Selling Books On Amazon

We usually have a pile of books that will not sell, or will not sell quick enough so we are stuck with a bunch of stuff in inventory that keeps on collecting and accumulating in closets, or store rooms. There are a couple of ways of getting rid of product that just will not sell as quickly as we thought it would.

One of the most interesting ideas I have seen is to have a garage sale with your books, put a fixed price on them, say a dollar or three, and then post it in Craig’s list that the garage sale is happening. You can also use this as an opportunity to get rid of a ton of other stuff. You might have to say “no scanning allowed” because someone is going to show up with a book scanner and start scanning right there in the middle of your driveway. You can usually get what you are asking for, just make sure you keep track of sales, you will need to pay sales tax on them if you live in a state that requires sales tax. This is a higher commitment process, meaning you will spend all day in the yard watching people go through books.

Another way is to take them all down to half price books or someone else who will purchase books. Half price books is getting smart to this, and will ask if you are a dealer or will notice if you bring in two or more of a title. You will usually get pennies on the dollar, not as good as a yard sale, but interesting all the same because you will end up with some money, but not as much as if you had sold them outright, or sold them at a yard sale. For this one though you are paying for the convenience, drop 20 boxes of books of, it takes an hour or so for them to go through them, collect a check from them and the deal is done.

Donate them to Good Will or other charity system. This is one generally more popular, as you can donate them, get a receipt for the donation (usually cost or resale value of the goods), and then use that as a tax write off on your end of year taxes. Check with your tax accountant, but donating them to charity is always a good thing when it comes to taxes.

Donate them to a local boys/girls/adult home for their library. Check with your local support or charity groups, they might be looking for books for a donation for their library or for a yard sale they will be doing later on in the year. They might be fussy about what they take, but you can do an all or nothing proposition with them. Good for you because you can get a tax write off if they are a bonnafide charity, good for the kids or adult daycare center because the folks who are there get new books to read, and probably something that they have not seen in a long time or at all.

Put them back into the book system by donating to the local Friends of the Library, this one can be tricky, you don’t want to go to a FOL sale and pick up your own dead wood, but putting the books back into circulation can help others discover new stuff. Depending on the Library system you might get a tax break (check on this one), and the only drawback is to make sure you do not pick up the stuff you donated at the next FOL sale. Most libraries have donation guidelines, and you might want to make sure that you contact the library first. Some libraries might be too small, or part of a major library system, meaning you might and probably will get bounced around a lot before you find someone who can help you meet the guidelines.

Free to Good Home. You can put a box on the street with a sign, free to good home, and those books will disappear, but this is really where you make nothing off them at all. Someone else will just come along and take care of the problem for you, but does not mean that you will get any benefit from it. This is the last ditch resort to getting rid of that box of paperback bodice rippers that someone gave you from their aunts house.

These are all good strategies for working out how to get rid of dead wood, with various tax breaks, returns, and the downsides of time, taxes, and more packing of boxes of books in the house. In the end though, this also gives you an opportunity to go through and work out what is selling well and what is not selling well, then finding a suitable way to get rid of them. Each of these is equally valid, and all have some form of return on them, either through doing a good deed for the day, or making a bit of money off of them.

Tags: garage sale, fol, friends of the library, goodwill, free to good home, sales, dead wood, books, sales, book

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