I've just discovered another way of selling books. Green Metropolis is run for the benefit of the Woodland trust and all books cost £3.75 including delivery (there are some exceptions to that rule but I haven't found them yet).
You sign up, list your books (condition notes are a good idea) and, when one sells you get £3.
I have not tried this but the selection of book available is good and a cursory inspection of the site reveals people who have sold reasonable numbers of books so it must work.
Saturday 18 June 2011
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Swapping Books
This is another activity which is totally revolutionised by the internet. Within hours of listing books on Bookmooch, I had requests for some of my stock of surplus books.
There are two sorts of book swap, those where you swap directly and those which use a "currency."
Readitswapit is a direct swap site based in the UK. The drawback as I see it is that the chances of someone who wants your book having one which you require are pretty slim. I may, of course, be totally wrong.
There is a clear explanation of how this site works here.
The second model seems to work very well however. I've used two sites - the market leader is Bookmooch, with the main disadvantage being that it is much more used in the US than in UK & BookHopper, which is UK based. The eBay effect comes into play here and I have had much more success both giving and receiving books on Bookmooch.
How Bookmooch Works
You register, list the books you have to give away & you get .1 of a point for listing a book. Once you have a whole point you can request a book. It costs 1 point in your own country & 3 if it is from abroad. You may refuse any mooch. There are official acceptable reasons for this (and unacceptable ones... I'm amused that "I've lost the book" is not an acceptable reason! If I've lost it, I can't send it!), but when all is said & done, no-one can force you to send a book out.
It is a good idea to add condition notes to your book entry and I also use this to say whether I am likely to agree to send the book abroad. I have stopped sending heavy hardbacks anywhere as they cost too much to post.
You can decide whether you wish to send abroad or not by setting your account to "only to my country", "ask if not to my country" or "worldwide".
Once someone has requested a book and you have decided to send it, you pay the postage (obviously) but surface mail or 2nd class for domestic mooches is acceptable and, in return, you pay nothing for the books that come to you.
I put a large number of books on at the beginning and built up rather a large balance of points. Now I add relatively few new books to my inventory while I try to spend them.
As well as adding your inventory of spare books, it is worthwhile to add books to your wishlist. When a book is added to those available on the site, an email is sent to one of the people who has wishlisted it. That person is chosen at random. However, from the moment it is listed, anyone may mooch it so it is worth checking now and then to see whether any of your wishlisted books has been added.
I love using Bookmooch, not just because I have turned books I don't want into books which I do, but because many recipients are delighted with their books - one on Perpetual Motion went to India, Paradise Lost to Turkey & two copies of the Young Visiters to the US, all to delighted moochers.
There is a load more about Bookmooch here.
There are two sorts of book swap, those where you swap directly and those which use a "currency."
Readitswapit is a direct swap site based in the UK. The drawback as I see it is that the chances of someone who wants your book having one which you require are pretty slim. I may, of course, be totally wrong.
There is a clear explanation of how this site works here.
The second model seems to work very well however. I've used two sites - the market leader is Bookmooch, with the main disadvantage being that it is much more used in the US than in UK & BookHopper, which is UK based. The eBay effect comes into play here and I have had much more success both giving and receiving books on Bookmooch.
How Bookmooch Works
You register, list the books you have to give away & you get .1 of a point for listing a book. Once you have a whole point you can request a book. It costs 1 point in your own country & 3 if it is from abroad. You may refuse any mooch. There are official acceptable reasons for this (and unacceptable ones... I'm amused that "I've lost the book" is not an acceptable reason! If I've lost it, I can't send it!), but when all is said & done, no-one can force you to send a book out.
It is a good idea to add condition notes to your book entry and I also use this to say whether I am likely to agree to send the book abroad. I have stopped sending heavy hardbacks anywhere as they cost too much to post.
You can decide whether you wish to send abroad or not by setting your account to "only to my country", "ask if not to my country" or "worldwide".
