Here's a way that I've been getting used books for (almost) free and making a difference in the community. In short, I ask people to donate their books, and in return, a percentage of the profits go to charity.
Here's how it works.
- Put an ad in the local paper offering to pick up unwanted books.
- Answer the phone and make an arrangement with the donor.
- After the pick up, scan all the books and separate the ones that have Amazon value.
- List those books on Amazon will a unique SKU number for tracking purposes.
- After each month, pull a sales report from Amazon, and donate 20% (or whatever percentage you choose) of profits to the charity of your choice.
Here's the process in more detail.
Put an Classified ad in the Local Paper
This is where your creativity will take place. You will need to market your new business. I've tried Craigslist, expensive business advertisements in papers, and door-hanger advertisements. But, I found the most inexpensive and successful way is to put a small ad in the classified section of my local newspaper. Obviously your results may be different. Here's the ad that I use:
Pick a Charity
You will need to pick a charity to give your customers a reason to donate to you. It will make your business more meaningful as well. I picked the charity DonorsChoose.org. For this organization, you donate money and it goes directly to the teachers and the classrooms. It's 100% transparent. Here are some screenshots of their site.
I recommend DonorsChoose.org for several reasons:
- You know exactly where the money is going
- You can directly impact your local community
- You can start a campaign that tracks your donations, projects funded, students helped, schools served, and teachers supported. You can then put this on your website to create more legitimacy. See screenshot below.
- After you make a donation, you can leave a comment on the Donors Choose page to market your business even more. See screenshot below.
Create a Website and Pick a Name
Make a website for your new business for legitimacy and marketing purposes. On the website:
- Explain that you will come and pick up the books.
- Offer to pick up CDs and DVDs as well.
- Tell what cities or counties you are willing to drive to.
- Mention the charity that you are donating to.
- Include a form where the customer can schedule a pick-up right on your website.
- Include your phone number and email address.
Here's my website DonateBooksinFlorida.com. I used Wix to build the website. I recommend this platform if you're a beginner, yet still want to create a good looking site.
Collect and Sort the Books
After making an appointment, I drive to the donor's house and pick up the books. I tell them to put the books in bags or boxes and leave them outside their front door so they don't have to be home. Depending on where you live and the weather that day, this is not always the best case.
Then, I take the books to my storage unit and scan each one with FBAScan. For the one's that have Amazon value, I put in a separate pile and list those on Amazon. I use a unique SKU number to this those, so I can track the sales later. For example, I use SKU prefix DBF-4/13/17 when listing these books on ScanLister.
For the books that don't have Amazon value, I usually check some online book buyback sites using BookScouter.com to see if they will buy them. Then I donate the rest to Goodwill. Keep in mind there will be a lot of leftover books, so you will have to be creative in deciding what to do with those. For example, you can:
- Trade them in to a local bookstore for trade credit. Then turn around and use that trade credit to buy valuable books from that store
- Try to sell them in bulk on Craigslist or eBay
- Start a brick and mortar used book store
- Sell them to online book buyback sites using BookScouter.com
- Sell CDs and DVDs to Decluttr.com
- Use the Amazon Trade In Program for expensive DVDs if you're not approved to sell them on Amazon.
Tracking the Sales and Donating Money to Charity
After, each month, I generate a report on my Seller Central account. I go to Reports — Payments — Date Range Reports. Then I generate a report for the last month. Then I open the report in excel and sort the SKUs. For all the SKUs that start with “DBF”, I add up the values in the “Total” column. So, basically I'm adding the up the sales after all the Amazon fees are taken out. Then I take 20% of that total and donate it to a local classroom using DonorsChoose.org.
For example, my total Amazon sales for book donations was $289.50 was last month. I also made $30 using Powells Books, and $32.96 on the Amazon Trade in Program. My total inbound shipping costs were $42.50 So my total profit for the donations was $309.86. I took 20% of that and it came to $62. So, I donated $62 to a specific classroom last month.
Benefits of this Model
1. You have a real business that you can advertise. The more creative you are at advertising, the books you can get. In other words, this business is scalable.
2. Based on the charity you choose, you are making a difference in your local community
3. Word of mouth can spread, and you can become the “go to” guy or gal in your area. Most people just want to get rid of their books without having to lug them in their car to Goodwill.
Do you have a question or a comment regarding this business model? Please leave a comment below. If there's enough interest, I may write a 2nd blog post or a detailed PDF guide.
This is a neat tip. What kind of sales rank / price threshold is necessary in determining that it can be listed on Amazon?
That’s really up to you. Probably between $8-10 minimum on FBA.
Thanks Nathan. Great ideas. Thanks for laying it all out so clearly.
Thank you!
This is certainly a different twist to selling books; I would like to know more. Thank you!
Thanks for your feedback! I will do some similar blog posts and show some results from this model.
Love Your Idea Nat. I like to try that later, this a win win. Super Thanks!
Thanks!
This is a great idea. Thank you for sharing. Can you tell me what percentage of books you collect end up being Amazon-valuable? Thanks!
I would say 5% maybe, but I’m just estimating.
Do people whom you accept the books from ever ask you what charity you are donating to? More importantly- do you give them a donation form for their taxes? I volunteer at a non profit thrift store so we always give people who donate a donation slip for their taxes. It’s expected. But you’re not a non profit so I imagine you can’t give them a form.
Yes, a few people ask. I tell them that 50% of the profits go to DonorsChoose.org.
