In the past, I always avoided looking for inventory in used book stores because I assumed the owner(s) would know the exact value of each book on Amazon. After all, they are in the used book business. Surely, they wouldn’t sell a book for a $1 that has an Amazon value of $30. Right?
Well last Saturday, I bought 30 used books at a local book store for $55. The total expected profit is over $400.
Also, used bookstores normally have a buyback/trade-in program. This can be a big bonus. I trade in books that have little online value, but are high in demand at brick and mortar stores. Popular fiction books like Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, etc often have high trade-in value.
I sell them these books, and they give me store credit in return. Then, I use that store credit to buy books in the clearance section. Using this strategy, I was able to get my average cost per book down from $2.49 to $1.69.
I put this great idea into practice for the first time yesterday. While I didn’t have as good of results as you did, the $1.35 off per item purchased due to trade-in of other books was certainly welcomed and *definitely* a lot more than a tax deduction would have yielded for donating.
It is surprising to me too that there are profitable books to be found in a used bookstore. It would be interesting to know what parameters they use to judge if a book is worthy of accepting. I would imagine that books rejected for trade-in by one bookstore might very well be accepted by another, so I intend to put that theory to the test soon. 🙂
Thanks for the good (and quite profitable) suggestion!