How has the used book market changed?

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

I have a question about the eBay market for used books.

Years ago I was reselling a lot of used books that I purchased at library sales. Typically I'd list a book in a 7-day auction with a starting bid about half the average price in the same condition on ABEbooks. I'd sell about 50% of the listings, which I considered satisfactory.

I dealt mainly in technical books on odd and obscure topics that a person with a related occupation or hobby might want to buy for use. I also sold collectible books that would appeal to the same type of people. Here are a couple of representative listings that I have right now:

Designing and Painting for the Theatre, Pecktal - HB

Design Guide to Orbital Flight, Forward by Wernher von Braun, 1962

I've been away from eBay for three years, and away from selling books for years longer. Now I'm trying to liquidate the books I have on hand. I'm listing and pricing things the same way I used to, and nothing is selling. What has changed? What do I need to do to get a reasonable sellthrough rate?

[djvp53]

Your own link says items that can be mailed include: Domestic mail (including Priority Mail Express®) with metered postage or PC Postage. 

I buy PC postage on eBay and I can mail it in a blue box if I choose. 

Of course, the one time I tried, it didn't get picked up for three days. 

[blurryrobot]

1.   That IS the current Ebay sell-through rate.  It is all very depressing.

2.  The entire Ebay used book market has basically been ruined for the small seller by a few gigantic mega-sellers that are actually PAPER RECYCLERS who get their books for free, list them without photos for ultra low prices, and ship them in minimal packaging.   Hint:  Take the mega-seller's ebay name, remove the word "books" and replace with the word "recycling".   Now do a quick internet search and you'll learn something. 

These mega-sellers get tons of negative feedback because their grading and packaging practices are sho shoddy. But they sell so much volume that it buries the negatives. 

It's not the customer.  People haven't recently stopped reading.  People stopped reading 75 years ago, but the same people who kept reading, have kept right on buying books.  It's that a person who buys their books can't compete with a recycler's prices, when the recycler gets 'em free and makes money selling the shreds to paper mills even if they can't move the book.

(The same recyclers also collect clothing, also to shred and sell to paper mills for the making of cotton rag paper)

One thing I can tell you is, put your Ebay store name in the first sentence of your description.  Google has a habit of making 'composite' listings through Google Shopping where they pair the best description and photos with several different sellers' prices.    If you don't put your name in there, your text and photo are being used to sell the recyclers' bargain-priced books and you aren't even getting free advertising. 

But in general all you can do is list a lot of books and let the sales slowly trickle in.  

[jewelbiz]

All the walls in all the rooms in my apartment have floor to ceiling books which I bought from various, countless locations in my 50 years in business as a New York City antique jewelry dealer.  I keep wanting for decades to go down in front of my fancy apartment building on Broadway where I live to sell them on the street which is not illegal thanks to our 1st Amendment rights.  But I never get up the courage to do it.  Say as soon as the weather is warm, we’ll today is sunny & 70 degrees.  Broadway downstairs is a good place with lots of people.

 I could probably get down there with my hand truck, 1 table & 1 chair plus several boxes of some books without any help but I’m a chicken!

[pilgrim_1999]

A three or four business day handling time should solve the shipping issue. There is no requirement for next day shipping unless you are Top Rated Plus or whatever it is called. If you have specific days you go to the post office, such as Tuesdays and Fridays, you can put that in the description too if you think that would be helpful. I used to buy from a seller that had their shipping days in the description. You just have to make sure that you have tracking uploaded and the package scanned within your stated handling time.

People today just want to click and buy and be done with it if the price is within their budget. I used to do auctions with BIN and most people selected BIN even though they could have gotten the book cheaper if they would have waited out the auction. I see the same thing with BIN and make offer if the BIN price is competitive. A lot of people just go with BIN so they can be done with it and ensure they don't lose out. The only times I'd consider an auction are if it is a high value item that is highly sought after, or if I have no idea how to price it and am willing to sell it for less than I might be able to get if I had more knowledge. It isn't hard to research prices unless there are literally no other copies of your book for sale on the internet. 

[iart]

Not sure why we're giving you advice - you're a direct competitor. lol

1) Recycle (trash) any books you don't think you'll get at least $15 for (including shipping). $18 is even better.

2) After they don't sell on auction, RAISE the price and accept offers.

3) Bribe eBay with Promoted Listings.

4) Expect even nicely priced and promoted listings to take half a year or more to sell.

[evry1nositswindy]

I just sold a book recently that has been listed for nearly 3 years!  Just takes the right person.  I am in the process of deleting a bunch because I get to pick a house that my friend says has ROOMS full of books.  I will be very picky, but I'm making space.  I do recycle all of the books I don't keep.  Helps the environment, helps the school that does the recycling.

[enchantment_romance]

Wifey might not have been greedy, just stupid.  Or maybe she had fallen in love

with the two books. 

[enchantment_romance]

Does anyone here know that in many locations, you can order a pickup from the post office.

Go to USPS.com and order the pick up. You can leave your packages by your door and they

will pick them up during their usual mail route, for free.  Special pickups cost $20.  

A scale suitable for books costs about $15.  I have not gone to the post office in years.

[miyasamaco]

There are bookselling apps out there that are easy to use. I still much prefer visiting a bookstore, but shop online too. 

[south-plains-drifter]

Very good point. Apart from what you say about their dependance to the power grid, digital books are -by definition- always and essentially manipulable, subject to censorship and erasable. You can actually see how globalist platforms like eBay and Amazon are increasing the number of banned books, so they cannot even be listed, and this will continue getting much worse for sure. Not to mention the current slow and constant destruction of physical books by the own publishing houses, as well as the decline and disappearing of the traditional bookstores all around the world.  Physical and politically incorrect books, most especially first editions, have been exponentially increasing their value during the last year; just take a look at their prices in the market. My prediction is that old physical books will become scarcer and more desirable. Just give it time.

[onefootflippers]

Today the overwhelming majority of books have fallen to shipped prices below what a normal ebay seller can even ship the item out at. 

Mega booksellers and charity mega booksellers in particular have an advantage as they can both take advantage of 5 digit media mail presort and the charity sellers only pay 2 percent ebay fees. This means a charity bookseller can sell the book for $1.89 less than you can and they have such large stock that many actually take advantage of their buy 2 get 1 free (or related) promotions which means they can afford to list everything at the break even point if need be.

[south-plains-drifter]

Yes, you are right, but in my opinion this is only something temporary. Physical books will actually continue to be devalued, precisely as a previous and necessary step to their destruction. This is not something casual but a part of a well-defined process. In the long term, as the world completes its transformation into 1984, we will have to see the consequences of this on the used books market.