Great plan…thanks for sharing. On average how many books, cds and dvds to you pick up a month?
Maybe 1000 books/cds/dvds a month right now.
Are you saying its 1000 books you are keeping or 1000 items you pick up to which 5% is retained to sell?
Approximately 15% of the books that I pick up are suitable for FBA. The rest are either sold thru more creative ways (as mentioned in the article) or donated.
Great experiment Nathan. So it seems that you make about six dollars per book. But I suspect that you spend quite a bit of time selling books to buy back shops. And a lot of time taking books to Goodwill . So you have a lot of books lying around too. Is that worth it? Wouldn’t it be better to get a new book sorcerer? Then every book you have in your hands is an Amazon book.
Look forward to your answer.
I would like this method a bit better. The key is to monetize the books that can’t be sold on Amazon. The margins in this are much better than hiring a book-sourcer. With that being said, I still have a book-sourcer, but at this point, I’ve been experimenting with different triggers since the big Amazon fee increase.
That’s cool. I was just thinking last week of starting an ongoing book donation drive from individuals (by advertising on craig’s list). You have given me some tips I can use right away.
Awesome! I’m glad I could help.
You have consistently put out great material here and this might just be the best and most creative sourcing method yet!
Thank you!
Great content Nathan as usual! I’ve been doing an ongoing book drive with a non profit for the last few years. They advertise it as an ongoing event. We did the big push to their membership at the beginning. I collected over 8,000 books then. and in those early days many more books sold than will today. I donated over $3,000 to them for the first year. Now I pick up once a month anywhere from 100 to 1000 books at a time. I never know what I’m going to get. I’ve received a beautiful set of Easton leather bound books that sold on ebay for $800 in one shot. I’ve redonated many books back as well. I love going through the different collections of the donations, it always tells a story. The Disney collection, the travelers collection, the writers collection, the family that finally give up all their textbooks, some that are 50 years old. The valuable engineering textbooks. I learned that every single haul has value. I also learned that once the word gets out that you take used books people will give them to you. I got the pleasure of taking the books, media & video games from a very wealthy family that was remodeling their home. I made over $10k profit from that 2 day haul. This type of networking has a tremendous value in my experience. I’ve been considering taking on more non profits or even now adding a donation website as you describe here, but before I do that I have to evaluate the new normal for selling books on Amazon. I have not recovered from my big clean-out on Amazon since the new long term storage fees.
Very interesting! So, do you keep the one’s that have Amazon value and give the rest to the non-profit?
Awesome article any suggestions on how to make this work in Canada? I wish to do this for animal rescues they sure can use all the help they can get as far as funding.
Yes, this should be able to work anywhere.
Nathan, what’s with the new theme? Miss the BTTF logo!
Decided it was time for change. Glad you liked the old logo:)
what do you tell the people donating books if they ask you for a receipt for there taxes? Do you tell them that you are a for profit organization?
I tell them that I can’t give them a receipt because the money from donations end up going to DonorsChoose.org.
Great article.
Who do you use to host your donation website?
Bluehost.com
Thanks for sharing this great idea Nathan! I’m wondering which section in the classifieds have you found the best results?
Hello Jamie,
I listed the Ad under Furniture and Household items.
This is a great idea. I came up with something similar and sent it to your Gmail account . Please let me know how I can improve it if at all and what you think about it in general. Thanks Nathan.
Thanks for the innovative ideas Nathan!
Just curious, how did you build the website. Was it custom or did you use a template based service?
Best, Joe
I used the optimize press theme on WordPress, but I started from scratch with it. No template. With that said, I’m probably going to redo the site using Wix.com
Be careful Nathan. I’ve heard some web building services adopt the rights to your website if payments ever stop. Not sure if Wix is one of them or not.
OK, That’s good to know!
I’ve always donated my books that weren’t high enough priced for online sales to a few of the local friends of the library. This gives the validation that you are indeed doing something charitable and it’s better than land-filling the ones that aren’t going to sell.
People like it when you tell them that at least 60-70% of what you collect goes to a good cause.
Great stuff, dude! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Nathan,
Great stuff! Are book still doable in 2018? I am new to the whole book thing and wondering if it’s worth getting into.
Thanks,
Gary
I’m looking into doing this, Nathan. Is this still a good model for you with the prices changes and ltsf in 2018? Did it take awhile for people to find out about you?
Yes, it’s a very good model. The trick is to find the right advertising medium. I’m at a point now where I have to stop advertising because I get more calls than I can handle. I also give each donor a couple business cards and a magnet so they can easily reach me again or help spread the word.
Do you ever get so many books you can’t handle them all? Will Goodwill always take boxes and boxes of books? Great read, thanks.
Goodwill will take as many books as you are willing to donate. There is no limit. I recently bought a midsize SUV that helps with the book pickups. I also, sometimes rent a storage unit, if I get a lot of books.
Love this…my difficulty, as in beginning a business, or a new job, is how do you start? You have no charity data and are lacking credentials?
Most people are just happy to get rid of their books. As for the charity data, you can always donate $50 or $100 yourself to the get the ball rolling.
Fab idea – thanks so much for sharing, Nathan!
Awesome Nate Really great ideas Thanks for your emails, love you sharing your expertise
I found this post to be very insightful and helpful. Something that no one has asked so far was did you set up an entity to operate under in order to mitigate any chance of personal liabilities? If so, how did you go about doing it?