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Selling books locally?
Mugenmidget
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First off I'd like to state I'm in the DFW area so any specific tidbits related to my region would be awesome.
I've gathered a bunch of old books I no longer need and wish to sell. Some of these were textbooks that I flipped for quick cash at a campus book store, but their quote was pretty good so it was easy to swallow. I might have received a little more for individual selling them but I also view that as somewhat of a headache.
The problem came when I went to Half Price Books to sell the rest of these books. We had two laundry baskets full of books and presented them at the counter, shopping around while they decided on the value After the long wait, they offered $25 for the whole lot (which would be like 50 cents per book). I thought it'd be better to find out what the books were worth on Amazon.com's marketplace and sell the truly valuable ones.
So now I have like 4-5 books on Amazon.com, but I didn't bother with books in the $1-$10 range (as their lowest offer) so I still have a few to sell that I'm probably not going to ship out. My questions are as follows:
-How exactly does Half Price Books figure out their offers? Every time we've sold something there it seems the quote is pretty damn random.
-Is there anywhere better to sell these books locally without going through an online venue?
-Should I just donate the rest? If so, where/who do I donate the books to?
I'm leaning strongly towards just donating the books, I don't think the Half Price quote will get any better and I already have the "valuable" ones listed for decent prices on Amazon.com. But before I do I thought I'd ask if anyone knew of a book store that might offer something better, or perhaps specifics as to donating (do I donate to Salvation Army or a library or what exactly).
I've gathered a bunch of old books I no longer need and wish to sell. Some of these were textbooks that I flipped for quick cash at a campus book store, but their quote was pretty good so it was easy to swallow. I might have received a little more for individual selling them but I also view that as somewhat of a headache.
The problem came when I went to Half Price Books to sell the rest of these books. We had two laundry baskets full of books and presented them at the counter, shopping around while they decided on the value After the long wait, they offered $25 for the whole lot (which would be like 50 cents per book). I thought it'd be better to find out what the books were worth on Amazon.com's marketplace and sell the truly valuable ones.
So now I have like 4-5 books on Amazon.com, but I didn't bother with books in the $1-$10 range (as their lowest offer) so I still have a few to sell that I'm probably not going to ship out. My questions are as follows:
-How exactly does Half Price Books figure out their offers? Every time we've sold something there it seems the quote is pretty damn random.
-Is there anywhere better to sell these books locally without going through an online venue?
-Should I just donate the rest? If so, where/who do I donate the books to?
I'm leaning strongly towards just donating the books, I don't think the Half Price quote will get any better and I already have the "valuable" ones listed for decent prices on Amazon.com. But before I do I thought I'd ask if anyone knew of a book store that might offer something better, or perhaps specifics as to donating (do I donate to Salvation Army or a library or what exactly).
Mugenmidget on
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To give you an idea of the value that a used bookstore puts on books; when we had a section that we thought was overfull we would just go thru using our best judgement (and some of the staff's judgement wasn't so great) and donate or throw away hundreds of books in a day. We also had "drek", which was mostly made up of stuff that we told customers we didn't want and they just left it behind. This amounted to enough material to fill up the bed of a pickup truck every single day.
Sell the ones online that are worth enough to make it worth your time. Donate or just giveaway the rest.
I'm curious as to why a book store would ever throw away a readable book, when you can drop off anything at a local Goodwill.
Have you tried craigslist? I think they have a book section.
I used to live in the wasteland that is the DFW area. Basically I'd donate your books in Austin just to get out of Dallas
Seriously, though...If you want to donate books, you can contact your local public library. If they're textbooks you might also consider your local college library. It depends whereabouts in the DFW area you are. The local public library near me (Haggard Library in Plano) used to accept books as long as they were in readable condition. They might not do that anymore, I'm not sure (this was around 1997).
Basically, if you're selling books and looking to make more than what you get at Half Price, then good luck. Unless your books are in high demand, you'll be lucky to get half price back. Half Price determines their price based on demand and estimated resale value. Keep in mind that despite what you may think, Half Price is not a co-op or nonprofit enterprise. It's a business. Just as Gamestop buys your games for $10 then sells them used for $40, Half Price does the same. Only, they're a less slimy.
If it were me I'd just drop them at Half Price and take the cash.
Well, they might. But you donate in case they don't, and you get a tax write-off.
Yeah, it was hard for me to get used to as well. We did try to donate to places, but the sheer volume just overwhelmed them. They usually took everything the first day, but when they came back the next day and saw the pile was just as big they stopped coming around. Might take a few days or even a couple weeks, but that usually happened. That, or they would spend hours cherry-picking what was in there. We were still left with a huge volume of product. We didn't have enough space to store more than 4 or 5 days worth, so if they didn't come by we'd start throwing stuff out again. Then they'd be pissed that we didn't hold on to a 10'x15'x4' pile so they could take a grocery bags worth of shit out.
There were a few times that I thought we'd found a good place to donate too, but it never lasted long. It usually made me a little sad to throw all that out. I really think that there's way too much shit printed because every asshole in the world that wants to read the new Grisham or whatever has to have their own new copy. The library really is a beautiful concept.
But when I asked them how much it would take off the total if I took out a game, they said they couldn't do that. Apparently they price your items as a lot rather than individually. Which is most definitely more slimy than GameStop. At least gamestop is transparent about the amount of money you get.
In conclusion, Half price books pretty much sucks.
I'll try to get in contact with some local libraries and see if they could use any of these in their collections. There's a few way old textbooks and ancient PSAT prep materials but there's also a few books that I'm sure somebody could use.
That's the same area as me, I'll try them and Harrington.
I went to the one off Parker road, but I might be going to that one or another that just opened just to see if the quote turns out differently (plus those stores are pretty fun to browse).
And thanks for those anecdotes, AtomBomb, helps make my decision easier. Sounds like I got the hard part out of the way, I'll probably end up donating whatever the libraries will take and getting chump change for the rest.