If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of books. Every so often, I’m forced to go through them and get rid of some just to reduce the risk of being found pinned under an avalanche of them. Rather than just giving them away, this time around I’ve been trying to earn a little money (so I can buy more books! Death by book slide, here I come…)
Since I want to get them out of my house fast, I haven’t been selling them individually. Instead, I’ve been using two book-buying services:
Amazon Trade-In
The US version is well-established and takes all sorts of things, but the UK one is quite new and only accepts a limited catalogue. Books have to be packed into boxes and dropped off locally (in the UK it’s at post offices or Collect+ stations). Postage is free.
They pay in Amazon gift cards, and for my last order they were offering a bonus £5 off £10 spend voucher code when you traded in £15 worth of books. Add that to the Amazon giftcards I’ve been earning through Swagbucks (another recent discovery – now I earn money from my search engine!) and I’m building up a very nice stash.
We Buy Books
We Buy Books is a UK only site that buys books, CDs, DVDs and games. So far they’re my favourite, because they take a much wider range than the Amazon store, they will collect your packaged books from your home (Monday to Friday) and they pay in cash (by cheque, through Paypal or straight into your bank account). They also have occasional voucher codes to increase your payout. As with Amazon, postage is free and payout only takes a few days.
Book Scouter
On Book Scouter, you type in the ISBN of a book you want to sell and it looks at all the book buying sites in the US to find you the one that’s offering the highest price for it. Brilliant if you’re selling high value books like textbooks.
Have you used a book-buying site?
This post has been part of:
Thrifty Thursday @ Living Well, Spending Less
Frugal Friday @ Sarah Titus
Share the Wealth Sunday @ Fun Money Mom