Introduction
One the easiest used items to sell on the internet is used books. They’re uniformly shaped, there’s nothing to try on, people generally know what they’re looking for, and there’s a super handy barcode on the back for you to use to expedite the listing process. Plus, they’re fairly low-cost to ship using media mail rates (in the United States). Sometimes you’ll see resellers clear out thrift stores (or little free libraries) to source their book inventory, but I’m coming from book selling as a way to clear off my shelves from the PR packages I receive as a book influencer. In this post, I’ll talk about how I receive the books that I ultimately sell, where to list them for sale, and how to package them up.
Where I Get My Books
Sometime around 2021, I started binge reading romance novels. Call it a post-Bridgerton semi-pandemic haze. I wasn’t really creating book content immediately, especially not within my main Instagram feed. However, when an opportunity came up to apply for the Avon influencer program, I took it, and I got in! At that time, they sent about one book in the mail to me per month. As someone who is a reader, but not a book collector, I would take photos of the books, post them in my feed, and then try to figure out how to sell the new books. Keep in mind, these were finished copies of the books, the same as you would find in a bookstore, not Advance Reader Copies (ARCs). ARCs are unfinished copies of books and have a big old disclaimer on the cover saying that they should not be listed for sale. Since then, I’ve been on different publisher influencer teams sporadically and have been grateful for the opportunity to receive free books to showcase as part of my bookish content creation.
An easy, but totally unreliable source for books entering giveaways, especially the ones on Goodreads. (link to Goodread Giveaways page) Publishers use Goodreads to host giveaways of their books, hoping to get the book in front of a larger audience. The probability of winning is really small because there are usually thousands of entries per book, but it’s worth trying anyway. Entering the giveaways is a tedious and somewhat time-consuming process, but I usually do this while I’m sitting on Microsoft Teams meetings during the workday.
As a TikTok Shop affiliate, I have also been able to receive many books as free samples from sellers. Many of the major publishers like Harper Collins, Sourcebooks, and Hachette have storefronts on TikTok Shop and send free product to creators to promote on TikTok. After receiving a free book from this source, I’ll make a video for TikTok, link to the product, and if someone makes a purchase using my link, then I receive a commission. (read more about how I make money on TikTok Shop here) Of course, I can keep the book on my shelf so I can continue to make videos over and over again, but there are times when I have so many books stacked up, that I need to list them for sale to clear out my space.
Where I sell: PangoBooks App
Of all the selling platforms, I have found PangoBooks to be the easiest to use and the one that consistently brings me the most sales. With the quantity of books I have available there, I usually sell about 5 to 7 books per week. The way to use it is to download the app onto your smartphone, register for an account, and start uploading photos of books. I will usually photograph the books, then edit them, and then start the listing. The app integrates a barcode scanning step that will import all the essential book information: title, author, summary, format, weight, etc. You just need to review everything and then set the price. After the book is listed and someone purchases it, you’ll get a notification and an automatically generated shipping label. The buyer pays the shipping fee (unless you have set up free shipping) and the package will ship via USPS Media Mail.
Photography Process
When I’m photographing books to sell, I try to make sure I’m in a well-lit environment and capture the book as clearly as possible. I will also try to photograph any flaws or signs of the condition of the book (such as dents, cracked spines, torn pages, etc). I’ll use a plain white poster board background in front of a window to set the book on top of and a piece of white foam board to help bounce light. After taking the photos with my iPhone, I’ll use an editing app to brighten the pictures or increase the saturation. This helps make the photos stand out among the other books for sale on the platform.
At my absolute laziest, I’ll take the photo within the PangoBooks app on a table lit with softbox lights and white posterboard.
Affiliate link to lighting kit
How the Money Works
On the PangoBooks app, it costs $0 up front to list the book for sale. After the book sells, there’s a platform fee of 20% of the list price (with a $0.40 minimum). Most of the time, the buyer pays the shipping (unless you’ve set the pricing or your store to have free shipping). You get paid 3 days after the item shows as delivered to the customer. For me, this means it’s best to ship out the orders as quickly as possible, so that I can get paid sooner. Once the money clears in the PangoBooks earnings section, you can transfer the money to either Paypal or your bank. You could choose to keep the funds inside your PangoBooks account to buy books with, but we’re trying to side hustle here and earn money, not buy more things we don’t need. I generally transfer the funds to my bank as soon as available.
Shipping Supplies
Label Printing
I usually print my shipping labels on 4×6 inch thermal label paper using my Munbyn thermal printer. Before I purchased a dedicated label printer, I would print with a black and white laser printer onto half-sheet label paper. If you don’t want to purchase label paper, you can print the shipping labels onto plain white paper and use clear packing tape to secure it to your packages.
Packaging Materials
For packing and sending out books, it’s important to protect the books from being bent or dented. I recommend using bubble mailers as a quick and easy way to protect your items. I have also used these heavy duty rigid mailers (which I was gifted by the company to try out) but they’re not as cost-effective as the bubble mailers. I also like to wrap the books with packing paper for extra security.
Overall Income
The income here is totally inconsistent because some months I get a lot of new books that I can list for sale, and some months I don’t have anything to list. Since I’m mostly just trying to get rid of books I got for free, I’m listing them online at very competitive prices. I’ll post the price at around half of the retail price of that book new, and my Pango Shop has a perpetual 25% sale running. After fees, a trade paperback book gets me $5.40 deposited into my bank. There’s also the cost of shipping supplies to consider.
Conclusion
Selling used books online falls into the category of selling stuff you have lying around your house to make an extra buck. I put no upfront investment into this and approached it as a decluttering process from being a book influencer. I have not tried to source books from thrift stores or discount stores, so I really don’t know if it’s worth buying inventory. Sometimes the books don’t sell very quickly, and I just have a huge stack of books taking up space. In some cases, if books aren’t moving and they’re still in my house, I’ll delete the listing and just donate the books to clear up space. At the time of this writing, I’m sitting on 74 books listed for sale in my Pango Shop, and I haven’t made a sale in a couple of weeks. I’m actually testing out listing the same books on a separate platform at the same time, and seeing if the books sell someplace else. This is a tip that clothing resellers share a lot (if you’ve already got the inventory and the photos, list the item on Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, and so on). I’ll come back and share how that experiment is going when/if I make a sale. Overall, if you’ve got extra books lying around that you don’t want (or if you manage to pick up a huge box of super cheap books at a garage sale), selling books online is a pretty low-effort side hustle and I’m definitely going to continue this one.
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