in Sydney. When you books buy the box you quickly learn about what sells and what doesn't. The downside is that the competition can be steep and prices high, but if you have the patience to wait around till the end you can get some great buys from auctions houses. Check the classifieds and Yellow Pages for auction houses and estate auctions in your area.

Book fairs are great for getting volume, but alas these are becoming more mainstream with higher prices aimed at joe public. The hardcore booksellers get there early, when the doors open it's a stampede, it gets quite intense. 

Some dealers do very well of placing 'books wanted to buy' adds in the paper. This gets you access to the best books in the best condition, but it is a tricky business. The seller will probably expect higher prices in this situation and may have a inflated idea of what the books are worth. Punters will also expect you to be able to instantly know the value of every single book in their collection, not even the most experience bookdealer can do this. There will be some dud leads and wasted days but big rewards.

The net itself is also a great place to hut for deals. If you have the patience you will get some great deals on eBay auctions, and also check for newly listed fixed price items, even the most experienced dealers make mistakes in their pricing. Second tier auction sites such www.Quicksales.com.au as Bidmate are buyers' markets, there are some great deals going there, but lots of chaff to sift through as well.

Every bookseller I know approaches buying in a different way, has different habits and preferences. It is impossible to get to every garage sale, every auction, every market etc (at least in the city it is), there's room for everyone.

Which websites should I used to sell my books on?

There's a zillion different websites where you can list your books but only a handful are worthwhile for Australian Australian sellers. 

For Australian booksellers: your choices boil down to this:

• List them on eBay which will gain you the most sales but costs the most in fees and requires the most work
• List them on a specialist book site or lesser known auction site for much lower fees but with a lower volume of sales.
• Build your own website, this may have high upfront costs but lower fees, and (most likely) low turnover

Whatever venue you choose, make sure you buy a couple of things on the site first to get a feel for how the process works and to get yourself some feedback if you using an auction style site such as eBay or Quicksales.

American and UK dealers are fortunate to have another big option: Amazon. Amazon is a business powerhouse currently firing on all twelve cylinders that attracts massive turnover and the best prices, but alas this avenue is not open to us regular Joes in Australia. I would love to see Amazon open in Australia and give eBay Australia the kick in the trousers but that it needs. On Amazon listing a book is as simple as scanning a barcode or finding it in a list, choosing the condition from the drop-down box, and entering your price. Sigh...

Selling Used Books on Ebay

Unlike the specialist book sites, eBay has stellar brand recognition and attracts everybody: joe public, dealers, collectors, mums, dads, grannies, kids, the works. For Australian book-dealers, eBay is the clear choice in terms of visitor traffic and turnover. Furthermore eBay has recently dropped it's prices for media sellers (books, music and movies) to 5 cents per item per month, 9.9% commission and a $20 per month store fee. This is quite a good deal even if you have a few thousand books.  For the beginner eBay is the best place to start, and you may never find a reason to go anywhere else.

The downside of eBay is that it has a labourious listing process, complex rules and they have a habit of making weird decisions at a drop of a hat that can dramatically affect your business. eBay went through a strange adolescent period for a couple of years after switching CEOs, they were complete self-centred a-holes. For example in late 2009 they slogged booksellers with massive fee increases, only to slash fees a few months later after many of us 'bookies' looked like going out of business, it was extremely stressful and a complete waste of time. But eBay has been a lot better of late, I have no complaints. The fee current fee structure is good value and they have been fair and professional in their dealings. Also they now provide an online catalogue to save you typing in inane book details, though the listing process is still slow.

The most important thing for the budding eBay book-dealer to know is that the fees can really stack up. Don't be one of those chumps who learns the hard way after trying to sell a stack of unsellable books at auction with a gallery picture at $1.10 a pop. Most of the books listed on eBay don't sell. Do a search on completed listings on eBay and you will see what I mean. You need to be choosy about what books you list on eBay, what price you put on them and what method you use to try and sell them.

As a general rule, use the fixed price 'store' format for listings rather than auctions. The novelty of auctions died years ago and people just don't bid like they used to. Most eBay booksellers have an eBay Store and use the 30 day/good till closed format to list most of their books, perhaps sending a few rarer books to auction, and using auctions as a way to promote their store and clear slow moving stock.

