Yep, Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) means 3rd party sellers keep their inventory at Amazon, Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) means the 3P sellers ship it out themselves. There are pluses and minuses to each for the seller.
They spike up due to demand in January and August, as they sell through and desperate students need to get a copy ASAP. There is now a fair amount of counterfeit textbooks for the more popular courses being manufactured in China and India. Counterfeiting for many products is rife on Amazon, but those and some counterfeit Dr. Seuss books (of all things) from China are really the only counterfeit items booksellers need worry about. That and selling Instructor’s Editions as student textbooks, which some unscrupulous sellers do. Look for black tape covering the “INSTRUCTOR’S EDITION” notation on the back cover.
I have a collection of modern firsts, limited S/N editions, and ARCs from King I collected over the years that I’ve been looking to get rid of. Any advice? Everything I’ve looked at seems to have too much overhead to make it worthwhile.
So IIRC from my college days, text books went out of usefulness rapidly. You’d buy the 8th Edition for your class and go to sell it at the end of the semester only to find that the bookstore doesn’t want it at all because the 9th Edition is already out and that’s what they’ll want next year. It was brutal for students (this was the nascent days of the Internet).
Is this still how it is? Do editions come out rapidly? If so, how do you stay on top of it? How do you collect and sell the 8th Edition, used, when the 9th Edition is already out? Or is this less of a problem these days?
A good question. I have a lot of Alaskana, both fiction and non-fiction, some firsts and some scarce, and really don’t want to have to list it on ebay.
For those kind of collectibles, either selling them yourself on eBay, or if you have enough to rent a table at a horror con (which can get pricey) is probably your best bet. You could also try reaching out to some of the rare book dealers who specialize in King to see what they will offer you, but they will not be able to pay you as much as you could make by selling them yourself as they also have to make a profit.
The other option, surprisingly, is Craigslist. I will list individual books that are collectible that I have at my antique mall booths on Craigslist - buyers like the option of being able to go and inspect it in a reputable business instead of having to meet a stranger in a parking lot with a lot of cash, so I make a decent amount of sales that way. What surprised me when I started doing this was how many requests I got from out of state for mail order sales - there are apparently a lot of collectors who do country-wide searches on Craigslist for books. If you try this method, again use lots of photos and put in a statement that you do mail order sales. It helps of you have a PayPal account. (You can also print out shipping labels from PayPal easily once the order is received.) Create an actual account on Craigslist (it’s free) and renewing your ad regularly is easy that way.
The best part of selling books on Craigslist via mail order? It’s free to list and there is NO commission or sales fee. You can keep the entire price. I don’t know why other book dealers don’t do this as much, it brings in a fair amount of revenue for me.
If you sell on eBay, the best sales tend to come from listings with lots of photos - collectors want full disclosure of any defects.
Good Luck!
See my suggestions to Turek, above. Regional books tend to sell well at local antique booths (if you’re in Alaska). You could also try renting a table at a local antique show or paper ephemera show (do a google search for this + Your State], where table rent is usually cheaper than cons. The Craigslist route will often do well on local histories, etc. for collectors.
Are any of those On Writing?
It varies - even if a new edition is out, the older edition will still be used by some professors around the country, although the value will be less. (Some professors are stodgy and if the field advances slowly, they don’t want the hassle of preparing to teach from a new edition). That’s limited, though - if the new issue is the 10th edition, you can probably still sell the 9th ed through Amazon and maybe the 8th, but 7th and earlier are essentially cordwood in most cases. Some of the seller apps will tell you if there is a newer edition and the Amazon listing page always will.
Generally, fields where the knowledge base advances quickly, like medicine, advanced physics, etc. have new textbooks issued more quickly than fields like literature and sociology.
For college students trying to get the most bucks for their books, instead of the college book store download an app called Book Scouter that you can enter the ISBN on and it will tell you what different buy-back services (that deal on line and direct to college bookstores) will pay for it.
You can also list them on Craisglist and book resellers will often snatch them up, as textbooks are a big business for us. List the title, the edition, and the ISBN. They may buy them even if your local college went to a new edition.
If it is a custom edition created especially for your college, they may still sell but aren’t as desirable. Many colleges have a student-operated Facebook page for buying and reselling textbooks between students (I sometimes source from those as well), so do a Google search.
Let us, uh, hypothetically suppose someone had a library of about 1000 science books. Along with more recent works, a number of these books might date from the late 19th or early 20th centuries; a smaller number might be even older, and many classic volumes in the fields of physics, optics and energy (to name but a few) were present. Let us further suppose that certain dealers who specialize in such books had already been contacted, but that for the most part (as you have already mentioned) the prices they offered were found to be unsatisfactorily low.