Once someone has requested a book and you have decided to send it, you pay the postage (obviously) but surface mail or 2nd class for domestic mooches is acceptable and, in return, you pay nothing for the books that come to you.
I put a large number of books on at the beginning and built up rather a large balance of points. Now I add relatively few new books to my inventory while I try to spend them.
As well as adding your inventory of spare books, it is worthwhile to add books to your wishlist. When a book is added to those available on the site, an email is sent to one of the people who has wishlisted it. That person is chosen at random. However, from the moment it is listed, anyone may mooch it so it is worth checking now and then to see whether any of your wishlisted books has been added.
I love using Bookmooch, not just because I have turned books I don't want into books which I do, but because many recipients are delighted with their books - one on Perpetual Motion went to India, Paradise Lost to Turkey & two copies of the Young Visiters to the US, all to delighted moochers.
There is a load more about Bookmooch here.
Thursday 22 October 2009
Selling Books
In the olden days, before the internet, you had to go to the dreaded dealer or pay the fees of an auctioneer.
Both these gentlemen (I use the term in its most all-encompassing form), would look sadly at your offerings and you would leave (much later if you sent them to auction) feeling disappointed with the cheque.
The internet has changed all this. Now you can hunt for the book you have on several sites which provide an online bookselling service. This gives you an idea of what it is actually worth, which is a good starting point.
Amazon is where I start. Search for the book and check the price of the cheapest copy in similar condition to yours. Now you have a decision to make. How much is your time worth? I don't bother to list a book for sale on Amazon unless the price is £5 for a hardback and £3 for a paperback. Be careful if you decide to go for a lower price as the Amazon fixed postage allowance may not be enough to cover your costs. Then, once you have opened a seller account, you just have to enter a description of the condition of the book (definitions of the grades are here ), enter your price and let the listing run
Amazon take a high level of commission and fix the postage charge but, on the up side, there are no listing fees and you always get paid.
Setting the price is quite straightforward but if another edition is available much more cheaply, you are unlikely to sell yours (unless it is a collectable edition), so look at the prices of other editions before pricing yours.
And then there is the problem of optimistic, usually US, booksellers. Some books are available at totally ridiculous prices. These books are not going to sell and nor will yours even if you price it at £2 less! To detect genuinely expensive books search Alibris and Abebooks. If the price is high on those sites, then you probably have a real rarity. You can sell on these two but they charge a monthly fee and it is only worthwhile if you have a very large number of books to sell. I don't know much about selling on these sites though buying on either has always been a good experience.
For really rare books, say over £50, condition is so important that I don't try to sell them online. I wouldn't spend £50 on a secondhand book without seeing it in Real Life so I don't expect anyone else to do the same. Those I send to a specialist book auction.
One last hint - Keep your inventory organised or you will sell books and not be able to find them!
I can't say that I've found many venues apart from Amazon very useful for selling books.
If you try them on the obvious auction site, do check that there are not dozens of the same title on already. Check completed items of the same title or at least the same sort before listing yours. If they go through unsold, don't bother to list yours.. move on to my next post!
Both these gentlemen (I use the term in its most all-encompassing form), would look sadly at your offerings and you would leave (much later if you sent them to auction) feeling disappointed with the cheque.
The internet has changed all this. Now you can hunt for the book you have on several sites which provide an online bookselling service. This gives you an idea of what it is actually worth, which is a good starting point.
Amazon is where I start. Search for the book and check the price of the cheapest copy in similar condition to yours. Now you have a decision to make. How much is your time worth? I don't bother to list a book for sale on Amazon unless the price is £5 for a hardback and £3 for a paperback. Be careful if you decide to go for a lower price as the Amazon fixed postage allowance may not be enough to cover your costs. Then, once you have opened a seller account, you just have to enter a description of the condition of the book (definitions of the grades are here ), enter your price and let the listing run
Amazon take a high level of commission and fix the postage charge but, on the up side, there are no listing fees and you always get paid.
Setting the price is quite straightforward but if another edition is available much more cheaply, you are unlikely to sell yours (unless it is a collectable edition), so look at the prices of other editions before pricing yours.