The theory is that most people would rather just buy what they want instantly with a fixed price listing rather than fart around with an auction that they may or may not win in five days time, just to save a couple of bucks. But then again I have had items sitting unsold in fixed price 'store' format for year or two that have fetched twice the price when put to auction. Sometimes people bid away at auctions paying far higher prices than identical items available in fixed price. Sometimes auctions do get better prices than fixed price listings but overall you will be much better off using fixed priced listings.

I've been selling on eBay for years and still find things inexplicable. Prices go up and down. Demand goes hot and cold in an instant for no apparent reason. I once sold a book for $60 at auction, sold another copy for the same price, then couldn't even raise 99 cents for the next copy I found!

Selling Used Books Specialist Used Book Websites such as Abebooks & Alibris

There's a bunch of specialist book sites around, most of which are cheap to list on but the sales are slow. These sites are very popular amongst collectors and dealers but barely known by the general public. Therefore these sites are best suited to dealers with large inventories (at least 5-10,000 books) or dealers of collectable books.

These sites are included in searches by the metasites such as bookfinder.com, the general public is not aware of these sites but it does help, particularly for international sales.

Good books generally get better prices on specialist book sites than eBay. Whenever I find rare books and sell them on eBay I need to price them below what appears to be market value to shift them.

Abebooks reigns supreme as having the biggest range of used books on the net, far exceeding even Amazon (who now owns Abebooks). It is also an excellent venue for folks with large inventories: for example you could list a moderate inventory of 7,000 books on Abebooks for $US53 per month, this would cost your around $AUD 370 month on eBay. Listing on Abebooks is very easy, I used their 'Homebase' software which is connected to an online book database, I could simply scan the barcode and the software would retrieve the book details (which sometimes needed correction). One bookdealer said to me that the beauty of Abebooks is that it is 'set and forget' you can list a book on Abebooks and not worry about it for years. eBay on the other hand is a very high maintenance mistress.

The Abebooks website is a bit of a dinosaur with a distinct 1990's vibe about it, but it works. The other downside is an inflexible shipping pricing system which allows you to set one basic rate per country, with the option to ask the customer for more shipping money if required. One thing I like about Abebooks is that when you join they phone you, a lovely lady called Sienna called me all the way from Canada, very impressive when accustomed to the "bugger off" vibes I get from eBay.

There are a number of other sites open to Australia sellers such as Alibris and Biblio. From speaking to other dealers and reading book-dealer forums it seems that Abebooks nets the most sales. I have also heard that buyers on the specialist booksites are much less demanding and require much less hand-holding that eBay buyers.

Selling Second-hand Books on other Auction sites such as Quicksales (Formerly Oztion)

There are a number of eBay clones in Australia, the most successful of which is Quicksales. Quicksales is cheaper to list on that eBay and has an excellent fee structure. But of course there is a catch: Quicksales has nowhere near the traffic and brand recognition that eBay does, though it is growing. There are people getting reasonable turnover on Quicksales but their prices are usually in the sub $5 range: it is very hard to make reasonable money selling books for $2.

A couple of years ago I experimented with using Quicksales for clearing my slow moving stock at low prices but found it wasn't worth the effort. I have found on Quicksales though that if you have good, sought-after books at a fair price you will quickly find a buyer. But these books I can sell on Ebay for more money so I am not really winning. And if your stock is moving slow on eBay it will stand still on Quicksales. Quicksales has an excellent website, it has basically mimicked eBay but it does have a lot of little touches that improve on eBay. But sadly, it just does not have the buyer base to support a good book business, I tried it but canned it.

Selling used books on booksandcollectibles.com.au

If you have some rare books that you are happy to sit out and wait for a good price then www.booksandcollectibles.com.au is an interesting option. I have never used the site but have always heard good things about it, though turnover will be slow. You can either list your book for free and pay a 15% commission or pay a flat monthly fee. That's a sweet deal. This site gets included in searches on the metasites such as www.bookfinder.com, unlike eBay or Quicksales.

