How to Sell Your Used Books on Amazon: Tips for the Home-Based Bookseller

Selling your used books on Amazon can earn you some extra pocket cash. You can make a fairly steady stream of extra income if you are persistent and smart about it. Here are some basics for getting started, some pitfalls to avoid, and ways to keep your used book sales ongoing.

First, take a look at the inventory you wish to sell, and relocate it (if necessary) so that your Amazon books are all in one location. A large bookshelf is best, so you can see the titles of your inventory easily. Boxes of books aren't such a great idea unless you have them extremely well-organized and clearly marked. Boxes can bend books out of shape if they aren't stored neatly, and can give books a musty smell if kept in a damp place. I keep my Amazon inventory of used books on bookshelves in a corner of our downstairs den. I can easily find the one I am looking for because I don't have a large inventory, and the books are all in one place. As soon as I list a book, I give it a home on the Amazon shelf.

It's a good idea to shelve your books alphabetically to help you find them faster. While days might go by with no orders, I often get 3 or 4 orders all at once, and it frustrates me if it takes a long time to find the books. Alphabetizing helps you find the right book much faster than just looking at every title on the shelf.

After you know where and how you are going to keep your books for sale, get onto the Amazon site and sign up for a Seller Account. There are two avenues from which to choose: an Individual Seller account and a Pro Merchant account. The Individual Seller is a good starting point. Amazon provides free listings plus a $3.99 credit to cover postage. When you sell a book, Amazon takes a couple of bites out of the profits - a commission on the sale and closing fees. Because of this, it's important to price your books so you will make some money on each one. While I haven't lost money on a book yet, I have had several that I priced so low that I only made a few pennies on them by the time Amazon took their portion and I paid the post office to mail them. So do the math and make sure you are making a profit.

Your listings will show you a column with the lowest price. You will notice that some books are selling at $.01 used. Maybe the Pro Merchant account holders can figure out a way to make a profit selling books for a penny, but it just doesn't work for a small-inventory Individual Seller. My lowest priced item is $2.99. Below that I can't guarantee a profit.

On the other hand, do use the "lowest price" column to check your items' prices for competitive pricing. If you have a book listed at, say, $10.50, and someone else has cornered the lowest price at $10.49, you can change your price down a penny or two so that your book will appear at the top of the sale page for the lowest price and therefore be most likely to be clicked on and purchased. I like to check my inventory listings early in the morning so that my price changes are ready for buyers first thing. Just be sure you are making some money on the sale and don't set your price so low that you can't make money. If your inventory and sales grow to the point where you are selling more than 40 books a month, it's time to consider going to the Pro Merchant account upgrade, which will cost you a $39.99 subscription fee each month and waives the $.99 closing cost from each book. This is a savings only if you can sustain high-volume sales month after month. Of course you can always go into the settings on your Seller account and downgrade it back to Individual.

Packaging your books can be very simple. You can neatly wrap each one in plastic film then brown paper and mail them via Media Mail. I buy padded envelopes in bulk to mail mine in, but that is not the most cost-effective way to do it. It's just easier for me than coming up with enough brown paper to wrap and mail books with! I will freely admit that it is more profitable than buying padded envelopes if you can devise a way to wrap your books frugally and neatly.

Another consideration of selling books on Amazon is the postage cost. I use Media Mail with Delivery Confirmation at the post office. This gives me a tracking number to plug into the shipping confirmation screen. However, this also usually uses up most of my $3.99 shipping credit, which is another reason why I am careful to set prices that give me at least a few pennies in profit on each sale. You can make $.80 more per book by not using the delivery confirmation, but then you will have a real mess on your hands if a customer contacts you to tell you they never received the book (and you don't have a confirmation to track it). I always give myself the benefit of the doubt and get the delivery confirmation on the postage.

Where do you find used books to sell? I started with my own bookshelves at home. I don't sell books that are not in good shape. I try to stick with "like new", "very good" and "good" condition books, although sometimes I will label a book "acceptable" because of underlining in the book, or maybe a bend in the cover. I try to err on the side of understatement when it comes to condition.

When I had listed all the books I thought were good enough to sell from my own bookshelves, I found more at Good Will, yard sales, university bookstore sales, school library sales and public library sales. My local public library sale is a gold mine every year. They have a "$1 Bag" sale during the last couple of hours of their book sale and I always fill several bags with the best-condition books I can find and list them on Amazon. Look in the paper and on your library bulletin board for sales and ways to buy good used books.

Selling used books on Amazon is easy, fun if you're a natural bookworm, and has no upfront costs (or very little!). If you pay attention to the details and do the math, you can easily make some extra cash on Amazon.