How to Sell Your Books in 6 Steps

 

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For centuries, reading has been one of the essential hobbies of humankind, and throughout history, people have spent money to buy books for this pastime. Today many book lovers are often faced with the choice of what to do with their overflowing bookshelves. Some people donate books to friends and acquaintances, but the most enterprising people decide to make good money. Books are one of the most common products in online stores, but you need to know the right approach to sales if you do not want your books to gather dust on the shelves for months.

So let’s figure out what steps you need to take to sell books in the shortest possible time:

Step 1. Get your books in order. Take quality photos

Check for missing pages or ink, or other stains. All this reduces the quality and price of your product and can lead to the return of the book. Take a photo of the book cover yourself, do not take photos from the Internet. The buyer must know in what condition the products are.

Sales on sites like  Amazon are highly dependent on customer feedback. So if your product is too low quality or does not match the description, it will lower your rating, and users will not see your offers.

Step 2. You need to figure out in advance how relevant your book is

You should not expect colossal demand if this is an old recipe book, dictionary, children’s fairy tales collection, or outdated scientific work. However, it is a different matter if you offer a recently purchased bestseller at a lower price—the newer the book, the greater the demand for it (except single antique copies)

Step 3. Determine the price of your book

After you have put the book in order and identified how much it would be in demand, you need to determine its price. The price of your book should be lower than in bookstores, but at the same time, you should gain at least some profit. Next, go to online stores, compare the prices of books and their quality. You will need this to get a competitive price tag. A free reseller tool can help you fix the price.

Step 4. Decide which online selling method is suitable for you

There are two methods of selling books online: online stores (BookDeal, Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Bookscouter, etc.) or advertising on social networks (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) directly messaging your potential clients.

Does it also depend on how many books you need to sell, 10 or 400? Selling books by finding customers on Facebook is too tricky if you have to sell several hundred copies. Therefore, if you are planning a mass sale, then online stores are the best choice.

Also, you can always choose a more traditional way of selling books, for example, open a small shop on the street or in your yard, or try to sell or exchange books in bookstores.

If you want to sell just a couple of books on social networks, you can do it in special forums, communities, and clubs. For example, you can sell language textbooks in linguistic forums and recipe books in groups for cooks.

Step 5. Sell your books!

After you have done a little research, you can start selling the book itself. To do this, you will first need to register in the online store. However, it would help if you remembered that online stores would charge you a portion of your profit per sale. In addition, they can give you monthly access to sales packages or charge you a percentage of every book sold. Some may give you a two-week free trial to try out their online services.

Thus, different online stores have other service packages, which you should familiarize yourself with separately and choose the best selling method for you.

Step 6. Choose a shipping method

After you have already found a buyer and received the payment, you must send the item to the new owner. Many online stores offer their shipping service for a fee. For example, Amazon will reimburse sellers for a $ 3.99 shipping fee, but if you sell a more significant type of book, say a hardcover, it will cost you more, and you could lose money if you leave that out. If you are sending the books in a single copy, you can do this via mail, but be sure to ask the postal officer how long the delivery will take and notify the buyer about it.

That’s all! We have considered all the steps of selling books. Now you are ready to please your future buyers and, most importantly, to make money on it.