Selling second-hand books on classified ad websites

There's an army of folks flogging there wares on classified ad types sites such as the Trading Post and Gumtree. Personally I think to sell books individually in large volumes on these sites would be a pain in the rear with people phoning you and arranging pickups etc. But it could be a great way of shifting your slow moving stock by the box-load. Trading Post was tooling around with auctions but this has never seemed to take off.

Selling used books on your own website

If you are just starting our from scratch and learning the business then I suggest forgetting about building your own site. Learn the ropes of the book business on eBay or Abebooks or wherever first. When you are established with good buying skills and inventory, then think about setting up your own site. It is most likely that Abebooks\eBay will provide your main source of income, and your website will provide some extra income on the side. For me, my website generates around 10% of what I turnover on eBay, but that should improve over time. 

The most important consideration in setting up your own site is that folks have to find it. I tried advertising on Google using Keywords but it wasn't worth the cost for my particular business. The going rate for my desired keywords was around $2 per click, too rich for me. 

Most folks will find you through searching on Google. Getting Google to like you is of upmost importance, SEO it's called, Search Engine Optimization. Google it. SEO is a whole specialist field in itself, and folks go to all lengths to make their sites search engine friendly. From all I've read and done I've found it boils down to this: 

• Keywords Keywords Keywords - figure out what words buyers are likely to search on and include them on your home page and site description and in your url's (Google loves 'clean' urls, eg if you click on a product on my website you will notice the name of the page in the browser includes the book title and author, rather than something meaningless like -product54.php). Generate meaningful content on your home page and change it often, even if it is just a list of recommended products, Google seems to like it if your home page changes often. 
• Get other sites to link to you - Google ranks how important your site is by how many other websites link to it. Getting other sites to link to yours is not easy. The best thing you can do is including meaningful content on your website, such as a blog (Google loves blogs), product reviews or technical information. Hopefully folks will link to it eventually. Have a long term approach for this, worry about your keywords first. 
• Don't cheat - there's a bunch of dodgy tricks for improving your visibility on Google such spamming your site with keywords (keywords stuffing) or using link farms. Google knows all the tricks and if you are caught cheating you may never show up in searches again. Beware of 'SEO experts' who contact you out of the blue telling you they can make your site #1 on Google (though there are plenty of legit SEO services). 
• Be patient - when google decides whether to index your pages and where\if to include you in search results, it seems to factor in the how long your site has existed. I have noticed that Google has has grown to like my site more the longer it has been around. Sites that appear above mine, have either been around longer are a deemed more 'important', eg Dymocks. 

When setting up your own website your are going to need some kind of 'shopping cart' solution There's a zillion different solutions floating around the net and choosing what's right for you can be difficult, but here's your main options:

• Rent some server space and install shopping cart software - this is not overly difficult but it is fiddly and some patience\manual reading is required. There's a lot of shopping cart packages around, including some free ones such as ZenCart, OsCommerce etc. Good commercial solutions can be had for $150-$1,500. Some commercial solution providers also provide free versions to get you in the door. You will also need to find some web hosting space. The cheapest option is a 'shared' server, which is about $5-$50 per month, your site shares the same hardware with lots of other customers. I run my site on a shared server, it can be a little slow sometimes but it is excellent value and it is managed by experts. Having a dedicated server, a whole server dedicated to your site is $100-$200 per month and up (and up!), and may require you to manage it, install patches etc. In the middle is using a Virtual Private Server, which is like using a shared server but more powerful, though generally requires you to manage it. I use X-Cart shopping software, which is showing it's age but is solid is a rock, and shared hosting from www.aussiehq.com.au for $20 per month. After installing your software you need to spend a lot of time fiddling around with it to get it look right and work the way you want it. If you have more money then patience then you can pay somebody to set up your site for you, have a look in your yellow pages. 
   
• Use a hosted solution - there are many companies that will host your site for you. This is much easier to manage but generally comes at a price, all the solutions I have looked into end up around $50-$150 per month, some also charge a commission on your sales. On the upside you don't have to worry about installing and patching software and other such nasties. One book specific solution is Chrislands which is great value at US$25 per month for up to 10,000 books, and very compatible with Abebooks, but man the sites look daggy. I chose to host my own software because the whole aim of the exercise was to save on eBay fees, it was the cheapest solution. 

