Selling used books

[Anonymous No.10309656]

I prefer physical books over reading from a screen, but some of the books I want to read are quite expensive. Some hardcover-only books cost $40 when you buy them second-hand. That creates a bit of a barrier, but if they aren't hard to sell again in the future, then it's like I'm simply storing part of my purchasing power in the form of books rather than euros.

Is that an accurate way to look at it? I have the money to buy the books; my concern is solely with converting it back to money. Things I have considered are selling them individually on Amazon for the lowest price, selling the entire collection at once, and trading them for Amazon gift cards. Does anyone have experience with these things? How long did it take to get rid of your collection? Were there many books that were hard to sell, especially when you have esoteric interests?

[Anonymous No.10309717]

Bump.

[Anonymous No.10309754]

Rebump.

[General Hobbies thread No.10309857]

bump
>e-reader?

[Anonymous No.10309870]

learn to not mind reading them on a screen, or buy them used and re-sell them on amazon/ebay but expect to make some loses. 1/4 of the price of book at least Id imagine

[Anonymous No.10310494]

>>10309656
Since it sounds like you don't plan on keeping them, just get a fucking library card or try to work something out with the local university library.

[Anonymous No.10312146]

>>10309870
I absolutely don't mind losing money. I'd gladly put them available at the lowest price if it helps me sell the books faster.

>>10310494
Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm planning to keep most of them, but may want to sell the expensive ones in the future.

[Anonymous No.10312480]

>>10309656
Former bookseller here. Not a great plan, to be quite honest. You'd only be giving more money to Jeff Bezos than it would be worth.
Download the expensive stuff if you just want to read it, then save up for some nice editions you could eventually flog online, if you know the ropes. The thing is to buy good copies cheaply, and that means taking time to find them.
Use bookfinder, Ebay, and the handful of used bookshops who don't list on Abe/Amazon etc and who have their own websites instead. (One trick to find these is to search for the title in inverted commas and plough through to find bookshops on the list that are not Amazon owned).

Selling the entire collection at once is a dubious possibility unless it's an academic field or else has very rare items you could justify putting up for auction. Not usually a good prospect nowadays unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.10314158]

>>10312480
I had a hunch. What about selling the expensive books individually; does it take long?

The thing about downloading is that I only find reading PDFs an acceptable experience (since the layout remains intact), which requires a bigger, more expensive e-reader. The only good ones I've seen cost $600 at least. For that price I could just buy those books physically.

On the other hand, an e-reader would allow me to take notes on those books, while I wouldn't want to mess up such expensive books with pencil marks. So I'm a bit torn.

[Anonymous No.10314171]

>>10309656
Learn to find the places online which sell second hand books cheaply.

Learn to not mind having previous editions of the book to save money.

Learn to love paperback and stop being such a hardback cover whore.

[Anonymous No.10314179]

>>10314158
Look at the Amazon rank of the book you intend to sell. If it is less than a million and you offer the lowest price it will sell quite quickly. Bear in mind the price of particular books can be surprisingly variable over time.

[Anonymous No.10314626]

>>10314158
How long is a piece of string? Depends on many things, not just your price. Sites like Abe, Ebay etc mean that any pleb can offload their crap easily, so there's a good deal of competition, even for rarer titles.
Look into printing out good quality scans (or text) of books you want to have in hard copy. See of there are any bookbinders locally (check around the university - binders main business is student theses) and see what they can do. Strike up a good relationship and you'll be getting plain but functional hardbacks for next to nothing. Such was my experience at any rate.