Get Rid of Old Books to Free Up Space and Money
Posted on February 26, 2010 by admin
Everyone, especially home-owners, has amassed over the years a collection of books, movies, etc, that they do not need, but have not sorted out yet. Whether it’s a couple of boxes of unread books given as gifts, or an entire house library of out-of-date books, everyone has books that they want to clear out. With a little preparation, you can get rid of your books easily, and even make money doing so.
First Decide Which Books to Keep
Current Travel books, reference books, novels you expect to re-read, and any other book you realistically think you will touch again within 5 years should stay. Everything else should go, including:
- Out of date travel books
- Out of date reference books (dictionaries, almanacs, etc)
- One-read Novels
- Out of date technological books (Windows 95 for Dummies, Mastering Corel WordPerfect 98)
Ultimately, you are just getting rid of everything out of date. Purge ruthlessly. If you doubt you will use it, and the book is replaceable, scrap it.
Buy a $20 Barcode Scanner on eBay
The major problem with selling books online is that it is not time-efficient. Spending time listing book details and taking pictures is a waste of time as they often won’t sell for much, and many won’t sell at all. The best way around this is to use a barcode scanner to scan the barcodes from the books. You can get a cheap one on eBay for around $20 incl. shipping. With only the basic driver installed and no additional software, the barcode scanner will type the ISBN code of any book you scan on your screen. This makes listing books significantly easier and faster.
Sell Your Books Online
To get the best return on my books, I first try to list my books on Half.com. Half.com lets you search prices and list by ISBN. If the selling price is worth my time I will list the book. Otherwise I will head over to BookScouter. Many websites will purchase specific used books back from you. BookScouter allows you to search all of these websites at once. Finally, if the book is worth nothing, I will list it on a book-swapping service such as BookMooch. At the least, this will let me get a book from someone else later. Every month or so I unlist unsold books, pack them up, and get rid of them.
Getting Rid of Unsellable Books
If you still have a book after the above three steps, it’s not worth your time to sell, and you should just get rid of it by one of the following methods:
- Donate it to your public library
- Drop it off at a thrift store
- Donate to your local Church Sale
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