books that sell
Recently we had a discussion about the state of the book selling market. Right now for me ebay is more or less business as usual or down somewhat due to not getting many offers and auctions nothing special. But over the past few days Amazon has blown up. My inventory there is small but the sales are dramatically higher. I wanted to bring this up in terms of what kinds of books are selling for me: cookbooks like crazy and recent novels. A friend reports good sales of textbooks but I have few of those. So some people out there are still reading and I assume they appreciate the secondhand market because the prices I see on the books are shocking. $30 for a novel?
13 comments
knnjamison
·2 years agoAs a buyer looking for a book(s), I am not going to waste my time browsing ebay’s book category nor will I waste my time searching for a book or author. Ebay’s search results are laughable.
But even more laughable are eBay’s home page recommendations. I clicked on the ‘See all’ link under Antiquarian & Collectible Books, Recommended for you…. Within one minute I found refurbished car parts and stiffener boards for military assault packs in the antiquarian & collectible books category along with countless new book listings, digital book listings, etc. Only the first few rows had antiquarian/collectible books. This has to be a programming mistake, right?
Of course consumers are going to shop somewhere else. No one has time or patience to navigate eBay’s categorical mayhem.
I also tried browsing the Antiquarian & Collectible Books category and I was suggested ‘Antiquarian Sticker Books’ & ‘Books Used’ as related searches.
onefootflipper
·2 years agoSo you neither browse nor search. How exactly are you looking then?
I sometimes price check hundreds of items a day, I have absolutely no issue finding exact titles, usually hundreds of copies of each one.
keziak
OP2 years agoI don't think Amazon is very good for browsing. Recently I wanted to find current books on the opioid epidemic and it was hopeless, their subjects headings no good. I had to do Google searches instead. As for Ebay I have always assumed people did title searches or keyword searches.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoBrowsing for books on eBay is easy compared to struggling with Amazon. Which is a shame, given their origins.
keziak
OP2 years agoCataloging books isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, to be fair to them. Often the subject headings are too broad to be useful. They are good when you want to find out all the books by an author.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoIt's definitely better for that, yes, though I notice that they seem to mix in books with similar titles in those results, even when searching under author. But at least they're in the ballpark. I've sometimes had to go to Goodreads, etc., to really find series, though, other time Amazon presents all the books in a series.
mr_lincoln
·2 years agoHi @keziak
Text books that can be used for Home Schooling do well as do used Home School curriculum.
keziak
OP2 years agoI haven't really had particular luck with homeschooling books and materials. Maybe I don't market them effectively, explaining how they can be used. For example last year I had a whole lot of homeschool books on learning Latin and sales were really underwhelming. Though just to contradict myself I have someone interested in buying all of a series of Latin books I have right now which is unusual.
mr_lincoln
·2 years ago@keziak
We've sold numerous years worth of h-s materials but do not recall any requirements to learn Latin ... that is probably more your issue. In our area h-s was popular when we did it for our kids and has actually grown since then.
keziak
OP2 years agoThere was a woman with a ton of homeschooling curricular books and materials for sale on Marketplace. I talked to her back and forth but didn't venture out of town to go look at the stuff. Someone with expertise might have known better what she had in terms of saleability. She did have a list and a lot was marked "fair" which didn't sound promising.
john_wade
·2 years agoAny book signed by a famous person or writer regardless of whether it's a first edition and regardless of condition. I recently sold a hardback edition in DJ of one of Pres. Trump's "Art of the Deal" books signed by him on the endpaper for $150 on eBay. A book signed by Mark Twain even if it's a later edition would be worth plenty.
dhbookds
·2 years agoSeasons............I'm seeing Xmas gifts selling (said by buyers)... cookbooks and favorite authors should do better this time of year.........textbooks obviously because of school starting......
simba6
·2 years agoYou never know what will sell on eBay. You can check the sold listings to get an idea of that is selling and for how much.