We sell online also, only items valued at $10 or more and primarily out-of-print/rare books - we just use Amazon...so generally we look up items that are published before 1960. We have a staff member who lists the items and she can do it quickly so that has worked well, she also packages the items when they are ready to be mailed out. We have had great success with library withdrawn items also, you just need to be clear in the description of the item that it is a withdrawn library copy. We also list in our descriptions that the purchase helps support our library. It is generally simple to list items on Amazon and we mail them USPS so Amazon gives us a $3.99 shipping credit - generally it costs $2-$3 for the postage to ship the books. There is a portion collected by Amazon for selling the item but the convenience and ease of use makes it worth it. (For example we recently sold a $30 book and got $27.15 for it.) We have sold books for $70-$100 that otherwise would have only sold for $1 in our used book store, so it definitely pays to keep an eye out for valuable books in your donations! It would be great to have a volunteer to monitor this process but I have not found one at our library yet... and our staff is able to do the process fairly quickly... you need to have someone keeping an eye on it daily to keep your seller ratings up. Amazon pays you directly to a bank account and emails you when you have sold items and when you are getting payments. Our Friends group does keep an eye out for items that get donated that are published before 1960 also and pass them on to us to check the value. We made $700 last year and have already sold over $400 this year.

It's a great way to make extra income and I would encourage you give it a try. Even on a small scale it is pretty effective...We have a very small inventory to monitor and still made $700 last year.

Andrea Estelle

Library Director
Otsego District Library

401 Dix St

Otsego, MI 49078

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Michlib-l] Selling books online
From: Christine Hage <christine.hage@rhpl.org>
Date: Fri, July 03, 2015 9:58 am
To: "Mich-L." <Michlib-l@mail2.mcls.org>

Our Friends of the Library have been selling books online for several years and have had great success. They've earned $17,000 so far THIS year. It is completely a volunteer operation and none of them had any special training or experience in book selling.

Volunteers scan donations to the library and all library withdrawals. The scanner and its software costs us about $400 a year. We recently got a second scanner and because it was the second it was slightly less. The scanner matches the ISBN number against items on sale at Amazon, ABE and maybe a few other databases. If the item pops up as selling on line for more than $10 we list it.

A separate team of 4 or 5 people who were self-taught and now train our new volunteers do the listings. We often can find the same book online and don't have to come up with original posting information. We make excellent money on library withdrawals too.

Another team of volunteers have someone in every morning that handling the packaging and shipping of materials. We can have anywhere to 700 - 800 titles listed on Amazon at any one time. We list them for 4 or 5 months and then reduce the price if they aren't moving.

We have 100% satisfaction rating on Amazon.

It is a lot of work, but our volunteers love it. They are able to sell a lot books. I would highly recommend online selling to you.

Christine Lind Garden , Library Director
Rochester Hills Public Library
500 Olde Towne Road
Rochester, MI 48307-2043
248/650-7122

Raising a reader is: Talking * Singing * Reading * Writing * Playing

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