How to Sell Books Online (Canadian Edition)

A scenario: you have a shelf full (or some boxes full, or a stack of) books that maybe you've read once or twice, but you're certainly not going to read again. Some university textbooks, maybe, that aren't current anymore and won't be bought back by the bookstore. And you want to find some way to get a few dollars for getting rid of them. But -- and here's the rub -- you're living in Canada.

This can be more of a problem than you might think. A quick search of Google will find scores of small companies willing to buy your books off you at something like wholesale rates. There's actually a pretty standard approach to this, which you can quickly see by testing out sites like CKY Books (open only to American sellers, unfortunately): you enter the ISBNs for your books into their database (those 10- or 13-digit numbers found on the copyright page and usually just above the barcode on the back of the book), it spits out a price, and then they give you a prepaid shipping receipt to stick on the box and send it on its way. A few weeks later, you get either a cheque in the mail or a deposit in your PayPal account. Brittany Tucker has a pretty thorough overview of the general process.

The problem, as I've now stated twice, is that these sites work with Americans only. Which is great for my American readers - but a bit more trouble for we hapless, alienated Canucks. What this article aims to do is provide some options for Canadians who are looking to sell their books online but can't find a place to do that.

Wholesale Selling - Liquidate Your Collection

This is what most of the American sites (that you can't access) will let you do. This is the easiest but probably least profitable option for getting rid of old books. There's no mess: you enter the ISBN numbers, you see what books the company is willing to buy from you, and you send them off in a single transaction. Done deal. Usually the book company also agrees to pay for the shipping costs by giving you a prepaid shipping slip, so you don't have to worry about that either.

The downside is that most of the "sell your books online" sites will only buy the books they're certain they can sell, which means you'll be liquidating your best books at very low rates, and then you'll be stuck with a pile of books that nobody wants, including you. And I do mean "low rates": they'll offer you wholesale rates for used books, and they'll take into account the credit they're already extending you for shipping. It's a rare book that will get you in this process, and most will be far less. The ones they'll buy from you at all, that is.

Now, some of the American sites do seem to accept books from Canadians, but the process is shady enough to make me nervous. I can't find any accounts of Canadians who've done business with them, but that's not to say nobody has -- I just can't vouch for them personally. Bookbyte.com, for example, lets both Canadians and Americans register to buy and sell books, but doesn't mention whether it will credit Canadians for shipping or not (my guess is not, since the receipts for Americans are for USPS, the U.S. Postal Service)

MoneyForBooks.com seems like a reliable website, but it makes a vague promise that they will credit you what your postage would have been if you shipped from within the continental United States. I don't know how they make those estimates, but you're guaranteed to lose at least some money in the process.

Which for the moment leaves, so far as I can tell, Abe Books. Abe is better known as a site where you can buy and sell used books directly, but I didn't put it into my next section because Abe is geared more toward commercial sellers, those able to pay monthly fees for the privilege of keeping their accounts open. If you're into that particular angle, I might have another article later for would-be secondhand booksellers. But for the moment, what you need to know is that Abe Books will also buy shipments of used books from you at wholesale rates, similar to the websites I've been discussing above. And, like those, they will pay the shipping costs for you. They give you a UPS label to print out when you complete a transaction online. All you have to do is arrange for the pickup.

Abe Books was my entry into the world of selling books online and I cleared about 0 by emptying off a shelf of textbooks and non-fiction books that I hardly read the first time and certainly would never read again. Fair warning if you're planning on using this site, though: they're pretty heavily geared toward successful non-fiction books and recent textbooks. Old-edition textbooks and fiction, especially mass-market paperbacks, are almost guaranteed to be rejected. Still, it doesn't hurt to check - a few minutes entering book numbers into their database and you can see quite quickly whether anything you have is worth anything. Sometimes you'll be surprised: the most expensive offer they made me, for some reason, was for a years-old business textbook that I'd picked up off a shelf of free books and was tired of seeing clutter up my basement shelf.

