Big vendors online like Amazon are always looking for used books that they can buy and resell. You can create an entire business out of finding books and selling them to these companies in bulk. A lot of people are able to earn five figures every month doing this side hustle, so it’s well worth the time and effort.
The bad news about this type of work is that it requires time, travel, and heavy lifting. A single book doesn’t seem very heavy but an entire box of them can be enough to cause injuries if you’re not careful.
This article will give you some tips to get starting including a website that you can use to easily find out the value of any book and connect to the vendors that will buy it.
Why Resell Books?
In today’s digital world, the average person really doesn’t value books anymore. Think about the years after DVDs were released. VHS tapes became old news and nobody wanted them anymore because they were big, bulky and heavy. Something similar has happened with books today, except there is actually still a demand to buy them.
Since most people don’t view books as being valuable anymore, they can often be found for pennies on the dollar if you search around in your local city. You can sometimes even find people online locally that want to get rid of boxes full of books for free if you simply pick them up.
Doing this type of work does require a lot of physical labor. You’re going to have to leave your house and drive around to find items to buy. You then have to transport them back to your house to package them up and ship them to a vendor to get paid. This will leave you physically sore for a while if you’re not active and used to a lot of activity.
Price Books & Find Buying Vendors
Buying and reselling books is a side hustle that can require a lot of work but it can also result in big earnings if you’re successful. BookScouter is a website that you can use to easily look up the values of books and connect with companies that buy used books to get paid.
It’s free to join and list books for sale on this site, but they also have a paid membership option that provides more powerful features for book sellers. You won’t need the upgraded membership to get started. Give the site a try first to see how the process works before you decide to invest in an upgraded account.
Books can be bought from any source. Local yard sales or thrift stores are easy sources. If you visit enough of these locations and homes, you can often find multiple people that are trying to get rid of a massive pile of books. Sometimes you can even strike up a bargain to buy everything they have for a really low price. However, make sure you look up the selling values of them so you can sure to make a profit.
You could also try wholesale liquidations like estate sales or storage locker auctions. When you find books that you can buy, scan the ISBN with the BookScouter mobile app to look up what vendors will pay for it. After you collect a group of books to sell to a vendor, just package them up and ship to them. You’ll get paid within a couple of days of the books being received by the vendor.