And then there is the problem of optimistic, usually US, booksellers. Some books are available at totally ridiculous prices. These books are not going to sell and nor will yours even if you price it at £2 less! To detect genuinely expensive books search Alibris and Abebooks. If the price is high on those sites, then you probably have a real rarity. You can sell on these two but they charge a monthly fee and it is only worthwhile if you have a very large number of books to sell. I don't know much about selling on these sites though buying on either has always been a good experience.
For really rare books, say over £50, condition is so important that I don't try to sell them online. I wouldn't spend £50 on a secondhand book without seeing it in Real Life so I don't expect anyone else to do the same. Those I send to a specialist book auction.
One last hint - Keep your inventory organised or you will sell books and not be able to find them!
I can't say that I've found many venues apart from Amazon very useful for selling books.
If you try them on the obvious auction site, do check that there are not dozens of the same title on already. Check completed items of the same title or at least the same sort before listing yours. If they go through unsold, don't bother to list yours.. move on to my next post!
Wednesday 9 September 2009
Too Many Books?
There are, in my experience, only two sorts of people. The first have very few books and little or no interest in them. The second, and I'm talking to these people, have too many and keep acquiring more.
One day you have to face the fact that some of them have to go but books are not ordinary stuff and getting rid of them is emotional as well as a practical task.
Here are my suggestions for that task.
1) First remove duplicates. I know that sounds obvious, but many of us have them.
2) Sort through the rest and decide which ones must go. Be ruthless. In the unlikely circumstance that you decide that you got rid of a book that you wanted, you will find that very few modern books cannot be borrowed from your library or bought online for relatively small sums of money. For example, how often do you re-read a novel? Be honest! Are you keeping your favourites so your children can read them? How likely is that? If you have a fine collection of romances and no daughters, they are very likely never to be read again, so consider rehoming them (I prefer the term rehoming to disposing). Are you ever going to take up pyrography, surgery, go on that 1980s fad diet? Please insert the subject of your own white elephant non-fiction books into that sentence. Free yourself from the guilt of not doing these things by removing the books from your shelves.
Now you have a heap of books to leave (and some space on your bookshelves!). I find it disheartening to think of these books languishing on a charity shop shelf waiting for the one person who wants them so what follows is my strategy for minimising that.
What can you do with them?
1) Give away to people you know
2) Sell
3) Give to charity
4) Swap for books you want
Point 1 is easy - you know who has small daughters who will love the Flower Fairy books your sons despise or who has sons who want the Action Man books you loved as a boy but which your daughters ignore.
My next post will go into more detail on how to do the others, giving you space, possibly some money and a smug feeling of having done something useful.
One day you have to face the fact that some of them have to go but books are not ordinary stuff and getting rid of them is emotional as well as a practical task.
Here are my suggestions for that task.
1) First remove duplicates. I know that sounds obvious, but many of us have them.
2) Sort through the rest and decide which ones must go. Be ruthless. In the unlikely circumstance that you decide that you got rid of a book that you wanted, you will find that very few modern books cannot be borrowed from your library or bought online for relatively small sums of money. For example, how often do you re-read a novel? Be honest! Are you keeping your favourites so your children can read them? How likely is that? If you have a fine collection of romances and no daughters, they are very likely never to be read again, so consider rehoming them (I prefer the term rehoming to disposing). Are you ever going to take up pyrography, surgery, go on that 1980s fad diet? Please insert the subject of your own white elephant non-fiction books into that sentence. Free yourself from the guilt of not doing these things by removing the books from your shelves.
Now you have a heap of books to leave (and some space on your bookshelves!). I find it disheartening to think of these books languishing on a charity shop shelf waiting for the one person who wants them so what follows is my strategy for minimising that.
What can you do with them?
1) Give away to people you know
2) Sell
3) Give to charity
4) Swap for books you want
Point 1 is easy - you know who has small daughters who will love the Flower Fairy books your sons despise or who has sons who want the Action Man books you loved as a boy but which your daughters ignore.