There's an obvious problem with really only having one good-quality buyback option (more if you count companies like MoneyForGold.com): there aren't many options. If you run your numbers through the various sites, you'll quickly find that the rates offered for differing books can vary surprisingly. Some books only sell at some sites. Some will sell everywhere, but for prices ranging from fifty cents to eight dollars. And so on. One day, perhaps, we Canadians will enjoy the degree of choice the Americans currently do. We can always hope.

Direct Selling - Become an Online Merchant

This route will allow you to set the highest prices for your own goods, and deal directly with purchasers. Essentially, you'll be getting the benefits of not having to ship out your books at pathetic wholesale prices, as well as being able to put up your whole catalogue for sale. Plus, it's a chance to go into business for yourself (sort of), if you're into that.

eBay (http://www.ebay.ca) - In the United States, as I understand it, the no-nonsense best choice for selling books yourself is Half.com. This is a subsidiary of eBay which specializes specifically in selling books and other media. Unfortunately, to sell books on Half.com, you have to be an American. The next-best and most relevant choice for Canadians, then, is to sell directly on eBay itself - specifically, eBay.ca, although once your items are listed on eBay they can be purchased by Americans or international buyers, if you so choose. eBay also lets you set a flat shipping rate, or have eBay automatically calculate a shipping rate for you based on the buyer's shipping address. This is an important advantage over the Amazon Marketplace (see below). 

EBay currently charges an "insertion" fee of roughly a quarter every time you post an item to be auctioned, plus an 8.5% commission upon every sale. At the moment, you're allowed to sell five items per month without paying the insertion fee. There's a very slight additional fee if you want to add a "Buy It Now" button so that people can buy your books in one click rather than waiting a week for the auction to expire. Among booksellers, I've noticed that this is a very common and popular strategy on eBay.

Amazon Marketplace (http://www.amazon.ca) - Amazon.ca is the go-to choice for ordering new books online, but it also has a thriving trade in used books through its Marketplace section. Every time you search for a book in the Amazon catalogue, a link will come up to the Marketplace identifying how many used copies are for sale, and what the current lowest price is. You can sell your books, too, at any price you want. Amazon does gouge you on their commissions though: they won't charge you anything up front, but once you're item sells, they will deduct a .49 transaction fee, a .25 "closing fee" (much higher if you're shipping to the U.S. or you're selling DVDs rather than books), plus a 15% commission on the final price. Yikes.

There are a couple of things to beware of with respect to Amazon. A quick search with Google should find you scores of complaints from small sellers in the Marketplace about the high costs incurred meeting Amazon's "A to Z Guarantee" to buyers. Amazon is very protective of its image and has very high standards for transactions; if you have too many complaints, or consistently ship too slowly, or accept too many refunds under the guarantee program (or rather, Amazon is forced to accept too many on your behalf), your account will be closed and you will be booted.

The second is, yet again, that you are Canadian (are you sensing a trend here?). In the U.S., our comrades can merrily send books whizzing about the country at very cheap rates thanks to the Postal Service's "media mail" function. Canada Post doesn't have that. In fact, if you're sending a book across country and it's not thin enough to be able to pass as a very large letter, you're pretty much guaranteed to be spending or so for the privilege. Amazon Marketplace guarantees you a .50 credit for shipping on each sale, which means you're going to have to factor in to the sales price as much as an additional or so to cover your shipping costs.

These are pretty much your options, so far as I can see, if you want to go free up front. If you're willing to pay up-front fees on the assumption that you're going to be selling a very large number of books over a long period of time, you can do Abe Books for that, too. And you can use Alibris, which sells books through a number of different marketplaces, including Half.com and the secondhand books section of the Chapters Indigo website (which, unlike its Amazon equivalent, you can't access as an independent small seller).

Know of a really good option that I didn't cover here? Please put it in the comments below -- to educate me, and for the sake of other readers.

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