Sell Books Online: Breaking the Paperback Piggybank

Sell books online and you just might discover that you’ve had more money sitting around than you ever realized. It’s worth your while to learn more about how you could get cash for your unwanted books, and turn your piles of dusty old books into a pile of money.

The Paperback Piggybank

The next time you need a few extra bucks, don’t bother digging under the couch cushions or searching through the pockets of that jacket you haven’t worn since last winter. Just go grab the money that’s hiding in your bookshelves. No, it’s not cash stashed between the pages of your favorite book, it IS the book.

Whether you ever stop to think about it or not, the books you’ve got sitting around, collecting dust are worth money to someone.

Why not find that someone and give them what they want (and get a little cash in your pocket at the same time)?

Why not sell books online and break into your very own "paperback piggybank"?

The Rise and Fall of “Used”

There was a time when “used” was a word you saw in stores all the time. Stores selling used records and CDs were one every Main Street in every town in America. But MP3s and online music stores like iTunes are making used record stores a thing of the past. Used bookstores are also disappearing, and the ones that haven’t been driven out of business by the Barnes & Noble’s of the world are operating on such razor thin margins that they won’t buy many of your books for fear they won’t be able to resell them. Even the ones they are willing to take won’t get you much money, as they have to be able to make a profit at used book prices. For these reasons, one of the last reliable ways to sell used everyday consumer goods is to sell books online.

Selling Online

When we talk about "everyday consumer goods", we’re not talking about collectibles. We’re not talking about your Aunt Ethel spending her retirement years selling Beanie Babies on eBay. We’re talking about the things you bought to use, and are now just sitting around your house. Books are one of the few such goods that have an entire market based around selling them used.

Sure, you could probably sell your used toaster on Craigslist (as long as you don’t mind giving a stranger your home address for a three dollar profit), but there are a whole host of websites dedicated to buying and selling used books.

Learning the Ins and Outs

The more you learn about these sites the more you may find that there are harder and easier ways to sell your book online. The easiest, and most user-friendly are buyback sites, like MyBookBuyer.com, which allow you to price and sell books online all at once, and then ship them in for free.

You may also find that there are other benefits as well. If you are environmentally conscious, you may like the fact that it's “green” to sell used books. If your house is in serious need of a little Spring Cleaning, you’ll be happy to know that a great way to get organized is by selling books online.

Making Connections

Of course you will get different amounts of money for different kinds of books. Genre, author, title, and a dozen other factors affect demand, and therefore the price you can get for a particular book. You may get more for a non-fiction book like a technical manual or a textbook than you might for more common mass market paperbacks, but even if you are just trying to sell your used James Patterson novel, there is demand somewhere out there for just about every different kind of book.

The magic of the internet brings that demand to you. Connecting buyers and sellers who otherwise would never connect is the function of buyback sites, and is what make it such a beautiful thing to sell books online.