Post edited 10:23 pm – March 15, 2012 by Lou82

I am going to tell you how to profit off many (maybe even the majority of those penny books you have left over). When I buy a big lot of books like you I sort through them and list the ones I want to sell on amazon. I also keep a list of the ISBNs to the books I will not be selling online (*EVEN THE PENNY BOOKS*) because when I am done sorting through the lot I do the following with the remainding books

- I take the list of ISBNs of the books I will not be selling on amazon and enter them into powells.com. Powells buys back your books and their payouts are great. I do not know what their business model is but it is not uncommon for me to get $.75, $1, $2, $2.50 from powells for a book that is selling for a PENNY on amazon. There are other buy back sites but their payouts are so little that to me it is not worth listing, sorting, packing and hauling the boxes over to the post office. Powells will not buy back all of your books, most of the time they wont even take half of them (unless you get really lucky) so then I do the following with whatever is left over

- I box up the remainding books and take them to a used bookstore like STRAND. Look to see if there is a franchise place in your state like a STRAND. Do not waste your time and bring the books to niche/rare usedbookk stores because most of them are very picky and will only take a few books off your hands. Look for a STRAND because they will take the majority of the books off your hands and their payouts can be $.50 or more sometimes, at leat in my experience.

This is why when I buy a big lot of books I try hard to get them for about $.50 per book or a little more because I know that even if many of them are penny books i am guaranteed to either break even on the penny books or even maybe profit a bit off them buy using the powells/used bookstore method. Last month i bought 800 books from some guy for $200. I knew prior to buying them that many of them were penny books but I didnt care because I knew Id get my money back on them. I have gone through just a quarter of the lot and the other day I listed about 200 of the penny books from that lot on powells and powells accepted around 50 of them for $80. So I got back roughly $1.60 for a bunch of penny book which I paid $.25 for. That $1.35 profit. Now the rest of the books I am going to bring to a used bookstore and get almost my entire investment back on just a quarter of the books. Not to mention the ones I listed on amazon that are going for good money. WINNER.

Dont be so quick to donate your penny books or discard them. Put in the work. Use  my method above and you will be much better off.

I hope this helps and you have the same success.

Good Luck