We are less then a month away from one of the busiest times fo the year fro online booksellers.  All the college kids are going back to school soon and looking to save money on books (for more beer maybe).  If you have not alreay – now is the time to stock up on shipping supplies.

If you sell remainders (there are some that specialize in universtity presses) the text book season is when they move – so you could find some titles to buy in preparation for the school year.  Try Great Jones for academic books – the margins on these are not great but if you can find a good title to buy in bulk in might be worth it.

Also – be prepared for lots of questions if your listings are not complete.  Make sure you properly list what edition text book you are selling and if it has highlighting, underlining or margin notes – I make it the first thing in the item description.  Do not sell international editions (or if you do be prepared to be banned by eBay and Amazon as it is against their terms).

More on textbook season soon

Friends of Library Sales are starting to peak now (with the exception of this weekend).  If going to book sales and elbowing people is your thing now is the time to map out your calendar – check out www.booksalefinder.com – to find your local sales. 

I don’t go to book sales much anymore but you can slowly build up your inventory by going to them.  The downside to Friend of Library sales is that they are overrun with other booksellers with their scanner many of whom work in teams.  I would often see people running into the sale and indiscriminately  scooping up armfuls of books  and putting them into bags then running to a blanket where there partner is and doing it again.  There would be no selection process – just a mad rush which would mean if you were not on of the first on line you find many books gone (and piled up on someones blanket).

I remember one sale where someone had hundreds of books piled up on a blanket after they had run like crazy through the sale – at the end of it they had hundreds of discards left laying on the grass in a pile after they had scanned them all.  Me – I would be happy to leave with 30 good books.

I hate having to get to the sales 90 minutes early to get a decent place online.  When you get in there is barely any space to move let alone put your books down.  God forbid if the place where the sale was used air conditioning too.  Also – many sales will cherry pick some titles out and put them online themselves.

This has turned into a big gripe on library sales but let me back up and restate that you can find books at them and often find some treasures at them that make it all worthwhile.  I found some rare physics texts that sold for hundreds of dollars at one sale.  These books were sitting there well after the intial mad rush but had been bypassed because they were old  (from the early sixties and pre-isbn)

Anyway – if Friend of Library sales are your thing then Good Luck and Good Hunting.