My Amazon Journey
@owlwings (43910)
Cambridge, England
August 15, 2016 1:02pm CST
I have listed a few books on Amazon for several years now, mainly to clear my shelves of books I've collected over the years and no longer want. To be honest, it's not a big money spinner but every now and again - that is, about once in six months - I get an order, pack it up and ship it off. Usually, what with the amount Amazon pays you for postage and deducting the iniquitous fees Amazon charges, I make a pound or two from it. I can't really calculate a 'profit' because I bought most of the books so long ago that I can't remember the price I paid for many of them.
Today, however, I had the bizarre experience of selling a book for 50p and actually making four times that.
It worked like this:
The order came from the USA so Amazon's allowance for postage was £6.94, however, their fees were £2.13 (on a 50p book? They have to be joking!), which left me with £5.31. Luckily, the book was only a smallish pamphlet and didn't weigh very much (55g, when packed), so the postage actually only cost me £3.15, so I am actually £2.16 better off for selling a book for 50p!
It doesn't always work like that, of course. Many of the books I have cost rather more to ship than Amazon allows, so I have to take that into account when setting the prices.
16 people like this
17 responses
. You should better sell only books printed on thin paper@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Aug 16
I must say that I was a little surprised but the fees are based on what the customer pays, which includes the set cost of postage. I usually weigh my books before listing them, calculate the actual cost of postage and make allowance for that in the price so that I don't have to send anything out at a loss. I have never had to send anything overseas before, though, and I was a little worried that the postage to the US was going to be more than it was worth to send it. Even so, I felt that £3.15 for what was basically no more than half a dozen sheets of A4 was a bit steep!
1 person likes this
. Your real official profit here would be £0.50-£2.13=£-1.63 : nice, Amazon helps you to pay less taxes by selling at loss
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Aug 16
Nope. Never owned a Series II Landrover but I gather that some of the Haynes manuals are like gold dust, though a bit heavy to pack and ship. This particular one was a somewhat obscure pamphlet of 11 hymn tunes in the 'folk' style by Geoffrey Beaumont. This guy must have wanted it quite badly to pay over £7 for it! It really was worth no more than £1, tops, in my view.
1 person likes this
@maezee (41988)
• United States
16 Aug 16
Nice! Sometimes I wonder how realistic those shipping rates are that they set on Amazon. I used to sell college textbooks and they would always force me to only charge 3.99 for shipping domestically and I always lost money on that. Grr. But good job!
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
17 Aug 16
I don't know how Amazon work out their shipping rates. They must be based on something like an 'average weight', I guess. For something like text books which are notoriously heavy, they are usually nowhere near enough which means that a wise seller will add the extra in to the price displayed. Working out the return you will receive if the books sell is rather complex because of the fees deduction but some people have developed tools to help with this.
@marguicha (223795)
• Chile
15 Aug 16
I wish I knew how to sell book, not to get money, but to clean up some of my shelves without having to throw them away.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Aug 16
Amazon makes it fairly easy for anyone to list books. It works quite well in Europe and the US but I don't know how it would be in South America. Of course, you then have to wait for someone to want to buy (and that could be years!) and then you have to pack and ship the things.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (223795)
• Chile
15 Aug 16
@owlwings THere are a lot of things that do not work well for South America. One of them are surveys. But we can buy ebooks from Amazons, yet I doubt that we can real paper books. The shipping costs must be huge.
1 person likes this
@Mike197602 (15512)
• United Kingdom
15 Aug 16
I left all my books at my landlords house as I had no space for them.
I should have tried to sell them but I couldn't be bothered so he's taken them to a charity shop as far as I know.
Storage issues are way easier to solve when you have a digital library
2 people like this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Aug 16
If I had the time, I'd scan many of my books and sell them (keeping the digital copies). On the other hand, I find paper copies of books much easier to refer to than e-books. E-books are fine for something like a novel but less useful for reference books where you only want to refer to just one chapter or passage.
2 people like this
@marsha32 (6631)
• United States
15 Aug 16
I sell through half.com They calculate the shipping, which is generally just a bit over what it actually is, so that is good.
I don't get a lot of orders either, but I do get more when I am listing on a regular basis.
I do remember once that I bought a book at the Goodwill Store for 39 cents and it sold for $40! I sure wish that happened more often!
One other time I happened to buy a college textbook at the public library for $1 and it was still a current text book. I had that one at ebay and it also ended up selling for $50. I about fainted, but then looked it up online and the going used price for that text book was $75 so they ended up with a good savings.
1 person likes this
@ChrisH09 (277)
• Trinidad And Tobago
16 Aug 16
I use ebay for my second hand items I want to get rid of, however I am familiar with the feeling of hardly making anything for yourself after the fees are deducted. Small items like video games usually earn me the most as it cost little to nothing to ship.
@celticeagle (168256)
• Boise, Idaho
16 Aug 16
It sounds like a rather confusing way to make next to nothing.
1 person likes this
@Jackalyn (7558)
• Oxford, England
15 Aug 16
I have never tried. I have had the bizarre experience of finding books by me for sale on Amazon for over £100 so I have never felt I could trust them. I really do not know how they work their prices out at all.
I do have books to sell though but I think there is another company here called WeBuyBooks that might actually collect the books at a collection point as well as receiving them by post.
Currently I have more books than bookshelf and no room for more bookshelf so it is time to lose the ones I can bear to part with...
However, it is good to hear you did fine with that one book.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Aug 16
With the second-hand books, it is the seller who sets the price, not Amazon. There are a few sellers who consistently list quite ordinary things at very strange prices - far too high for anyone in their right mind to buy them, especially as there are usually many more at more reasonable prices. I really don't know what their game is and I can't believe that they ever make a sale, though there are always some mugs about, I suppose.
Amazon is a very trustworthy market place, though, as I say, they do charge rather exorbitant fees for the privilege of listing (while the seller holds the stock and does all of the dirty work of packing and shipping). Sellers are monitored carefully and it is relatively rare to come across one who doesn't ship promptly or doesn't supply the goods as described.
@crazyhorseladycx (39509)
• United States
15 Aug 16
i'm jest too lazy to tend with that resellin' 'f schtuff. if'n i've no need, i donate 'em to the library 'r one'f the shelters. i'm glad that'cha made a few coin off'a that'un, hon. most interestin' how amazon figures those kinda thingies i reckon? yepperz, i'd be keepin' a close eye'n such if'n i 'twas doin' what'cher doin'.
1 person likes this
@Poppylicious (11133)
•
15 Aug 16
Nice little amount for your pocket, there. I don't sell anything anywhere, and books would freak me out a bit if I knew they might cost a bit to send. I have no problem buying books though!!
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
15 Aug 16
I offloaded some college textbooks that way, I dont have actual hard copies too often anymore, the few I do I wouldnt want to get rid of
1 person likes this
