Amazonian pocket money

Well that was some easy money. I was cleaning my office this afternoon when I decided to make some space on my shelves by getting rid of some old books. I’d been thinking about trying Amazon’s used book program, and I’m glad I decided to do it.

It is almost trivial to set the books up for sale. There are three steps: 1) put in the ISBN, 2) describe the book’s condition 3) price it. You only get a short 1000 character description, so you don’t have to agonize about it like is customary for eBay listings. In an hour or so, I listed 25 books. I started to list another ten or so, but they just weren’t fetching a high enough price to justify me bothering to ship them. The “long tail” sort of books are definitely the more profitable ones. “Jonathan Strange”, not worth bothering for $2, but “Hardware Hacking” was definitely worth listing at $11.

When the book sells, Amazon charges shipping as well, and passes that along to you. You get an email, and you ship the book within a couple business days.

Two sales immediately

I got my first couple sales within 2 hours of listing! Nice, $20 pocket change in exchange for me dropping them off at the post office on the way to work tomorrow. That’s a heck of a lot better money than I’d have gotten at any local used book store.

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