My family (all female) are voracious readers and buy paperbacks, mainly of one genre (uh - chick lit?), from local charity shops.
However they have always refused to get rid of them as they may want to read them again.
So my loft was stuffed with boxes of books. However I have decided that the loft needs to be cleared and told them they have to go, except maybe one or two boxes of genuinely re-readable books.
We've come across over 300 so far, that's probably about half. Condition is average, some are a bit curled but otherwise they are fine.
I was all for taking them back to a charity shop but my daughter is a bit hard up and could do with some dosh so wants to look at realising something for them.
My 3 experiences of selling at car boots have been dire, I have no idea what it costs to enter (£20?) but we'd have to sell a fair number before breaking into profit.
She's found someplace online but I bet they wouldn't pay much.
So other than that I have in mind finding a local 2nd hand bookseller and selling as a job lot at say 20p a book, or seeing if the local house clearance auction ever deals in anything like that.
Anyone got any other ideas?
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From from experience, second books are worth almost nothing. Honestly if it were me I'd give her £20-30 and then just take them to a charity shop.
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Yep, to be honest even the charity shops don't really want them unless they are in good condition. Most paper back book donations go for recycling.
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Are there other donating options - community or day centres, for example? Places where the books would be appreciated for their reading value rather than their (very small) cash value.
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>> Are there other donating options - community or day centres, for example?
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That sounds like a good suggestion. I know a couple who recently gave up dealing in secondhand books. They tried car boot sales to get rid of their stock, but finally resorted to giving it away. Most of the books were hardbacks in good condition.
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Daughters had a book clearout and rather than take them to the charity shop I found an area to display them in our canteen at work. Someone even found a bookcase and put them in there. Hardbacks a £1 and paperbacks 50p. All proceeds to Crones and Collitis. Shifted nearly a 2/3rd of them and new books are coming and going all the time. So it has become a little bit of a library. Up to about £35 now :)
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The 2nd hand shop in Bath indoor market pays a significant percentage of the cover price if he takes your book, but I've found he doesn't take many.
This morning I took a load to the local tip and dumped them in the book/CDs recycling thing, apart from a few nice hardbacks which I'll be giving to the Woodley Oxfam bookshop next weekend.
Last edited by: Focusless on Sun 11 Jan 15 at 14:58
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I used www.greenmetropolis.com
Sold some. As I recall after x months they automatically delete them, so I disposed of the unsold ones at that point.
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Trivial to Amazon them at a low low price. You might make a few pence per book with the postage fee. Or always worth a double check before chucking them out, just in case you have a modern first edition of interest without realising it. It happens.
Example of the kind of thing:
books.hyraxia.com/books-wanted-bought-sell-rare-books-first-editions-and-collections-online
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I don't think there's any money in selling them. But in my experience hospitals can be quite grateful.
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I agree, not worth selling unless they are first editions or something. If they have more merit than, say, Danielle Steele novels and are fairly high class literature, li. crit., history art and so on, I have found our public library grateful. Some Oxfam collections are quite advanced. They have a shop is Shaftesbury which deals only in books and music.
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Suspect charity shops have killed off any commercial interest in ordinary paperbacks as second hand books. Only exception is likely to be payment of a very small price for bulk on off chance that something that's in demand but out of print or otherwise collectable lurks within.
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Our charity shops take books and sell them all 50p each / 3 for £1. Doesn't matter what shape size or kind of cover. Sometimes a customer will get a right good bargain, other than that they get books which they read and more often than not, return to us to sell on again.
Even then, we still get too many books and after they have been out on the shelves for a couple of weeks they are then taken off and boxed up and collected by a third party who pays us per the kg, something very small like 5p per kg but that is worthwhile considering the time and cost involved in having to dispose of them.
The third party company then has a setup where all the books are listed on Amazon and they are probably the source of many second hand books sold in Scotland! Indeed many charities I know of try doing this themselves utilising software that automatically prices the books according to how many are on sale etc. I think this may have been one of the software companies who crashed a couple of weeks ago with the 1p prices.
Really couldn't see how an individual could make money selling their own books unless there was any specialist type stuff in it that is worthwhile.
On a separate note I believe national charities like Oxfam will only sell the absolute top notch books and these are often priced in the "several pounds"
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When we closed the Quango office we had a huge number of books to dispose of. As well as a pretty comprehensive law reference set there was 50yrs or so of Hansard (Commons and Lords) plus a whole bay of literature specific to our jurisdiction.
Apparently fact that most volumes were stamped 'property of.....' was a problem. Quite a lot went to Africa for their law students (some sort of charity set up) and staff had pick too. Mostly of value to the lawyers but I got a biog of Sir Oliver Franks and an interesting account of the Crichel Down affair.
An awful lot was pulped though - the legal stuff is all on line now.
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Selling 2nd hand books - sooty123
