I’ve talked before how I’m primarily a reader of ebooks, but I do receive copies of physical books from publishers or from giveaways. In order to keep my collection to a minimum, I resell the used books. Here are the platforms I’ve used before plus some tips for shipping supplies.
Photography Process
When I’m photographing books to sell, I try to make sure I’m in a well-lit environment and capture the book as clearly as possible. I will also try to photograph any flaws or signs of the condition of the book (such as dents, cracked spines, torn pages, etc). I’ll use a plain white poster board background in front of a window to set the book on top of and a piece of white foam board to help bounce light. After taking the photos with my iPhone, I’ll use an editing app to brighten the pictures or increase the saturation. This helps make the photos stand out in whatever selling platform I’m using.
Selling Platforms
Since I’m selling books that I’ve received at low or no cost, I have not been overly concerned with profitability. My main goal has just been to get the physical items out of my house and any minimal profit I get is acceptable.
Depop
It’s pretty easy to set up a Depop shop and sell whatever it is you want. There’s a category for books and the seller needs to input all of the title and description information by hand. You are able to duplicate listings, so you can carry over the category information from one product to another. You set your own prices and the shipping fees you want to collect. Shipping labels are not integrated onto this platform and you need to use a separate service to deal with your shipping. Before I realized I could be using Media Mail rates, I would purchase first class or priority mail labels with PirateShip. However, I’ve since learned that I can purchase Media Mail shipping online through PayPal with ShipStation. The listing, selling, and shipping process with Depop is fine, but I haven’t sold that many books on Depop and all of the book information is tedious to enter, especially when other platforms will import this information from a database.
Ebay
Ebay is pretty much your classic auction website for used items. For listing books, you’re able to search for a similar product and the database will import the book-specific information (such as title, author, and summary). There are sections that the seller fills in like the shipping weight and the selling price. You can also customize how the shipping charges are set. Since the traditional format is an auction sale, if a book gets bid on, the seller waits until the auction is over before collecting payment and shipping the item. The website generates a shipping label with USPS Media Mail that can be printed out and used to ship the item. With auctions lasting a limited number of time, unsold items need to be re-listed in order to sell at a later time. I was able to sell a few books though Ebay, but the relisting process for unsold inventory got to be annoying and tedious.
Mercari
I have tried to list a couple of books on Mercari but found the platform to be clunky for listing books. I couldn’t seem to find a feature that let me duplicate a listing (thereby carrying over the category and description) so it was tedious to enter all of the information for each product. I didn’t ultimately make any sales with the few books I listed here, so I did not continue to list books.
PangoBooks
Of all the selling platforms, I have found PangoBooks to be the easiest to use and the one that consistently brings me the most sales. With the quantity of books I have available there, I usually sell about 5 to 7 books per week. The way to use it is to download the app onto your smartphone, register for an account, and start uploading photos of books. I will usually photograph the books, then edit them, and then start the listing. The app integrates a barcode scanning step that will import all the essential book information: title, author, summary, format, weight, etc. You just need to review everything and then set the price. After the book is listed and someone purchases it, you’ll get a notification and an automatically generated shipping label. The buyer pays the shipping fee (unless you have set up free shipping) and the package will ship via USPS Media Mail. As far as fees go, PangoBooks seems to take around 20% of the sale price and then there are no fees for bank deposits (though it will take 4 to 5 business days). The money is made available a few days after the book is tracked as being delivered to the buyer. Overall, this platform has brought me the most consistent sales and ease of shipping and payment.
Shipping Supplies
Label Printing
I usually print my shipping labels on 4×6 inch thermal label paper using my Munbyn thermal printer. Before I purchased a dedicated label printer, I would print with a black and white laser printer onto half-sheet label paper. If you don’t want to purchase label paper, you can print the shipping labels onto plain white paper and use clear packing tape to secure it to your packages.
Packaging Materials
For packing and sending out books, it’s important to protect the books from being bent or dented. I recommend using bubble mailers as a quick and easy way to protect your items. I have also used these heavy duty rigid mailers (which I was gifted by the company to try out) but they’re not as cost-effective as the bubble mailers.
I also like to throw in a thank you card, business card, and bonus bookmarks whenever people purchase my books. This makes for a fun surprise for buyers and they’ve left positive feedback on it.
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