What's the best way to advertise/sell a whole bunch of books, CDs, and DVDs?

Jul 03, 2012 17:57


My friends J & P are downsizing from a very large house, and they've packed up over two decades of books, CDs, and DVDs to sell. Since they're ridiculously busy, they've made me a kind of estate agent: my job is to sell all this stuff, and then give them the cash (though I get a cut for doing the work, which is awesome). There's a wide range of ( Read more... )

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Comments 15

sparcck July 3 2012, 23:19:20 UTC
I've always had the most luck with EBay. I've sold lots of stuff in bulk (books, etc.) and I don't think I've ever had a bad experience. They do a lot of the work for you, which is nice, and it's easy to track payments and shipping. And, at this point (especially if you do sets of items), I think your customers will end up being people who are old hat at using EBay (I found when I sold books, it was to people who had huge ratings and wanted no muss and no fuss), so it'll probably go more smoothly than, say, craigslist.

Good luck!

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tzikeh July 3 2012, 23:36:14 UTC
My concern with ebay is that you start incurring fees after posting, I think, 50 things for sale? And I'm going to have hundreds and hundreds of things to sell. As far as selling books in bulk, how would I decide which books to put together into one offer?

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sparcck July 4 2012, 00:41:49 UTC
Ah, hm, yeah fees suck. I would put together lots of books in a few ways. You can do it by author, genre, publication date or subject matter. And hen within each lot, I had a lot of luck by putting together, like, one or two valuable or popular items, and then a few less-so. People are willing to pay for and give the lesser known or lesser valued things a try in order to get the ones they want.

So my price for the lot would be a reasonable price for the bigger items plus a couple bucks. I ended up moving stuff I never would have by themselves!

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anonymous July 3 2012, 23:58:11 UTC
I think Amazon has something like this... maybe its "fulfilled by Amazon" service? I'm pretty sure I read you could scan the barcodes of everything you want to sell, pack it in a box, make a barcode for the box, and ship it to Amazon. -KatGamer from Twitter

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tzikeh July 4 2012, 04:36:25 UTC
Where would I go to scan barcodes?

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ubixtiz July 15 2012, 23:46:07 UTC
My understanding is that some folks have this technology on their phones these days. I don't know how, and the idea frightens me a bit, to be honest. No sci-fi with that kind of feature ever ends well.

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killabeez July 4 2012, 01:26:07 UTC
Amazon is by far the easiest and fastest, for me, but they also take a healthy cut. Also, my shipping costs are usually a bit more than what they actually pay you for shipping, particularly if you include the cost of padded envelopes/boxes. I would say if you can sell in lots on eBay, you might make more. I prefer the ease and speed of Amazon for books/CDs/DVDs. (Plus, no taking photos!) I sell a lot of other stuff on eBay, though, and while it can be more hassle, you also make way more (usually).

I'm no expert. That's just my experience. Craigslist I use only occasionally, and only for very specific items-- usually things that are in high demand in my area and that are too heavy to ship easily. (For instance, furniture, electronics.) Anything art/photography/videography/sports equipment related, I consign.

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tzikeh July 4 2012, 01:32:40 UTC
Hm - I was just looking at the Amazon marketplace thingy, and it doesn't seem fast at all. It says something like, they'll send you money every 21 days, if stuff sells? So that could take (ostensibly) months. Am I misunderstanding?

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killabeez July 4 2012, 01:45:15 UTC
I should have been clearer. Listing stuff is very fast. Actually getting paid is not fast.

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lyrical_sky July 4 2012, 03:20:08 UTC
My husband and I have downsized our own collection of books, cds, and dvds over the years, selling them on Amazon.com's Marketplce. We've literally made thousands of dollars selling them there - a lot of out of print and hard to find items sell for a surprisingly high price (though we're fair about it and always list our prices a little less than the highest priced seller). I highly recommend Amazon.

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tzikeh July 4 2012, 04:37:43 UTC
Hm. I might ask you for advice, but my main concern is time. As Killa says above, it can take a long time for whatever you put on the Marketplace to sell, right?

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lyrical_sky July 4 2012, 05:04:31 UTC
More often than not, things usually get sold within a few days - many times, within hours of listing. The trick is to price your item a few cents less than the top priced seller. Obviously, the best results are if you're selling items in 'Very Good' or 'Like New' condition. Feel free to ask any questions here or via PM. We've been doing this for years and it's been a great experience.

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magdalene1 July 4 2012, 03:46:27 UTC
Maybe take it to Half Price Books and get it all taken off your hands?

Downside, they may not pay you for all of it.

Upside, they will take/dispose of/recycle what they can't sell.

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tzikeh July 4 2012, 03:51:05 UTC
Unfortunately, a big part of this is making some money. If it weren't, we'd just donate most of it to the Uptown branch of ChiPubLib.

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