My next post will go into more detail on how to do the others, giving you space, possibly some money and a smug feeling of having done something useful.
Monday 20 April 2009
2. Fabric
If this is in small pieces then many school art departments will be happy to take it for collage.
Larger pieces can be wanted by schools as well or amateur dramatic societies. The very best fabric locust I ever came across was a fashion student who was very pleased with many of my less sensible fabric false economies! (they were all such a good idea at the time when I bought them!)
The quickest way of disposing creatively of fabric in large quantities, pretty much regardless of the size of pieces or nature of the fabric is the Scrap Store.
Here is the link to the website for the one in Bristol. It includes information about the many items they are happy to receive as donations and a list of other scrap stores about the UK. My local one is Swindon Children's Scrapstore and they make excellent use of their donations, helping other voluntary groups as well as schools.
If this is in small pieces then many school art departments will be happy to take it for collage.
Larger pieces can be wanted by schools as well or amateur dramatic societies. The very best fabric locust I ever came across was a fashion student who was very pleased with many of my less sensible fabric false economies! (they were all such a good idea at the time when I bought them!)
The quickest way of disposing creatively of fabric in large quantities, pretty much regardless of the size of pieces or nature of the fabric is the Scrap Store.
Here is the link to the website for the one in Bristol. It includes information about the many items they are happy to receive as donations and a list of other scrap stores about the UK. My local one is Swindon Children's Scrapstore and they make excellent use of their donations, helping other voluntary groups as well as schools.
Thursday 16 April 2009
Art & Craft Materials Part I
Almost anyone who does any craft work at all creates what the Americans call a stash. This stash can result in a disposal problem when your interests change. I would recommend passing on things you really can't see yourself using in say the next 5 years (and I'm being generous in giving you 5 years!!!). Where to and what are we talking about? It rather depends on the craft but here are some ideas for what you might have and where to donate it.
1. Knitting Yarn
Much of this will be wanted for the army of knitter who knit for charity. Every year thousands of shoe boxes of Christmas presents are sent out by Samaritan's Purse under the heading Operation Christmas Child and many knitted items are included. A church or school near to you is sure to be taking part and would welcome donated yarn.
I could post a dozen or more links but here is a collection of them. One of these is sure to appeal to you and want your yarn stash.
to be continued....
1. Knitting Yarn
Much of this will be wanted for the army of knitter who knit for charity. Every year thousands of shoe boxes of Christmas presents are sent out by Samaritan's Purse under the heading Operation Christmas Child and many knitted items are included. A church or school near to you is sure to be taking part and would welcome donated yarn.
I could post a dozen or more links but here is a collection of them. One of these is sure to appeal to you and want your yarn stash.
to be continued....
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Freecycle
This is a worldwide movement based on Yahoo Groups.
The UK homepage is here.
But I haven’t told you why you would want to know about Freecycle.
Freecycle allows you to find the person who wants something you have but don’t want. The movement is based on reducing landfill. You advertise what you have that you don’t want and you will be emailed by people who would like it. You can also ask for things but I will come to that later.
What can you Freecycle? Almost anything legal, decent and safe although most groups seem to ban the offering of animals.
What should you Freecycle? This is a different question and the answers are my opinions. I freecycle anything large, useful and difficult to sell/rehome. So far this has included carpets after we had an extension built and all the rooms had grown too big for the carpets. In the same wave we found new owners for all the curtain rails, curtains and window blinds that were no longer any use to us. I’ve also Freecycled old software, computer components, jam jars, garden plants, audio cassette tapes and, best of all, most of my old fitted kitchen! I’ve received underbed drawers and a bag full of knitting yarn among other things.
Other items which go well are furniture, computer peripherals when you have upgraded, electrical goods & building materials.
When I decide whether to post something on Freecycle I ask myself these questions
1. Can I sell this & is the likely price worth the effort?
2. Will a charity shop be likely to sell this?
3. Is there any chance anyone will want this?
If the answers are No, No & Yes, then I put it on my local Freecycle.
