Creatrope

I love books and I have a lot of books. I buy books new, used, and I attend book sales.

Some time ago, however, I decided that I had all the books I was ever going to have, but allowed that they might be different books. So if a box of books comes in, a box of books must go out. It drives me crazy to see books left all over the house and I’m not buying more shelving (I have quite a lot), so something has to give. There’s a related article on how to decide what to keep and what to part with you might also be interested in.

Some of the books are never eligible for purging, either they have reference value, sentimental value, or are useful or fun for my family. But there is a class of books I’ve accumulated that I keep just because they might have tangible or collectible value or less clear reference value.  So I end up making a judgment as to whether the shelf space is best used for this book – and five years later is still on the shelf.

Here’s a method I’ve come up with to help make the decision to keep or get rid of the book palatable.

Step One

You can always bring your books to a local used bookstore and see what they’ll fetch.  I’ve personally found the market soft enough that this hasn’t been a particularly fruitful route.

You can use Amazon.com used book listings to see if the book does, in fact, appear to have some value.

You’re going to be surprised, I guarantee it. There’s going to be some books listed for pennies (basically selling for the value of Amazon’s shipping credit to the seller – about a dollar or so) that you thought were valuable, and others that appear to be worthless listed for dozens or even hundreds of dollars.

Unfortunately, you have to dig a bit deeper.  If the book is very cheap you have review whether the condition seems to fit your book. If it’s valuable, be sure to review all the search listings. Its not rare for a book to be listed multiple times. It may be expensive in one set of listings and cheap in another. You’ll find this particularly in books for multiple editions and older books. While Amazon software developers work hard on methods to consolidate these into single listings, its not unusual for these to slip through as multiple listings.

You should assume most buyers will take the time to find the cheaper alternative.  Just because it has an expensive listing does not mean seller can actually consummate a sale at this price. Like an antique store, they may be fine storing it for a long time in case someone bites.  We’re assuming you are not or you wouldn’t have read this far.

Step Two

Ebay completed auctions are a better tool to determine whether sales are actually consummating for that price.  While Amazon’s book selection is second to none, but the presence of some completed Ebay sales actually completing can give you some corroborating evidence of the book’s value.

Step Three

The steps above give you a bound on what the book might fetch. Now you can judge whether you want to even try to sell it. If your prized book has a dozen used copies selling for dollar, the best route is just to donate or discard it.  To make it worth selling the books cheaply like the professional sellers do, you have to ship a lot of stuff, otherwise you’re  spending more on gas and almost certainly undervaluing your time.

If the price seems acceptable, you can list the books for sale on Amazon or Ebay.  They are conceptually a bit different – on Amazon you are setting a price that you want, and on Ebay you can set a price or use the auction model. On the auction model, the book might sell for less than you think is worth shipping it for (you have the option of setting a reserve – minimum – price).  On Amazon you can let it sit for months if necessary to see if it will fetch your price. Let’s assume you’re using Amazon from here in.

To be competitive, since you’re not a professional seller, it’s probably good to price your book well (that is, lower) compared to the other options. It’s dead simple to become a seller – simply click the “sell yours here” on the books page itself! You can be selling in minutes. Having the book listed for sale is a big step toward mentally parting with it, so give yourself some credit if you get this far!

Step Four

If your book sells, congrats, you’re reduced your collection. If not, you should consider reducing your price on Amazon in the seller tools until the price is now low enough where you’d prefer to donate it than actually go the trouble of mailing it.

If you’re not a seller you wouldn’t ordinarily see this screen. As you can see, I’m providing the lowest price on the Ologies book, but someone is selling the Steam book slightly cheaper.  This can change rapidly. I was the low seller on both just yesterday! It’s easy from this screen to periodically adjust the price (usually downward if you genuinely trying to get rid of the book!). You do need to check this occasionally.

Eventually you reach a point where you determine it’s not worth shipping and the free market has had plenty of time to find your book. Of note is that Amazon will eventually expire your listing if it doesn’t sell (athough there is no penalty to listing it again).

Now you can really and truly donate or discard the book (or make something cool from it) knowing you’ve donated enough shelf space to the valueless book (according to the ‘market’).  Moreover, you have the peace of mind to know that you could reacquire this book if you needed to quite cheaply. As I’ve written before, I like to think of Amazon and Ebay (and to some extent Craiglist) as my ‘distributed storage system‘.

Fair disclosure: the author is affiliated with Amazon.