The process of setting up my website, www.usedtravelbooks.com.au has taken me countless hours in acquiring the technical knowledge, evaluating different technologies, design, developing content, and data entry. Plus I am stocking it with thousands of dollars worth of books that would sell in a flash for better prices on eBay And now I spend hours obsessively fiddling with it and fine tuning it, it's a long term project that I expect will take at least a few years to really bear fruit. In over a year of trading though I have found business is picking up, a few sales per day at the most but it's a solid start.

Things may change in the future though, Google seems to be getting in on the act. They are testing a system called Froogle which is a massive database potentially of all products available on the net. Combined with google checkout, perhaps google will be one big online store one day, perhaps it will die with a whimper, who knows, these are interesting times in e-commerce. 

Splitting your inventory across multiple websites

After a while you may consider splitting up your stock across different selling venues. For example you may have all you quick selling stock on eBay and your slow movers and collectables on Abebooks. This may save you lots of money in fees but it does introduce complications. It is far simpler keep tabs on your inventory when it is listed on just one website. When you start listing some books one one site and some on another you need to be disciplined to keep it all under control. Furthermore you will find yourself removing books one website then listing it on another website effectively doubling your workload.

Listing the same books on multiple websites

Established booksellers with a few thousand books often put list their inventory on multiple sites at once and usually there own website as well. This gets tricky because if you sell a book on Site A, you also need to remove it from site B and C as well. What if you sell the one book to two different buyers on two different sites at the same time? A myriad of complications can arise, and it is a lot of work but it is doable when using the slower sites such as Abebooks and Alibris. 

Many book dealers simply maintain a spreadsheet of all their stock and submit it to various sites and their own website. This is fiddly but worthile it if you have a large enough inventory to justify the fees. There are automated solutions such as Fillz that keep track of your inventory across all multiple sites as well as your own website. These solutions come at price though and are best suited to the high volume seller. Also these solutions seemed to be USA-centric, for example Fillz allows you to list on eBay USA but not eBay Australia which is far from ideal. If I was in the USA I would be using Fillz or a similar service to list my stock across Amazon, eBay, Abebooks and my own site all at once. But alas, I am in Australia. 

Another often mentioned service is Auctionblox which allows you to list products on eBay and your own website at the same time. I have heard this works well.
 

Average selling price per book 

Before delving into black art of pricing books you should consider the amount of time it takes to deal with each book. By the time each book is found, cleaned, photographed or scanned, researched, listed, packed and all correspondence and invoicing dealt with, you have spent perhaps half an to an hour per book. That may sound excessive, but most full-time one-man-band ebay dealers are selling around 100 books per week, if you do a 40 hour week to achieve that you are looking at 40 minutes per book. If you are selling your books for $5 each and taking 40 minutes to sell each one, you're better off flipping burgers. 

Therefore it is important to set yourself goals for average selling price and minimum selling price. Most book dealers will have a minimum price and margin they like to achieve for each book. Of course even the most experienced bookseller makes buying mistakes and must price some books to clear (or file them in the dumpster). 

Setting prices on secondhand books

Setting prices on second-hand books is an art and a science. Some used bookdealers set their prices low and go for volume, other used booksellers go high, waiting longer of a higher return. I often see novice booksellers going too far the either way.

It is common to see new dealers go for low prices and high turnover only to find their best books underpriced and snapped up by dealers, collectors and savvy buyers. Then they are left with a pile of slow sellers and little revenue to purchase new stock. Other newcomers can be overly precious about their books and refuse to sell them for little less that full retail, selling little and wasting money in listing fees.

The best thing to do though is to see what other folks are charging for your book.. Just do a search on whatever site you are selling on and see what comes up. Almost as as important as the price as the number of books that turn up in your search. If there are pages of results for the same book, it's an arsehole, ie everybody has one. But if you do a search on your book and nobody has it: it's rare, woohoo! Doing a search on eBay for completed listings of the book will show you what people have actually paid for the book in the last couple of weeks, a very handy tool.