If there are no replies, then it is often worth putting it on again a few weeks later and at a different time of the week. Also, if you live at the edge of a Freecycle group’s area, join the next one and post it there. Different things go well in different areas.
Often you will get just one reply but deciding who gets a popular item is entirely up to the original owner.
Items should be collected by the receiver and it is important to turn up when you said you would and to be polite (the words “Thank You” are sometimes strangely absent, I’m told, though all my collectors have said them). There should be no charge at all.
Although it is not really in the spirit of the blog, I can’t resist making some observations about Wanted posts. These are controversial. Most reasonable people can tell the ones that should be banned as soon as they read them (Wanted – Laptop(windows XP or better)…) and the sensible ones (Wanted – 3’ of worktop, any colour, for my garage), but it is very difficult to write rules for this. I just ignore most of them and it may be best for your blood pressure if you do the same.
To sum up, Freecycle is a great weapon in the Decluttering War as it is more satisfactory to get rid of something to someone who wants it than just to pitch it out.
P.S. Tell any tradesmen working on your house about Freecycle. They are constantly removing useful items from homes and can encourage Freecycling. It is in their interests, too, as Trade Waste must be paid for at the tip. The basin and loo from our old bathroom were wanted by 6 people inside an hour of posting. The Thermostatic shower control was similarly popular and the window blind and mirror have also been rehomed.
The UK homepage is here.
But I haven’t told you why you would want to know about Freecycle.
Freecycle allows you to find the person who wants something you have but don’t want. The movement is based on reducing landfill. You advertise what you have that you don’t want and you will be emailed by people who would like it. You can also ask for things but I will come to that later.
What can you Freecycle? Almost anything legal, decent and safe although most groups seem to ban the offering of animals.
What should you Freecycle? This is a different question and the answers are my opinions. I freecycle anything large, useful and difficult to sell/rehome. So far this has included carpets after we had an extension built and all the rooms had grown too big for the carpets. In the same wave we found new owners for all the curtain rails, curtains and window blinds that were no longer any use to us. I’ve also Freecycled old software, computer components, jam jars, garden plants, audio cassette tapes and, best of all, most of my old fitted kitchen! I’ve received underbed drawers and a bag full of knitting yarn among other things.
Other items which go well are furniture, computer peripherals when you have upgraded, electrical goods & building materials.
When I decide whether to post something on Freecycle I ask myself these questions
1. Can I sell this & is the likely price worth the effort?
2. Will a charity shop be likely to sell this?
3. Is there any chance anyone will want this?
If the answers are No, No & Yes, then I put it on my local Freecycle.
If there are no replies, then it is often worth putting it on again a few weeks later and at a different time of the week. Also, if you live at the edge of a Freecycle group’s area, join the next one and post it there. Different things go well in different areas.
Often you will get just one reply but deciding who gets a popular item is entirely up to the original owner.
Items should be collected by the receiver and it is important to turn up when you said you would and to be polite (the words “Thank You” are sometimes strangely absent, I’m told, though all my collectors have said them). There should be no charge at all.
Although it is not really in the spirit of the blog, I can’t resist making some observations about Wanted posts. These are controversial. Most reasonable people can tell the ones that should be banned as soon as they read them (Wanted – Laptop(windows XP or better)…) and the sensible ones (Wanted – 3’ of worktop, any colour, for my garage), but it is very difficult to write rules for this. I just ignore most of them and it may be best for your blood pressure if you do the same.
To sum up, Freecycle is a great weapon in the Decluttering War as it is more satisfactory to get rid of something to someone who wants it than just to pitch it out.
P.S. Tell any tradesmen working on your house about Freecycle. They are constantly removing useful items from homes and can encourage Freecycling. It is in their interests, too, as Trade Waste must be paid for at the tip. The basin and loo from our old bathroom were wanted by 6 people inside an hour of posting. The Thermostatic shower control was similarly popular and the window blind and mirror have also been rehomed.
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