Let’s say you’ve decided to clean up a bit of space and decided to get rid of some old popular psychology books, some cookbooks you never really opened, your old Twilight copy (you definitely won’t read it again!), and a few anatomy textbooks that are simply collecting dust on your shelves. Great idea—you can make use of them to earn extra cash!
So, how do I sell my books for cash? In this guide, we’ve prepared six tips on how you can sell your used books to get the most profit.
The first thing you should do is go to BookScouter. Instead of manually checking every possible website with a buyback program, you can check only one. With 30+ vendors, BookScouter is the largest bookselling platform where you can see all the deals and find the most profitable offer for your books. You will also get a good idea of whether you should sell your books or just donate them. Perhaps, your Twilight copy won’t bring you a lot of cash (because buyback prices are not the same for all books), or your cookbooks might be of better use to friends and family. Textbooks, however, can be sold quite profitably. Besides, you can also use the Historic Buyback Price Lookup tool to see how much your copy of Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology cost in the past and choose the best time to sell it. Cool, isn’t it? BookScouter is an excellent online resource for selling old and second-hand books. Ok, once you’ve detected the best offer, you go to the vendor page and sell your book—it’s simple. That’s why we recommend starting with BookScouter first.
If you like more complicated ways, you can go directly to Amazon and try selling your books there. It’s an option; however, we warn you that it’s a lot more complicated, and if you just have a couple or a dozen books, it probably makes little sense. Yet, our job is to provide you with the information, and here it is. To sell your books on Amazon, you need to open an Amazon seller account and provide many personal and payment details. After that, you’ll need to select one of Amazon’s two fulfillment methods:
Besides, you’ll also need to choose between the Individual plan (99 cents per unit sold) and the Professional plan ($39.99 per month). The latter is more advisable if you plan on selling more than 40 books a month. If you don’t, then the Individual plan and FBS are more obvious choices (with more work on your part, of course).
The same can be said for eBay. It is Amazon’s alternative; however, it comes with strings attached. It has a bidding system that will work exceptionally well if you sell niche, rare, or collectible books as well as textbooks. You will hardly likely get much for your Twilight copy here, yet again.
Probably not an obvious choice of a platform to sell books, as we all know it as a place to shop for cute hand-made goods. However, people do sell books on Etsy. To try this option, you need to log in with your Facebook, Google, or Apple account. However, keep in mind that there are many fees associated with this selling method: listing fees (20 cents for each item ), transaction fees (6% of each listing price), advertising and promotional fees, and shipping fees. So before you go to Etsy with your dozen of used books, think again. Perhaps, you’d better recheck our #1 option.
Another possible venue to try and sell your books together with other used items is Decluttr. The website has a separate category: Sell Books. It’s pretty simple: you just enter your book’s ISBN and click “Add” to see the price offer. Mind that you can’t sell less than $5 worth of items; plus, you should include at least ten media items or one tech item. So, this option is perfect if you really want to declutter your house, not just from books. You get paid either by a direct deposit or via PayPal. Alternatively, you can donate your money to charity.
Now, let’s move on to the places where you can sell your used books in person. We’ll start with Powell’s as the most popular option. You can bring your books to them for evaluation, or you can also sell your books online. Powell’s buys back a lot of books, really (see Powell’s reviews on BookScouter).
However, they only accept books in excellent condition. So if this is not the case with your books, you shouldn’t have your hopes high. Instead, check our second-place suggestion.
If your books are in different conditions, you can try selling them to Half Price Books. Just pack them and bring them for appraisal. Half Price Books are also known for their huge buyback potential; however, they may not offer much. So be prepared to get a few bucks.
If you don’t want to bother packing and sending your books by mail, or if you are lucky to have a local bookstore that accepts used books, go there and ask for their offers. Perhaps, there is a thrift market at the place where you live or a local Facebook group—try selling your books there, too. The latter can be of great help if you have used kids’ books.
Arranging a garage or yard sale may be a cool idea if you want to earn extra cash and socialize at the same time. You won’t probably get much for your books, but we assure you that you’ll have a great time.
Before you sell your used books, prepare them for sale. After all, you are trying to give them a second life, and other people will be using them after you. So, here are our recommendations:
If you’ve inspected your used books and decided that none of them are worth spending time packing and shipping, you can just give them away. There are plenty of options where you can donate books; here are some of them:
First of all, check your local library. Indeed, libraries don’t accept every book people don’t need. But if you have kids’ books or some recent bestsellers that are likely to be in demand, your local library will be glad to accept your books. Alternatively, you can leave your books at a “little free library,” where people may take a book and leave wherever they like.
If you have many kids’ books you no longer need, donating them to children’s hospitals can be a good option. Some sick kids spend a lot of time in hospitals, so the books you donate may help them spend their time just a little bit more cheerfully.
Charity organizations like Goodwill and churches also accept donations from time to time. You can visit the Goodwill website to find the donation center near you or check your local charity for the next thrift store or market sale. You can also donate your books to Books to Prisoners—the website that allows you to donate books to local correctional facilities.