With so many books, it is impractical for the owner to inventory and individually price them. Expectations that someone might come along and make an offer on the whole collection seem unrealistic. Searching for a worthy institution that might be willing to accept the entire library as a donation seems fruitless as shipping costs would likely prove exorbitant (assuming the worthy institution is out of state).
Any suggestions for how this hypothetical someone might be able to unload these books while maintaining a clear conscience?
Thanks for the answer; it basically confirms what I had suspected. I’m not super keen on selling them on ebay. I bought a lot of them via ebay years ago, but I just don’t trust people enough to sell via that method.
I have considered craigslist, but it would mainly be a local thing, and that really seems to limit my choices.
Consignment or selling to another seller just eats up too much of the value.
I have an ARC and a British first edition (Hodder & Stoughton) of On Writing.
You might try listing just a few on Craigslist, and again, mention that you do mail order, and see what kind of responses you get. You may be surprised how many collectors source through Craigslist from outside your area, especially for collectible titles.
Hypothetically, that’s a toughie.
I used to list a lot of 19th and 20th century science books, as I thought there must be scads of collectors on books on the history of science. Certainly, I thought, there would be chemists who would want a collection of books showing the advances in knowledge in their fields, or who would at least want 19th century leather bound editions to dress up their study.
You’d think.
But, what I learned is that people who collect old science books are few and far between. Most working scientists are trying like hell to keep up with the current state of knowledge and have little time for older books.
There are some exceptions, but I hate to tell you that for many antique and vintage science books, their value lies in a) tearing out the plates to frame and sell, or b) if they are leather, selling them to one of the companies that buy up old leather books to sell to interior decorators, set dressers, and chichi restaurants.
Who rates the condition of the books, you or Amazon? Is there any attempt to make sure the ratings are consistent between sellers, or could your Very Good books be as good as someone else’s Like New?
I’m an Amazon bookseller too, although I sell out of my home and do not use FBA. I don’t earn enough to be able to depend on it as my sole income, but I do OK.
I also sell sheet music, videos (and a few grandfathered DVDs), CDs, sewing patterns, and a few other miscellaneous items that I deem worthy of listing. One thing that is guaranteed is that people will buy THE.WEIRDEST.STUFF. Just today, I sold a Ta’i Ch’i VHS tape - for $20! :eek:
In addition, I manage the my library’s Amazon site; that money goes to Friends of the Library and we use the site for rare or valuable items, or items that are not suitable for the bookstore (like The Pocket Kama Sutra or The Joy of Gay Sex - really). That site earned over $4,000 for the library last year. 
We at the library found a solution to that problem. There’s a “Pioneer Village” living museum just outside town, and I finally went there a couple years ago. They had a one-room schoolhouse that operated until 1967, and the books they had on display were basically sawdust. We get lots of school books from mid-century or even earlier, and we contacted the people who run the museum to let them know that we had these books. One day, a woman came by and took 5 big boxes of old children’s and lesson books with her, so the school would look more like it really did back when it was in use.
The sellers do.
There is a VERY wide lack of consistency in condition description. I am very conservative in my gradings and would rather my customers be pleasantly surprised to learn that their Very Good book is actually in Like New condition (and my feedback ratings reflect that). But if you look at as many listings as i do, you will find many (mostly newer, soon to lose their selling privileges forever) sellers will list books as “LIKE NEW - ex-library edition, missing front cover, crayon scribbling on back cover, smells like cigarette smoke and cat urine. Looks like an interesting title!”
Amazon had such a problem with these kinds of listings that they removed all condition descriptions for New books - it damn well better be New, now.
Very cool! Are you in Phoenix by any chance?
No, I’m not.
I also listed things in a better condition than they actually were when I started out. I’ve had to go back and re-list a few items, because you can’t edit the condition, or PM a buyer and explain that the book is not in as good condition as I thought it was. It’s about 50/50 between “That’s OK, I still want/need it” and “Cancel the order.”
One time, I had a vintage cookbook listed as “Very Good” that someone bought, and on closer inspection was “Good” at best. I messaged them, and they said, “I’m buying it as a gift; cancel the order” which I did, and re-listed it as “Good” with a loser price. Within a week, someone else bought it. 
Mike, do you ever sell things back to Amazon for the gift card? I’ve done that a few times.
What specific genres (military, science fiction, etc.) sell the most readily, and on which specific topics (I would assume WW2 books sell quicker than WW1 books for example)?