Making the Cash Money

Published on January 17, 2009

A couple months ago, I decided that I should sell some of the books that I had for my Masters program. Many of the books are really quite good, but I doubt that I will read many of them again. Ironically, it seemed that the best books were the ones I happened to find in a library, and they are the books I felt I should actually buy, but never did. I have always hated buying textbooks. I actually don't really like buying any books. I feel like it is mostly a waste of money, when I can just get them at a library for free. I am an English teacher and I do love reading, but there aren't many books that I buy that I read more than once (and sometimes I don't even read them).

I have a program called Delicious Library 2. It is basically a fancy-schmancy way to organize your books and other possessions. There are two killer features that make it a totally worthwhile purchase:
  1. Barcode Scanning
  2. One-click listing on Amazon.com
When you put a barcode up to your iSight (or any other webcam) Delicious Library searches Amazon.com for the item. If it finds it, then it downloads all the information for it from Amazon, without any input from you. It includes recommendations, retail price, current price (the lowest used price on Amazon) and other information. If Library cannot find your item on Amazon.com, it searches other amazon sites until it finds it. There have been a couple times that it has not been able to find my item, but it is pretty rare. In the event that it doesn't find it, I can go find it myself, and drag the address into Delicious Library, and it will create an item based on that web site. Very slick.

Once I have all the information about my item, I can see if it is worthwhile for me to try and sell it. For example, the book "Getting to Yes" has a new price of about $10, but the lowest used price is just under $6. A book by one of my professors has a list price of about $20, but is currently selling on Amazon for $27. That is one that I certainly want to list. To list an item, all I do is right-click it or  hit Shift+$ and it lists the item on Amazon. I still have to go through all the condition and setting-the-price stuff on Amazon, but it is very easy. Way easier than listing on Half.com, which is what I used to use. 

There are a lot of other neat things about this program, but I these two features have made it very easy for me to sell 7 of my college textbooks that I probably won't ever read. 

Have a Good Life.