Some of your old books don’t have value to be donated: they are either too old or in bad condition. You can recycle books; however, check the guidelines published by earth911 or Recyclenow to understand better how to recycle old books. The thing is that not all books can even be recycled. If you want to get rid of old paperbacks, it’s easier. Hardcovers, however, are more problematic to dispose of. Books, heavily damaged by water, can’t be recycled. Check the article on where to recycle your textbooks.
On BookScouter, you can check the price offers from over 30 vendors and choose the best one.
Textbooks are the most popular and profitable books for reselling. Art books and cookbooks, together with some religious books and non-fiction books, have more chances to sell well, while popular fiction will unlikely bring you good profit.
As we’ve already mentioned, the books that are unlikely to be sold can be either donated or recycled. Unfortunately, books in deplorable conditions can only be disposed of with general waste.
If you want to become a book reseller, BookScouter can help you navigate through the industry and maximize your profit with the help of Pro Tools. There is no need to do everything on Amazon only; with BookScouter, you can get access to the hot book flipping deals, historic pricing, bulk lookup, and so much more.
If you are a writer trying to grow your career or start to make money from your craft, you most likely have wondered where to sell short stories.
Venturing into the realm of selling short stories not only broadens your audience but also propels your writing career to new heights.
This guide will walk you through why you should consider selling your short stories in the first place, some tips to submission, and then dive into actual places to submit your short stories.
If you are trying to make it as a writer, or at least trying to make some side income from it, you should consider selling your short stories.
Most likely, if you already have been writing them for some time, there are people who would pay to read them. It is simply a matter of finding platforms and publications that will pay for your stories.
Some other reasons you might want to consider selling your short stories:
For any writer who wants to get paid for their writing or eventually become a full-time author, you will want to have some published pieces in your portfolio. It is a way to show people that you are a serious writer and it can prove that other people should invest in your art, too.
You never know who will read your short story and want to work with you. You might even be hired for things like ghostwriting or other writing opportunities.
Most writers have a small following online, but when you are published in new marketplaces, you have the chance of reaching even more readers.
Ideally, you will choose places to publish your writing that have the greatest reach to new audiences, but in the beginning you might not be able to be as picky as you will later on.
If you are considering writing a longer book, selling and testing how a short story does can help confirm whether it’s a good path to pursue or not.
Many successful books (and even movies) have started as a short story that became popular.
Generally, it’s not incredibly easy to make money with short stories. Do not expect to become rich overnight.
However, with a practical mindset and a determined attitude, you can often start to make some money and get the word out about your work.
You could make anywhere from a few bucks to a thousand dollars. Generally “pro” rates start at $0.08 per word, if that gives you any context into how much you can make.
Yes, it’s more common that you will find opportunities for less money, but also almost every famous author out there started by selling their short stories. It is more about what you do with your growing audience and your stories that can have a huge impact on your career down the line.
Some writing contests, anthologies, or publications may have specific submission guidelines or themes that writers find interesting or challenging. Selling a short story to meet these requirements can be a way to participate in such opportunities.
One thing you will want to particularly note is that most websites have rules about whether they will accept stories published in other publications before or not. Some publications want the first rights to your story, and some will accept stories you have published before. That is something you will want to take seriously and keep an eye out for.
You will want to double-check (and even triple-check any submission guidelines before entering so you are not automatically disqualified from consideration. Some publications have rigid rules, and some have looser rules, so do your research before submission.
The Amazon KDP program is a great place for writers to put their short stories and get paid.
As a book seller, you can earn up to 70% of royalties, depending on the publishing option you choose from them. This program also offers publishing option for a wide variety of genres, which is not something you will always find from various publishers.
For example, some magazines will only publish particular kinds of genres and stories.
Amazon also has the biggest book market in the world, but you will still have to work hard to get your short story to stand out.
The Threepenny Review is a literary magazine that generally publishes essays, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs and more.
They have various word count preferences for each of the type of stories they choose to publish, but they do pay for pieces they publish.
On the higher end, they can pay $400 pier piece, and for shorter ones (such as poems) $200.
Poets & Writers have a few various ways to help writers make money.
One option is to pitch directly to the magazine, which you can do through their submission guidelines page.
After that, they also have a subscription you can join to keep on top of various short shorty contests and other opportunities for other paid writing gigs.
If you are looking to publish a short story, you have probably come across One Story as an option.
They only have a short window of time where they accept submissions, but they do pay $500 for 25 contributors copies.
Check out their submission page to stay on top of when the next opening is happening.
Clarkesworld Magazine mainly focuses on publishing short stories in the science fiction and fantasy world, but they also consider art, non-fiction, and other types of short stories, as well.
They currently pay $0.12/word, which is on the higher end of platforms that pay for short stories.
Following the science fiction genre, East of the Web is currently accepting short stories that are at least 7.000 words. They currently have over 100,000 mobile devices that have their short story app installed, which can be good for your story to help reach a wider audience.
At the time of writing this, they are currently paying $0.05 per word to publish stories, but they are open to submissions of previously published stories, which not all places do.
If you love writing short stories that are between 500-1000 words, you will want to check out the Flash Fiction Online submission guidelines.
With Flash Fiction Online, you can expect to make $60 per accepted story.
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