If it looks rare then it is worth checking on a couple of sites: I find abebooks gives you a good indicator of how rare it is; take note of how many copies are in Australia, it may be common overseas but rare downunder. Amazon is good for checking to see what top dollar is, Amazon generally has the highest prices. Remember that some dealers put stupid prices on books in the hope that one day, one year, some fool will buy it. So if someone has a book for $500 on Abebooks or Amazon, it doesn't necessarily mean that is what the book is worth, a book is only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it! After a while you learn to read between the lines when checking prices on the big book sites. Also remember that just because it is rare it doesn't necessarily mean that somebody wants to pay a lot of money for it, you will develop a feel for these things.

You can search on multiple sites at once using meta-sites such as www.bookfinder.com and www.fetchbook.info. These sites give you prices from all the major sites. 

For recently released books I also look up dymocks borders and the thenile.com.au to see whether it is currently in stock and what the high street retail price is. If these sites indicate that the book has to be ordered in it may possibly be out of print.

When selling books on eBay I generally find that prices I can get are lower than books listed Abebooks on Amazon (excluding the dodgey $1 sellers). My strategy is to price rare and collectable books lower than the big sites, for more common books I only take the eBay price into consideration.

Then again you don't need to have the cheapest price, to get the sale, people don't always choose the cheapest product, and people will pay the better price if you have a good feedback record, I certainly do.

eBay encourages you to list your items at 99 cents but this is generally a sure fire way to lose money, many have tried 99 cent auctions as a strategy but only few survive. Many online sellers will tell you that the lower priced items attract the most hard-to-please buyers. I certainly agree.

When selling books on my own website: www.usedtravelbooks.com.au site I have to make sure my prices are lower than everywhere: I don't have the luxury of millions of registered users that the big sites have, so I have to offer low prices to draw the people in.

Having said all that – this is just one opinion on how to price books, every dealer approaches it differently. 

Managing your inventory of secondhand books

When you start listing your books on eBay or wherever you may find that a bunch of books sell quick but after a while the sales slow down and there are a bunch of books that don't sell. Some books sell straight away, same take a few weeks, some take a few months, some take a couple of years, some just never sell.

Every now and again you need to cull the slow sellers because they are either costing you money in fees or taking up your limited and valuable storage space. There are tons of ways to get rid of you slow stock: discounting them, auctioning them with a low starting price, moving them to a different site with lower fees, packing them in a box and selling them at a general auctions house, selling them at the markets, selling at garage sales, sell them cheap to a dealer at the markets. 

If you can get your cost price back for your slow stock you are essentially making a profit. For example: if you bought 5 books for $1 each at a garage sale, then you sold 4 of those books for $10 each, you have well made your money back on the initial $5 purchase. If you sell the fifth book for a $1 you are increasing your profit by a dollar, not just getting your money back. Maybe that is wonky logic, but the point is just don't get too precious about your prices, yes you have average selling price and minimum margins to consider, but sometimes it is better to cut and run.

You also need to continually add new stock to keep the store fresh. I have seen some dealers get a load of stock then just sit on it, complaining that business is slow when in fact they have a bunch of stale stock. I did some research a while ago and discovered that around 80% of my eBay sales were from books listed within the previous twelve weeks, anything sitting around longer should be considered for removal.

Dealing with Customers

Online book selling is one of the rare industries where the honest folks win. Honesty pays – in an extreme example I once refunded a lady in full when I book I sold her fell apart when she opened it, these things happen. She was so happy with the service she promptly orderd a further $100 worth of books off me. This is a rare occurrence, but it illustrates that honesty pays in this business. Dishonest dealers quickly gain a bad reputation and disappear.

In a nutshell: be nice, treat others the way you would like to be treated. I find most online booksellers to be good to deal with, the others go out of business. Most book buyers are nice people and great to deal with, this can't be said of all online business (I've heard that selling used women's clothing online is a nightmare).

The simplest and most important thing you can do is email to let people know you have received their payment, and email them to let them know when you have posted their book. So many people don't do this yet it is so easy. This lets the buyer know you are on the ball and approachable. If there are delays in the post the buyer won't is less likely to assume you are ripping them off.

If a customer sends you a grumpy email then send a nice one back, and do it quick. Most problems are misunderstandings and can be sorted with a friendly email. Occasionally you will get somebody who won't cooperate with you or refuses to see your side of the story no matter what (I find this happens most with buyers from the USA for some inexplicable reason). Sometimes I find it best just to refund them and move on, sometimes I stand my ground, whatever the case, never lose your cool, always be polite and professional. 

