You’ve given me a couple of ideas though. I hadn’t considered Craigslist. I guess that would eliminate my having to pack and ship things.

And it sounds like Amazon might be better than eBay which strikes me as a whole series of fees to pay (to list the auction, to put pictures on, to pay PayPal fees, etc.). Given that I’ve seen those books going for 99 cents on eBay I doubted I could make any money by the time they finished charging me for stuff.

Yes, I’d have to ship the books, but I wonder if I’d make more money with Amazon than on Craigslist (where I’m assuming it’s only local people buying, so a smaller market).

I wasn’t keen on trading because the places didn’t have enough books I really want (they would give me 2 of theirs for each of mine). But maybe Paperback Swap, so I could get exactly what I want? Or some combination of the above?

Decisions, decisions. Thanks for the help though!

I think some of it depends on the value of the books.

For instance, you might be able to offload the Star Trek books on Craigslist. There are probably plenty of trekkies scrounging around online. (Might also be interesting to see what people might trade you for.)

I’ve also heard good things about book-swapping sites, though it sounds like you’re not in the market for *more* books. Otherwise you’d have taken the offer for trade-in value.

As far as eBay, I’ve never much understood selling books on there. I kind of get schoolbooks and maybe understand bestsellers. But regular books? I just can’t see much profit in it. On the other hand, I’d never even thought about selling books on half.com. So clearly I’m not “with it.”

However, I should point out that Amazon has a pretty cool program where you can sell your books as an individual. You just list them the one time and that’s it. If someone buys, Amazon notifies you and helps with some of the cost of shipping.

Still, it sounds like maybe you would prefer to forgo shipping the books anywhere.

If so, I think the best route is to just donate them for the tax-write-off. I don’t know how such things work in Canada. But for folks here in the US I always suggest keeping a list of the items you donate and the approximate value (be realistic, folks!) so that you have records as needed.

Since the flood I had a couple of years ago I’m not sure what I have since everything ended up boxed up (none were damaged but all the shelves had to be discarded because IKEA and water don’t mix). Some books are still in boxes and the shelves I have aren’t all lined up along the wall of my living room. In fact, I split my books between my 2 homes so it’s really hard to tell.

But I reread my books over and over. Still, there are some that have become less important to me over time. For example, I had (up to a certain point a number of years ago) pretty well every Star Trek book ever written. One day I realized that I was only reading most of them once. (This may have been the day I read a book by Peter David where all the alien characters were named for the items on the seder plate! But I digress….) Money was tight and eventually I stopped buying them. But I never got rid of the ones I had.

I finally went through them a couple of moves ago and separatd them into the ones I want to keep forever and the ones I’m done with. I want to sell those books (along with a bunch of other books, including ones that were my mother’s) but I never get to the point of actually doing it.

My hubby *buys* stuff on eBay but we’ve never sold anything there. I don’t know whether to try to sell the books in general and the collectable books in particular on eBay or Amazon or half. I’m afraid of the costs, of the hassle of boxing and shipping, etc. and it keeps me from moving ahead.

Do you think I should just give up and give the books to charity, or try to sell them? What do you find to be the most successful way to sell books? (I’ve already carted them around to a couple of second hand bookstores and they took very few. Other places just want to trade me for other used books.)