Advice on having a used book store?

Question

I am a college student who *used* to have time to read, lol. I used to average 2 or 3 new books a week in high school. Now as an engineering major I just don't have the time, but I do have about 500 books clogging up my closet.

I was thinking of having a book sale, not a yard sale because it would only be books, and donating half the money to the local animal shelter. I live in an apartment in a busy neighborhood, there are many yardsales, so how should I go about doing this?

There are many best sellers, teenbooks, and classics, but most of my books are mystery or romance. Because I would be donating money do you think it would make sense to charge 1 or 2 dollars a book because it would go to a good cause?

Please let me know if you have done a book sale before, how you priced, how you set it up, and how it worked?

Any advice would be great, I know what I want to do, just not how to do it?

Answer 1

There are also some great websites that allow you to trade books, CD's, DVD's etc. See my profile for link to titletrader and paperbackswap. This allows you to get rid of an item you no longer want and get something you do want in return. Titletrader is awesome because you can trade books, dvd's, cd's, games and vhs tapes. So if you get rid of a book you may be able to get a dvd in exchange. Paperbackswap is only for books.

Answer 2

I made the mistake of taking about 300 old books to the "Half Priced Bookstore", they have an open offer to "buy your old books". I loaded up my SUV, drove 30 miles to the store and lugged them in for inspection. The girl told me to shop around until they had assessed the books and they would page me with an offer.

The whole time I am thinking, "Even at $.50 per book, I walk away with $150 not bad, and I got rid of some clutter." When I was paged to the desk, my offer was $11.50! Which, obviously, barely covered my gas money, and I brought lunch to boot! Of course they know that you will never lug them back home, so I took my $11.50, tucked my tale, and went home.

Bottom line is, a private book sell has to be better than that, and what you don't sell you can donate to a nursing home or something.