Pack and send your parcels as soon as you can, same day if you can. If customers know you are good to deal with and you will post their treasure quickly you have a much better chance of repeat purchases.

Occasionally items go missing in the post, I guess around 1 in a thousand. When a customer asks where there parcel is I let them know what date it was mailed and the address (occasionally the customer has moved and still has their old address on file). Get them to check with their local post office in case it is there awaiting collection, or call the post office yourself. I have found that if the parcel does not arrive after 4-6 weeks it will probably never show. Refund the customer, move on. Some dealers refuse to refund for lost post, it's your call, but in my opinion you just have to wear the odd lost parcel, it's part of the business.

Postage Charges on Secondhand Books

Buyers can be very sensitive about your postage charges, even if you declare them up front and the buyer can make their own decision based on total price, they can still be sensitive about your postage costs. I have never understood this, but that's just the way it is.

Make sure you get a decent set of scales. If you plan to be in the business for the long haul then invest in a good set of scales. Get scales that take up to 20kgs (the maximum you can post via Australia Post) and accurate to 1 gram (an extra gram can cost you a few bucks sometimes). You can get a great set for $50 - $100 on eBay, a good one will last for years.

When figuring out postage charges for books there's a couple of things to be aware of:

Skinny books under 2cms wide and under 500 grams can be posted as a letter, much cheaper than parcel rates. Australia post has prepaid envelopes which makes postage on skinny books a snap. The C5 sized prepaid envelope is a ripper for small books as it can take books up to 500 grams and can save you a bundle. 

For other books the Australia Post's prepaid satchels are excellent value. They come in two sizes: 500 grams and 3kgs. Buy them in lots of 10 for a 5% discount or lots of 100 for a 10% discount. Books over 500 grams can be very expensive to post, don't get caught out. You can fit a few books in a 3kg bag so you should offer some kind of postage deal to encourage multiple purchases. We offer as many books as you like for $X – we figure if they buy more books than we can fit in a 3kg bag we are making a healthy profit and can afford to take a hit on postage.

We offer a deal where buyers can buy as much as they like for $6.90, we lose a couple of bucks on the postage but it is a strong incentive to buy more stuff. However we find most people buy only one extra book, for this deal to work we really want people to buy a few books so the postage loss is spread across a few items and not so painful.

One final tip is to consider which countries you will ship to. Many online sellers recommend not shipping to Italy, South America or Central America – nice people but terrible postal services!

Packing your books

If sending books in an envelope it is best to let the buyer know and make sure you wrap the book in plastic in case it gets wet. Sometimes you may want to insert backing cardboard to stop the book getting bent in the post. 

For books posted as a parcel we believe that people really like to see bubble wrap, but bubble wrap is expensive. The best compromise we have found is wrapping the book in one layer of bubble wrap then with a couple of layers of newspaper over the top. This protects the book really well and is cheap and lightweight. If it is a nice hardcover or expensive book you may need to be more generous with the bubble wrap.

Paperbacks can be wrapped in plastic then a few pages of newspaper, a few sheets of tabloid should do the trick. Make sure you wrap it in plastic or plain paper first so the newspaper doesn't mark the book.

Another option is using bubble bags. These are really nifty for paperbacks, just pop the book in the bag and tape it shut: quick and easy. 

Most internet sellers hate packing and posting with a passion. It can be a drag but you can make it fun by putting on some music or a movie, listing to a podscast or whatever. Using printed address labels and having the right packaging materials makes the process so much more pleasant.

My final tip is to be nice to the folks at your post office, I do everything I can to make it easy for my post office and in return they do everything they can to make life easy for me.

Will people lie about receiving their books?

Many people new to online selling are understandably concerned that people are going to lie about receiving their goods then claim there money book. Well you are lucky because used book buyers are good folks. In five years and around 20,000 transactions I have only ever had maybe a dozen people say that their items didn't arrive. I would be very surprised if any of them lied about it, maybe one or two got their refund and didn't bother telling me when the book arrived later on. It's a testiment to human nature, we're not such a bad species after all.