Peace of Mind Organizing

An easy way to sell books

2 November 2009

In my life, books can be a big source of clutter. For a number of years, I was the book review columnist for Dog World magazine, and books would come pouring into my home on a regular basis. I’ve been decluttering my bookshelves for a couple of years now.

I’ve tried, with some success, selling books on Craigslist. I’ve avoided selling them on Ebay or half.com because I didn’t want to have to ship individual books.

Enter Powell’s Books and their Sell Us Your Books program. They make it very easy. You enter in the ISBN numbers of the books you’re interested in selling. They tell you, on the spot, whether they’re interested in the books and, if they are, how much they’ll pay you for them. You accept or decline their offer with a click. If you accept, you decide whether you’d like the money in store credit or via PayPal. (You get a higher price if you opt for store credit.)

After you login or register, you print out a personalized, postage-paid shipping label and ship them the box of books. Once they inspect the books and make sure they meet their quality standards (which they spell out well on their website), they email you that they’re applying the credit (or sending the money via PayPal).

This morning, I found “sell books” on an early page in my Autofocus notebook and so I went to Powell’s website and entered some ISBNs. I sold eight books (out of the 20 or so ISBNs I entered) for $33 in store credit. (I choose store credit so I can buy knitting books, which are among the few categories of books I purchase, rather than borrow from the library.)

I’ve already shipped the box. Easy peasy. And now there’s a little more room on my bookshelf!

Tagged with: books, decluttering, powell's books

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