Selling Used Books Online for Cash.

So, how do you sell your books online, what kind of books do you sell, and where do you get your inventory?

In this article I'll be dealing with selling used books. I believe that this is the easiest, and least risky type of book for the beginner to sell online. Perhaps you have a personal collection you want to sell, and you can start there. Even if this is the case, you'll probably want to find additional inventory at some point. The best places to obtain used book inventory are thrift stores, library sales, and estate sales.
There are tools that online booksellers can use to determine the value of books, and perhaps you'll want to invest in these at some time. As a beginner I suggest you stick to buying books that you would want in your personal collection, and don't pay more than a dollar for anything (to resell, if you want the book for yourself, then you use your own judgement) until you have learned more about the value of various types of books. Some rules of thumb:
1. Nonfiction is usually better than fiction
2. The highest prices are where demand is high relative to supply. So bestsellers generally sell for a dollar or less online.
3. If you do buy fiction, stick to first editions. Unfortunately knowing how to determine if a book is a first edition is a subject for another article or series of articles!
4. Textbooks are generally only valuable if they are less than a year or two old. Sometimes you can get a clue to this if the book is in at least it's second printing so you can see how many years between editions.
5. Heavier, denser books are usually good bets.
6. If you sell paperbacks, be prepared to do a lot of packing of high volume, low profit books. This is really the only way to make money on most paperbacks

There are 3 basic choices for how you sell your books online. These are auction format, fixed price format, and setting up your own online store. The last option is definitely not for the beginner, Ebay is a subject for many articless alread, so in this article I'm going to stick to the fixed price format, where Amazon is probably the most well known example.  Some of the better fixed price format sites other than Amazon include Abebooks.com, Alibris.com, Biblio.com, and Choosebooks.com.. For the most part the fixed price sites do not become cost effective until you have put together an inventory of several hundred books, and often require a minimum inventory.
Most charge a percentage of each sale, and some charge a monthly fee as well. Since these can change at any time, it's best to visit these sites FAQ pages for the current rates. An advantage of these sites is that you can use the same database file for all of them, whereas on EBay you have to enter each book individually, and usually a photo is needed as well.
I recommend beginning with fixed price sites.

3 Once you've got your inventory and have decided which venue or venues to sell on, the next step is getting your books online and priced. If you're selling on one site only I suggest you search the existing listings on that site to determine the value of the book. Most of these sites also include information on how to describe, or grade, your books. It is a good idea to read through these and make sure you have a fairly good grasp of the terms used in the trade. Generally your description will include several items, or in database terms, fields. These include:
Inventory number
Author
Title
ISBN number(books from before the early 1970's don't have this)
Binding (the general types are hardcover, softcover, and mass-market paperback)
Binding condition
Dustjacket condition
Category(such as history, mystery, etc.)
An overall description of the book.

You'll also need to decide what type of database program to use. Many of the fixed-price sites have a free version that you can download, such as Homebase on Abebooks.com, or a spreadsheet program such as Excel can be used.

So, find your books, decide which venues to sell on, get your books into your database, and get started!