This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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My daughter has been saving money for another horse (the current one is over 30 years old). So a couple of months ago, she came to me with two books that someone had apparently left on the front porch. They were like new, and she wanted to sell them to someone. Anyone. Since I read quite a bit, she came to me to see if I would buy them. And since both books were on the topic of improving a marriage, it was no sale for me (I’m single).
To make a long story short, she wouldn’t give up, and we ended up
selling the books on Amazon.com. They sold for a total of about $25 for
the pair. Subtract $5 for shipping, and it’s $20 toward a new horse.
It’s nothing to make you rich of course, but it got me thinking
about my two bookshelves and all the books I no longer read (and
probably never will). I must have at least 50 books that fit that
category. And as it is, with all those books cluttering up my
bookshelves it makes it hard to find the books I actually want to read.
Anybody feelin my pain on this?
So the solution, of course, is to sell all those books on
Amazon.com. It’s really simple too. Just go to the Amazon home page,
and scroll down the page until you see in the left menu bar the menu
that says "Make Money." Click on "Marketplace," and you can enter your
books for sale. It’s that simple.
When someone buys your book, you’ll get an email telling you to ship
the book. All the books I’ve sold so far have been standard shipping,
which means you can ship it "Media Mail" via the US Postal Service (you
international folks will be different, I’m sure). Amazon will reimburse
you for the shipping.
And yes, Amazon takes a cut of the proceeds when you sell something.
There’s a $0.99 fee per transaction plus a percentage of the selling
price.
- Computers = 6 percent
- Camera & Photo and Electronics items = 8
percent - Items in the Everything Else Store = 10
percent - All other product lines = 15 percent
Again, it’s nothing to make you rich, but it beats having those books cluttering up your world. All I have to do now is make the time to list the rest of my books.